THE Commonwealth Bank has buddied with a New Zealand start-up to trial accounting software which pairs growers’ information with their bank, accountant and farm-advisor.
This month 100 of the bank’s agribusiness customers will start using a cloud-based farm budgeting tool, Figured, developed by New Zealand tech business of the same name.
Farmers will use the software to create profit and balance sheets. They can then choose to share the information with their advisors without having to prepare separate documentation.
The bank’s general manager of regional and agribusiness banking Tim Harvey, Wagga Wagga, said the software was designed to replace “static” spreadsheets.
“We have found budgeting is a key pain point for farmers and agribusiness clients because it’s often done on spread sheets. They do it but when the weather or commodity prices change it’s outdated,” Mr Harvey said.
“This software is integrated with real-time information like commodity markets which means at any point in time their budgets will be far more relevant.”
The software would also free-up the bank’s relationship managers.
“When the ecosystem between a client, banker and accountant is working it will mean our bank managers can spend less time working on the construction of budgets and more time providing advice and insights.”
Down the track Figured would introduce functionality which would allow agronomists and other production specialists to enter information which would help build a client’s budget.
“Farm advisors will be able to input data, for example, yield data, but not access the clients personal financial information.”
Mr Harvey said the software would be tested for 12 months. If the pilot is successful it will be scaled up.
