Menomonee Falls, WI. January 12, 2023 – The Farm Financial Standards Council (Council) has released an updated version of the Financial Guidelines for Agriculture (Guidelines). A revised edition of the corresponding Implementation Guide has also been published.
The 2023 edition of the Guidelines updates and clarifies the discussion of depreciation, emphasizing book depreciation as the recommended approach for financial analysis, but also acknowledging that tax depreciation and market value-based depreciation approaches continue to be used in agriculture for specific purposes.
According to Todd Doehring, Centrec Consulting, Savoy, IL, a co-chair of the organization’s Technical Committee, minor changes were made to the computation of the repayment and replacement capacity schedule, and to clarify the concept of unfunded capital expenditures which relate to replacement of depreciable capital assets.
The updated document is available for free to members or may be purchased as a pdf download from the FFSC website ffsc.org.
The group also released an updated edition to An Implementation Guide for Non-Accountants. The 2023 version includes the addition of a graphic illustrating how financial recordkeeping may progress from a producer’s current practices to implementation of the recommendations of the Council. The Implementation Guide is designed to be a supplement for non-accounting individuals in applying the various ratios, statements and other elements of both the Financial Guidelines and the Management Accounting Guidelines.
The Implementation Guide also provides a short introduction to the work of the FFSC and is available for free as a download at the FFSC at https://ffsc.org/order-the-guidelines/
