Bryan Rendle and partner Liz Russell keep a busy schedule on their 450h hill country property, across the Rangitikei River from Ohingaiti, where the couple run 1800 breeding ewes and finish the lambs.

Bryan says they buy in around 500 hogget replacements and 300-400 lambs to fatten annually –” we also trade in cattle running 70 mixed age cows and buying in 200 replacement heifers on an annual basis”.

The couple took a recent leap into yet another venture establishing agri-specialist business ‘Rendle Rural Ltd’ in December last year and Bryan says this was a natural progression as he’d been working in the agri-business area of a large bank for several years and drew on that, and his farming experience to step out on his own.

He says having had a foot in both worlds has given him a sound understanding of what is required to succeed – “forward planning and setting a cash flow budget for the year ahead is critical”.

Coming from a banking background, where he had previously used Excel Spreadsheet, Bryan says he soon realised he needed to move with the times and find an accounting package that would help us create a solid cash flow for the year ahead.

“We moved to Cash Manager Focus (CMF) – CRS Software’s new farm accounting management package which was specifically designed for farmers so fitted our planning requirements perfectly.”

“CMF is a powerful tool for farmers. We can now go to the bank with solid and verifiable information about our business, rather than how it used to be when the bank came to you with that information. Having this data provides a huge amount of confidence – we’re not on the back foot anymore which can make a big difference when you’re locking in cash flow details for the year ahead.”

He says the couple now link their cash flow details into their working plan and can see where the pinch points are, and more importantly virtually see what their overdraft will be and when. “I’ve just left an off-farm income and wanted more confidence around what we do, how we spend, and CMF provides that information in an easy to see format”.

Bryan says planning is important and, with some banks now requesting principle repayments on loans, the couple now include this financial obligation as part of their annual budget leaving no surprises at year end.

He says moving across to CMF was reasonably easy, plus the couple took advantage of the free one-hour set up help provided by the CRS Specialist Support Team.

“In a nutshell CMF provides the planning and budget information we need to make good decisions for our business – we have more confidence around spending money on farm that we didn’t really have before.”