Boost Your Farm Bookkeeping Skills

Farm Bookkeeping Skills

Boost Your Farm Bookkeeping Skills with a Quickbooks for Farmers Online Course from Cornell Small Farms

Are you a beginning farmer? Or are you a current farmer with the desire to switch to an online accounting system? Then our quick guide to QuickBooks is for you.

The Quickbooks for Farmers course from Cornell Small Farms is designed to provide an overview of the QuickBooks Pro software application that will help you to develop your farm bookkeeping skills. It will cover the basic features, such as sales tax, inventory, invoicing, adjustments, and year-end procedures. Students will gain hands-on experience in the concepts presented, as well as guidance on applying the concepts to their own farm.

Register Now to Boost Your Farm Bookkeeping Skills with QuickBooks for Farmers

This course is appropriate for people at all levels of farm experience who seek to get started using QuickBooks for their farm business record-keeping. Some understanding of elementary bookkeeping and accounting principles are helpful, and some previous exposure to QuickBooks will make the acquisition of skills much easier but is not essential. If you are actively using QuickBooks and would like to improve your use of the software, this course may be too basic for you. Read through the syllabus below to make sure the topics covered will be useful.

After competing the 6-week course, including hands-on practice, students will:

  • Show proficiency in setting up chart of accounts, item lists, customer lists and vendor lists
  • Be able to track income, whether using invoices or not
  • Be able to track expenses
  • Know what reports can be useful to them to monitor business finances
  • Know year-end closing and other year-end procedures
  • Know how to backup and restore data files

The bulk of the course happens on your own time, with discussions, readings, and assignments in Teachable, our online course platform. To add to the experience, live webinars will be held during the live instruction period — from September 20 to October 25, 2021, on Monday evenings at 7 p.m. ET. These webinars allow you to meet on a weekly basis to learn from presenters and ask questions in real time. If you miss one, they are always recorded and posted for later viewing.

Please Note:

QuickBooks software is not included in this course and will need to be purchased separately if you want to use it long-term on your farm. You can participate in this course using the free 30-day trial of the online version of QuickBooks; your instructors will provide instructions to get started with this.

Meet the Instructors:

Bonnie Collins is the Sr. Ag Program Team Leader and Farm Business Management resource educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Oneida County, She also operates an accounting business for nearly 35 years. She holds an MBA in technology management, a BPS in Accounting, has completed the Cornell Bird Biology seminars, is a Master Gardner, and has won the National Extension Association of Family & Consumer Science award for Environmental Education.

Steve Hadcock is a Cornell Cooperative Extension Educator with the Capital Area Agricultural and Horticulture Program who works with new and beginning farmers. He provides education on an individual and group basis to those interested in beginning a farm and for those who have been farming for less than 10 years.

​Already a QuickBooks Pro? Check Out Our Other Upcoming Courses

​Reading the Land​

Tuesdays: September 21 – October 12, 2021

There is only one guarantee in agriculture or other land-based businesses: “When we improve land health we realize improvements in production, profitability, and social well-being.” Learn how to read the land as you walk across it, and how to conduct various biological practices, with this new 4-week intensive.

Starting at Square One

Thursdays: September 23 – October 28, 2021

So you’re thinking about starting a farm, but feeling overwhelmed by all the decisions? This course was designed to assist new and aspiring farmers in taking the first steps in thinking through farm start-up (whether you already have land access or not).

This suite of online courses from Cornell Small Farms are accessed on a user-friendly platform, which grants registrants permanent access to their course content. Also, courses have tiered pricing based on household size and income to make access to the courses more affordable and equitable for everyone.

CSF offers more than two dozen online courses to help farmers improve their technical and business skills. These courses cover a range of topics any farmer needs to succeed, such as beekeepingholistic financial planningsoil healthvegetable farming, and so much more. Experienced farmers and extension educators guide students through course content, including weekly live webinars, videos, and resources.

The bulk of the course happens on your own time, with discussions, readings, and assignments in Teachable, our online course platform. To add to the experience, webinars will be woven into the interface of the course for a dedicated time slot each year to allow you to meet on a weekly basis to learn from presenters and ask questions in real time. If you miss one, they are always recorded and posted for later viewing.

You can browse all of the course offerings on the CSF website.

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