Farm Books Accounting Software | Support and Resource Center

FarmBooks FAQ

Please see below for answers to FarmBooks frequently asked questions.

Pre-Sale FAQ

Can I demo FarmBooks?
Yes! You can request a free trial of the software here.

How much does FarmBooks cost?
$395 for single farm installation/registration.

Are there any required maintenance fees?
Yes, you must pay a $75 yearly fee if you wish to stay eligible for program updates and support.

Can I download the program after purchase?
Not at this time. After purchase, the FarmBooks installation CD and startup documentation is sent to you by mail.

Can I run FarmBooks on a Mac?
You can run FarmBooks on a Mac but it must be installed and run in "Windows mode." Please contact us for more information.

Check Writing FAQ

Which check types are supported by FarmBooks?
FarmBooks supports three standard formats:

Three checks per page
Top check and two vouchers
Voucher - Check - Voucher

Special check formats may be created for a fee. For ordering FarmBooks compatible checks visit the Dynamic Systems website at www.dswebtoprint.com/farmbooks.

How do I set my starting check number?
The starting check number is defined for each bank account along with the beginning bank account balance for the fiscal year. This can be found from the "Balance menu" and then by selecting "Bank…". Edit each bank account and set the "Next Sequence Number" for check and / or deposit. Repeat this for each bank account.

How do I set my check format?
You can set the format for each bank account by going to the "Balance menu" and then by selecting "Bank…". Edit each bank account and press the "Check Format" for the "Default" section and choose the desired format. Repeat this for each bank account.

When printing checks, you can still change the format and the beginning check number.

Note: There are two formats for "Three per Page", one by Current and the other by Deluxe. You must select the format that matches the vendor where you ordered your checks.

How do I enter my check or deposit detail in the grid without using the detail popup window?
The application "Option" preference is where you can configure the "Check Book Entry" as "Novice" or "Date Entry". Novice causes the popup window to be display instead of allowing entry into the grid. Select "Data Entry" to allow entry of data directly into the grid. If you don’t know a code while entering data into the grid, you can press the Ctrl-Enter key in the field to popup the code list to allow you to browse for a specific code.

Why are the checks that I just entered not showing in the print check list?
If you are using the application as a check writer, you should have your application "Option" preference for "Check Number and Status" set to "Print" or "Print and Cleared". You will notice that the word "PRINT" is inserted for the check number. The system assigns the check number when the check is printed. If you have anything other than "PRINT" as the check number, the check will NOT be in the list of checks that are ready to be printed.

Code Management FAQ

How do I specify the Account Code used for Finance Charge Invoices?
User may create a "Product or Service Item" called "Finance Charge" and specify the account ATIGD. Since the finance charge invoice cannot be edited, it will be important to specify an ATIGD that does not require an External Code. If this special product and service item is not defined, then the customer’s default ATIG/D is used.

How do I eliminate ATIG codes that I don’t use from showing in my lists?
If you don’t have a "sheep operation" for example, then you can de-activate these codes from the "Setup menu" and then by selecting "ATI - ATIG Codes". It is as simple as un-checking the zero G CODE to de-activate the entire ATI code group or you may un-check a single code to de-activate it. Now, the sheep ATIGs will not be displayed in any of the lists though out the application.

How are ATI budgets used by FarmBooks?
The defined ATI budget table lists by ATI category all of the budget values entered for Budgeting in the "Planning menu". For each selected ATI code, a yearly budget value is entered; and then the yearly value is allocated to a specific month or months. The yearly budget values are utilized in the Flow of Funds report as the basis of comparing actual income and expenses for the fiscal year with budgeted values for each ATI category. The budgeted values are also utilized to develop the Projected Cash Flow report which can be used to compare projected to actual cash flow values.

Data Management FAQ

How often should I backup my database and what options should I use?
You can never have too many backups. It is always wise to protect your business from loss of information in the event of either a hardware failure or natural disaster. The application backup preference allows you to configure the location where you want your backup stored. If the location is to any location other than "C:\FarmBooks Backups\" a secondary backup will automatically be made to the local hard drive (does not protect you in the case of a hard disk failure). This was especially important when floppy diskettes were used as a backup media since they tended to be extremely unreliable. Also, if you check "Append Timestamp for Multiple Backups", it will create a new backup instead of overwriting the same file. This give you more options should one of the backup files be corrupt.

How often should I re-index my data?
The re-index function should only be used if you receive a database error or are instructed by technical support. This function in the application is overly used with no real benefit.

