Agriculture Accounting Services

For farm and ranch operations who rely on leasing capital equipment, the new lease accounting regulations can impact your cash flows and balance sheets.

How to prepare: Briggs & Veselka audit professionals can assist in determining the potential impact of these new regulations in advance of them going into effect and offer planning options to take a proactive approach with lenders and regulatory agencies. 

Because of the intense capital needs of most agricultural operations, proper capital depreciation can be a significant element of your balance sheet, cash flow, and tax liabilities.

How to prepare: The Briggs & Veselka agriculture practice has prepared a confidential, no obligation checklist to provide better insight into the impact of these FASB rules, which could impact contracts being executed even before the regulations go into effect. 

In the event of flooding or hurricanes, crop losses can have a debilitating impact on your operations. Securing the fair compensation from insurance carriers for lost income and damages, can be an arduous process.

How to prepare: Briggs & Veselka forensic accountants can provide a fair and defensible study of lost income and damages based on industry standards to assist farmers and ranchers in their insurance claims process. A proactive review of your current coverage—before disaster strikes—is often a good first step in this process. 

As agricultural operations grow in size and complexity, so too should their accounting processes. This could present opportunities for improvement in balance sheets (for your lending base) and tax liabilities.

How to prepare: A low-risk discussion of your current accounting method, performed by a Briggs & Veselka audit professional, can raise issues and opportunities for improved accounting practices. 

The practice of recording accumulated earnings for closely-held C corporations has come under greater scrutiny by the IRS. This is further complicated for agricultural companies who often must retain capital either for bonding purposes or for purchase of capital equipment.

How to prepare: Because of the vagueness of the IRS regulations, smart agricultural companies should have a consistent, well-documented approach to earnings that are withheld, in order to justify the approach in the event of an audit. Briggs & Veselka has benchmarked leading practices in this area and can share them with you upon request. 

Project billing, month-end closings, and reports for lenders can place burdens on your existing finance and accounting staff. And for some operations, they have simply outgrown their bookkeeper and internal systems.

How to prepare: Briggs & Veselka’s Outsourced Accounting Services gives you budget flexibility and control when you require interim support of full back office accounting functions.