Nestled on the outskirts of Darfield, Essendon Farm is a successful and growing dairy farm run by the Jarman family. This thriving farm has been in the Jarman family for over 150 years.
Anticipating the arrival of the Central Plains Water Scheme, Paul and Ann Jarman converted from traditional mixed cropping to dairy farming between 2013 and 2019. Towards the end of this process, they realised that they needed to change their financial recording system.
“We use our financial recording system to track our finances and help make farm management decisions,” Ann explained. “We’d been using the same system for 40 years and it needed to be updated. So, we changed to Xero.”
But changing to Xero was complicated. “Xero is a great system but it is standardised. After talking with our consultant and contract milker about what expenditure they wanted tracked, we came up with around 30 codes that we needed. But getting that set up right in Xero proved a problem. Even after watching Xero’s online help videos, we weren’t any closer to a solution. I didn’t know where to go for help.”
“A family member suggested Georgia Goodman, Division Manager of LP Assist,” Ann continued. Georgia met Paul and Ann at their home and ran a few Xero training sessions, diving deep into how Xero could be used in a way that was helpful to the Jarmans. She also set up their Xero system with the 30 codes they needed, customising the platform to be most effective for Essendon Farms. “It was ideal for us because she came out to the farm and sat down with us to find out exactly what we wanted to achieve with Xero,” Ann said. “Because of her farming connections, she understood exactly what we wanted to achieve both to help with farm management decisions and, because she is an accountant, what we needed from a compliance perspective.”
Since getting Xero running smoothly, LP Assist has also set Essendon Farm up with Hubdoc and Figured to streamline their financial activities even more. Georgia and our team are looking forward to continuing to work with Essendon Farms and seeing their great dairy farm continue to thrive.