Inventory Management FAQ

What is the difference between the inventory operating dollars per unit and the market dollars per unit? Where are these values used?
Inventory allows you to track your assets by recording a beginning and ending value. You may enter these values on an operating (actual cost) basis or by a market (what if scenario) basis. The system will automatically create the ending values if your application preference for "Automatically Create Ending Inventory" is checked. The ending values can be edited thought the year as you obtain more accurate information. The operating or marketing values are printed on the balance sheet depending on which report you select.

Invoicing Management FAQ

What is the "Track Income per Line Item" option in invoice preferences and how is used?
This option determines how your payment will be deposited: as a single lump sum or as a detail deposit reflecting each line on your invoice. It is recommended that you track income per invoice line item so that reports will contain more detail information reflecting your business activity. However, if your business activity is simply doing a single service or product, then a lump sum deposit may suffice.

Why do I have two lines of entry after selecting "Track Income per Line Item"? Why are there two unit price columns?
When tracking income per line item, the first line is printed on the estimate, invoice or credit memo form. The second line is used solely for making the deposit. The ATIGD is the only field that is required and the others provide additional detail for the deposit if desired. The unit price in the first row is used to determine the total amount to be printed on the form for the customer. This is based on the item quantity times the unit price. The unit price on the second line is used for tracking unit information associated with the ATIGD code and may reflect your cost of doing business.

What is the purpose of the "product and service items"?
The product and service items are the types of merchandise or activity that describe what you are selling. They capture various details that allows you to quickly enter a line on your invoice without specifying each field every time and brings consistency to your data and reports.

Do I need to setup all my "customers" and "product and service items" before I start entering estimates and invoices?
No. These can be created as you enter estimates or invoices. When creating your product and service items, it is recommended that you use general descriptions if you are initially adding a new product or service. After the line has been saved to the invoice, then you can go back and add more detail to the long description that may describe something specific for this line that would only apply to this estimate or invoice. On future estimate or invoices, this will allow you to reuse the product or service item on the form and then add additional detail specific to an invoice while entering the line as the additions are not saved. However, you can always go to the product and service item list in invoice preferences and add more detail or change the message that will be used on future forms.

How do I receive a payment on an invoice?
From the invoice tab, press the activities button and then select "receive payment" from the drop down menu to open the window to process a customer payment. Now, all you need to do is select your customer from the list and enter the received amount and press the tab or enter key and the amount will be automatically be applied to the list of open invoices starting with the oldest invoice first. You can edit the payment amount assigned to each open invoice if you want to change the pay assignment by adjusting the amounts in the grid under the Payments column.

What if I post a payment to the wrong customer? How do I correct the mistake?
From the invoice tab, locate the incorrect payment in the topmost window and select it and then press the delete button. A warning confirmation popup window will be displayed asking you to verify the deletion of the payment. When a payment is deleted, the associated deposit is deleted, the bank balance is adjusted, and any discounts, credits, or write-off that you may have applied for the payment is reversed, and finally the customer balance is updated.

What should I do when I receive a payment for more than the balance owed?
You should enter the amount received in the payment window. This overpayment will then be available as a credit for the customer which may be applied to a future invoice.

What if I receive a payment from a customer and enter it as a deposit instead of receiving it as a payment with invoicing?
When you enter the vendor name in the deposit tab, it will check to see if you have a customer with a balance. If a customer has open invoices with a balance, you will be asked if you want to apply the deposit against the open invoices as a payment and a deposit. Answering yes to this question will redirect you to the customer payment window.

Do I need to setup a vendor with the same name as the customer before processing a customer payment?
No, if the vendor with the same name as the customer does not exist for the fiscal year that you are creating the payment / deposit, it will be created for you automatically when you save the payment.

How do I prevent the payment terms from showing on the invoice?
In invoice preference, set "None" as your default payment terms. Also, use the payment term description with "None" on the customer records. This will suppress the payment information from invoices.

Is it necessary to show both the item description and the long description on the estimate, invoice, or credit memo?
No, you can hide columns and messages on the printed form type (estimate, invoice, credit memo, finance charge, or statement). Use the "Forms" setup options from invoice preferences to control hiding columns, show or hide special text, logo, and column heading text per form type. Select the form type from the drop down list for "Defaults for" and specify your preferences per form type. Also, if you don’t need a ship-to location, you can hide it for the form type.

