Reconciling Livestock Tallies
One of the challenges in preparing a set of farming financial statements is the completion of the livestock reconciliation.
A simple livestock reconciliation is as follows:
- Opening Stock Numbers
- Plus Purchases
- Plus Natural Increase
- Minus Sales
- Minus Deaths
- Equals Closing Stock Numbers
The things that go wrong include:
- Last year’s tallies were incorrect.
- This year’s tallies are incorrect.
- Some purchase numbers have been omitted or duplicated.
- Natural increase and deaths are not recorded accurately.
- Some sales numbers are wrong.
- Leased in livestock have been included.
- Leased out livestock, which are not on the property, have been omitted.
- A reasonable guess is made.
- Livestock were bought or sold within a few days of the balance date
Many farmers keep notebooks detailing regular stock tallies and record livestock sales and purchases. Tallies are often taken at shearing and lambing. Trucking invoices can be useful as they detail stock movements, ages and quantities.
Please feel free to add notes to your figures regarding the above, so your accountant can correctly reconcile your figures.
You can also email these through to your accountant directly or to Nicola to be added to your file.