When you first switch from Cashmanager RURAL to Farm Focus, and go into the Actuals - Balancing screen for the first time, you will see there is a lot of red. Do not be alarmed, there are a few simple fixes to get things back in order.

Balancing in Farm Focus takes away the manual reconciling that was in Cashmanager RURAL, and will automate the process going forward. You have a Focus balance and a Bank balance that will match when you are balanced. The Focus balance is the sum of all coded transactions. The Bank balance is your actual balance at the bank (the sum of all coded and uncoded transactions).

When you first switch you will need to make sure that everything is coded and reconciled in Cashmanager RURAL. All of these transactions will come across into Farm Focus and show in the Balancing Screen.

You will need to re-balance your bank accounts when you first open Farm Focus, and then your balancing will be automatic from that point on.

Go into the Actuals and click into the Balancing tab. You can choose to Accept Focus Balances to bring all of your balances into line:

Alternatively, you can use the drop down list to go to the most historic balancing record:

Scroll right down to the oldest entry, and enter in the bank balance at that date. This will give an opening balance amount which will align your Focus Balance and Bank Balance up to date. Depending on your bank, you may need to enter in the monthly closing balance each month up to the current month.

You will be all balanced up to the most recently coded items.

Daily balances highlight any discrepancies in the Focus to Bank balance due to uncoded, duplicate or deleted transactions.

See here to create a reversal for any duplicate transactions.

You can manually enter transactions right up until the day your bank feeds are activated if you choose to have direct bank feeds.

All migrated transactions will be treated as manual entry up until the day you switch.

Rabobank All-in-One account encompasses fixed loan facilities and working capital, and so is treated slightly different. Click here for Rabobank.

If you have recently switched your database from Cashmanager RURAL to Farm Focus, and the process above has not solved your balancing issues, there are a few other scenarios that might have happened:

Transactions entered with a future date in Cashmanager RURAL will migrate successfully but you cannot enter a future transaction date in Farm Focus. Once the payment date equals today's date, the balancing will come back into line and the error message will go away.

In Cashmanager RURAL, you may have recorded an incorrect transaction date that crossed into a different Financial Year.

For example: Your database has an end of FY of 30/06/2021

A transaction occurs on 10/07/2021 but has been recorded with a date of 28/06/2021.

This will affect the opening bank balance for the new financial year, making it incorrect to the actual bank balance.

The opening bank balance for the database will need to be manually adjusted on entries prior to the date you swtiched. The bank balance will then pull into line to match Focus balances going forward.

It is recommended to use the direct bank feeds so that bank balance information is being fed into Farm Focus directly from the bank.

In Cashmanager RURAL you can enter transactions that have a different payment date to the bank. This might be for a payment for bobby calves due to a long payment lag. You would still be able to balance your month-end correctly to the bank balance, but now in Farm Focus this means your Focus balance will not match your Bank Balance. Once your information is switched to Farm Focus, you cannot edit these dates.

Example:

You have dated a transaction of $10 for 25th June, whereas the actual date the transaction goes through the bank is 3rd July. This means your end of June Bank balance will not match your Focus balance, but once the date of the actual payment has passed, the balances will line up.