What is the purpose of statements?
If the customer has not paid you in full within the period defined for their payment terms, you may want to send the customer a statement of their account showing all open invoices. You may elect to assess a finance charge for unpaid invoices during this process. If you assess a finance charge to the customer, then a special invoice is created called a finance charge. If you later elect to drop the charges, delete the finance charge invoice.

How do I create a credit memo?
Open the invoice form, for which you want to give a credit in the editor, and change the form type to "Credit Memo". Now, for each line that you want to give a credit make that line’s unit price negative. Only lines with negative amounts will be included in the credit balance.

How do I apply a credit memo to a customer balance?
First, you must create a credit memo or have received an overpayment. Now, from the receive payments window, click on the button in credit column to assign an amount to the open invoice. This will adjust the balance due for this open invoice. Also, if the customer overpays their balance you should capture the total paid amount in the receive payment window. This will allow you to later apply this overpayment as a credit to an open invoice. Any un-applied credits for the customer will be displayed at the bottom of the receive payments window.

How do I apply a discount to a customer invoice?
Discounts may be applied to an invoice using several different methods. The system could calculate a discount if the payment term has a discount rate associated with it and the payment is within the timeframe. This calculated discount amount would be display in the un-applied discount column at the bottom of the receive payments window. You could elect to apply the discount by selecting the button in the discount column on the line of the open invoice you wish to discount. You could manually assign a discount to an open invoice as long as a payment amount is entered for the invoice, otherwise you would need to edit the invoice and add a line to the invoice with the discount amount specified as a negative amount.

How large should my business logo be for best viewing on various invoicing forms?
The logo should be no more than 3 inches wide by 1 inch height to allow enough space for the business remitter information to display below the logo.

How do I change my invoice settings so that my logo does not print on my form (estimate, invoice, credit memo, finance charge, or statement) documents?
From the setup menu, select invoice preferences and then the "Forms" tab. Use the "Defaults for:" drop down list to obtain the desired form to hide the logo. Uncheck the "Include Logo" check box in the Logo setup section.

Payroll Management FAQ

What is the purpose of the "payroll defaults" in setup?
The "Payroll Defaults" items are the master list of earnings and deductions / benefits that can possibly be assigned to an employee record for the calendar year. You can add new items to this list during the year as necessary to support your payroll needs. There is a default indicator column that allows you to specify items that would generally apply to all employees. This will allow you to quickly pull in these items during employee setup with the click of a button. Should you no longer provide a benefit, you can deactivate it by unchecking the active indicator. This will prevent you from adding it to new employee records. However, you will need to identify employees that had this deactivated payroll item and manually uncheck it in employee setup to prevent the use of this item on future payroll checks.

How can I add additional payroll items to "Payroll Defaults" or an existing ATIG category?
For instance, I would like to break down health insurance as Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits. From the setup menu, select ATI-ATIG/D Codes and location Farm Expenses: Farm Expenses 100% Deductible: 041 Labor Hired - Health Insurance is 0415 (should be display with red text). Now, press the add button to enter D Codes 1, 2, and 3 for the Medical, Dental, and Vision respectively. Lastly, you will add these same categories in "Payroll Defaults" setup using the ATIGD just created for the withheld and paid deduction ATIGD assignments. These "Payroll Defaults" withheld and paid deduction ATIGD assignments must be unique for the calendar year.

How do I enter my employee salary or hourly rate in the employee setup "earnings and deductions" tab?
When I go to the "earnings and deductions" tab after entering the employee payroll information, the earnings and deductions grids are empty. Press the "Retrieve Default Items" button to generate a list of payroll earnings and deduction / benefit available to assign values based on definitions created in the payroll defaults setup. If the grids are still empty (zero records added to the grid) after pressing the "Retrieve Default Items", then you have not defined any "payroll defaults" items from the setup menu. See question, what is the purpose of the "payroll defaults" in setup? If you added new payroll defaults since you setup the employee, you can press the "Retrieve Default Items" button again to obtain the new item or items. You can also click the first row in each grid and select from a drop down list for the “payroll item” column to add an item without using the retrieve button.

How do I apply a payroll tax deposit in the current year for the previous year?
Payroll withholding ATIG codes are 941x where the x value for the G-Code is 2=Social Security, 3=Medicare, 8=State, and 9=Federal. To make a tax deposit for any of the withhold use the corresponding A-Code of 0 or 041y where the y value equals the x value above for the G-Code. To designate the payment as the previous year use an External Code in the range 985 to 990. For instance, pay the federal tax deposit for the previous year use ATIG=0419 with an external code of 990 for "PRV YEAR FED INC TAX". Run the Payroll Summary report and you will notice that the column "Amount Paid" does not reflect the payment for the previous year which allows the “Amount to be Deposited” column to be accurate for the current year.

