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Financial Basics For Beginning Farmers NOFA Winter Conference 2019 Alec Gioseffi & Kat Mitchell

Workshop Handout

Exercise Data

~~~~~~~ Thank you for attending our workshop! Some of the data in the printed spreadsheets here is very small. If you would like a PDF copy, please email resilientfarmsnj@gmail.com.

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Resources

● Books: ○ Fearless Farm Finances - Paul Dietmann and Craig Chase (Specifically

refers to Quickbooks) ○ The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook: A Complete Guide to

Managing Finances, Crops, and Staff - And Making a Profit - Richard Wiswall

● Tax & Accounting Help: ○ Farm Credit East:

9 County Road 618 Lebanon, NJ 08833-3028 908-782-5215

● Loans and Loan Assistance: ○ Farm Service Agency (FSA - USDA)

www.fsa.usda.gov ○ National Resource Conservation Services (NRCS - USDA)

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/site/nj/home/ ● Accounting/Business Software:

○ Microsoft Office: Excel, Powerpoint, Word, etc. ○ Google Drive: Sheets, Slides, Docs, etc. ○ Quickbooks: Tracking and analysing information in one place. ○ Square: mobile credit card reader. Also tracks how specific items are

selling. ○ LivePlan: Business Plan software.

● Crop Planning Tools: ○ Johnny’s Seed:

■ Grower’s Library: http://www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/growing-center.html

■ Planning Tools and Calculators: http://www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/online-tools-calculators.html

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Microsoft Excel/Google Sheets Formulas

● Most Formulas are interchangeable between Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel

● Resources: ○ https://exceljet.net/formulas - This is a great tool containing over 500

different formulas. ○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t3FDi98GBk - This is a YouTube

video demonstrating how to use the 10 most common Excel Formulas.

Basic Formulas Examples

● =SUM(A1:A24) ~ will add the numbers in column A from 1-24. ● =SUM(A1:D10) ~ will add all the numbers within the range of A1-D10. ● =SUM(A1+B5+C8) ~ will add each individual cell. ● =A1/B2 ~ will divide A1 by B2. ● =A1*BC ~ will multiply A1 by B2. ● =A1-B2 ~ will minus A1 by B2. ● =AVERAGE(A1:A24) ~ will find the average of numbers in column A from 1-24. ● =AVERAGE(A1:D10) ~ will find the average of numbers within range of A1-D10. ● =AVERAGE(A1,B2,C5) ~ will find the average of entered numbers. ● =COUNTIF(A1:A24,“*Arugula*”) ~ will count how many times Arugula is found. ● =MIN(A1:A24) ~ will find the smallest number in the range ● =MAX(A1:A24) ~ will find the largest number in the range

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