RANCHING Business
keting section, and look for record- keeping examples. The spreadsheet is in Microsoft Excel, and produc- ers can customize it to their own operations. Banta describes the spreadsheet
as “a base template to use as a start- ing point ... I like to keep things simple, so that’s the way this is. For most operations, I think you could do everything you needed the way that spreadsheet’s currently laid out in less than 30 minutes to an hour per month, and for a small or mid-sized operation sometimes in less than that.” A really big operation would
have to spend more time entering data, but for the most part it’s not a very big time commitment — par- ticularly if you compare entering information as you go to the time and headache of searching for ev- erything at the end of the year or
the potential loss from forgetting deductible expenses. Some operations don’t have to
enter all of the data in the cattle performance sections by hand. If they have electronic animal ID, then scales manufactured by Tru-Test and other companies will match weights and other data to individual cows and transfer the information to their spreadsheet via computer. But Banta says very few produc-
ers take advantage of that function even though their scales may be equipped to do so. “In our family operation as well as in research sce- narios, even though I may have had access to a set of scales that have that, typically more often than not we just wrote those weights down and entered them into the computer.” He says those very large opera-
tions that would have to make a bigger commitment to entering the
data into the spreadsheet would be the most likely to use the digital scales to record weights. These have been extraordinary
times in the cattle market, with nu- merous price records established in the course of the last year. Does that make producers more likely to keep records? Banta doesn’t think so, be- cause what’s more important than gross receipts is the bottom line. “I think we may see more im-
pact when margins in the cow-calf industry get really tight and people are worried about losing money, and where they’re spending money,” he says. “That may be more likely, but what I’ve noticed generally speak- ing is it’s more based off that per- son’s personality, whether they are really interested in keeping records and keeping track of everything versus where we are from a cattle price standpoint.”
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tscra.org June 2014 The Cattleman 43
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