Program Interface FAQ

What are some of the differences between the Register and Detail Register tab views?
The "register tab" shows only transactions for a single fiscal year and bank account whereas the "detail register tab" can be used to show transactions across all fiscal years and all bank accounts. Filters can be applied to each grid to find specific data.

Program Management

How do I set the number of decimal digits of accuracy for unit price or units?
There is an application preference setting that allows you to control the number of decimal places for both units and unit price. You may specify the number of decimal places between 2 to 5 digits of accuracy. This preference option applies to inventory entry, invoicing, check / deposit entry, memorized check / deposit entry, and allocation entry. In check/deposit entry in the grid, the user is not limited to the number of digits specified in preference but the display of these values will be limited to the set value. This preference does not apply to how information is displayed in the reports for the 4.04 release. For instance, if the price amount is changed by the user, the price divided by the number of units could cause the unit price to be adjusted such that the unit price results in up to 5 digits of accuracy. If this happens, the reports will display up to five digits regardless of the preference setting for unit price.

Report Management FAQ

How can I print a group of reports without having to print each one separately?
Batch printing of reports is probably one of the most under utilized features of the application. It does allow you to print a group of reports directly to a printer or to PDF format for later viewing. To enable this feature, go to the "Report Menu" and select "Reports…" and then press the "Options" button. Also, from this setup window, you can configure how you want the application to automatically adjust report dates for new fiscal periods or prompt once for dates during batch printing.

How do I email a report to someone?
Use the batch print option (see "How can I print a group of reports without having to print each one separately?") to output your report to PDF format (see item 5), then go to the "View Exports" from the "Report Menu". Find the report that you want to email and right click and select "Send To" and "Mail Recipient". To use this feature, you must have an MAPI configured application like Microsoft® Outlook Express, Microsoft® Outlook, etc. instead of using web mail. The report file name the application creates is prefixed with your farm name for easy identification by the recipient.

How do I export a report to Microsoft® Excel and other formats?
Open the report in the Preview window, and press "the envelope with the red arrow pointing down" and follow the prompts. The reports were designed for printability and so they may not export without requiring some manual reformatting. If we hear enough users wanting this feature, we may develop an export format that would export cleaner in a future release.

What are the "tax planning values" used for?
The "tax planning values" are estimated financial values setup for the current fiscal year to be used in providing preliminary Schedule F and Net Taxable Income Statements. The Annual Depreciation of Equipment value is also used in the Income Statement report as the basis for computing Net Farm Income. These estimated financial and tax planning values can be revised for the current fiscal year as more accurate financial and tax information becomes available.

I’m getting an error 7008 when I open the report module and another window in the application. How do I resolve this error?
The error message looks something like this:

AdsQueryEmpYear: Error 7200: AQE Error: State =HY000; Native Error=7008; [Extended Systems][Advantage SQL][ASA] Error 7008: The specified table, memo file or index file, or index file was unable to be opened. Table name: ext_Mast.

Does the farm name end with a period? Even it doesn’t the underlying relative path stored in the registration table may contain a trailing period. To correct this problem try the following steps:

Go to the Personal Information window from the Setup menu and write down your registration information from the product tab.
Close the Farm from the File menu.
Select Change Registration Number from the File menu. Select the farm and enter registration information and press the finish button.

This will adjust the relative path information stored in the registration file. Now, open the farm and try to open the report module again. If you still obtain the error, please contact support.

Tax Management FAQ

How is the employees FICA exempt status used within the payroll reports and the FarmBooks application? Can this value be changed during the calendar year?
It is very important to carefully consider your payroll setup data and deductions before the first payroll check is written. This will ensure that the proper amounts are withheld for the calendar year and that the reports will be accurate. The FICA exempt status is recorded on each payroll transaction at the time that the paycheck is written. Changing the employee FICA exempt status during the year will impact the Form 943 report and the Payroll Summary by FICA Status - All Employees among other reports. Hence, if you change the employee FICA exempt status during the year, it will be necessary to edit each paycheck (must bring up the data in the detail window and update it) and then record it to have the new FICA status reflected on each paycheck so that the these reports will be accurate.

The FICA status is not displayed with the payroll grid so it can be a tedious task to correct your data. It is not recommended to change this value during the calendar year unless absolutely necessary. Up front payroll planning will result in accurate withholdings that do not require a lot of adjustments later.

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