Many farmers have had to make the switch from Cash Manager to Farm Focus in the recent months. As you may know, both softwares are owned and managed by CRS; Farm Focus is the new version of Cash Manager, which was retired on 31st March 2022.
Many of the features from Cash Manager have seamlessly transferred across to the new Farm Focus. But some of the old features are no longer available, and some have changed significantly. Read on to discover the key differences between the two softwares.
- Access
With Cash Manager you used to login to the software using an icon on your computer desktop. This meant that you always had to access your financial information on a computer that contained the Cash Manager software. Now, with Farm Focus, you access your data via a website. This is called “the Cloud”. See our earlier blog post for more information on the Cloud.
By accessing the data through the Cloud, you can login to Farm Focus from any computer, phone or tablet – so long as you have internet access!
- The Look
The new Farm Focus has a very different interface (that is how it looks) to the old Cash Manager. Cash Manager had a very “90s” look. The menu dropdowns were always at the top of the screen. There was very little color and there were large lists of data. Farm Focus, on the other hand, has taken a much more modern interface. Farm Focus has plenty of colour, and they use colour to differentiate different parts of the screen and options. The navigation menu is shown along the right hand side of the screen and the information on screen is split into smaller chunks. This makes it easy to navigate to what you’re looking for.
- The Wagebook
Payroll requirements have become increasingly complicated over the years. CRS have decided that it is best to leave these complexities to the experts, so the Farm Focus product does not include a wagebook. Farm Focus does, however, partner with payroll providers such as PaySauce so you can continue to ensure you are meeting all payroll requirements.
- Scanning Bills
In Cash Manager you were able to enter Supplier Invoices and create batch payment files to upload into your bank account for payment. This was a manual process where you had to manually copy the data from each invoice into Cash Manager.
Farm Focus has a new feature where you can email your PDF or scanned supplier invoices to a unique email address. Farm Focus will then analyse the information on your invoice and enter this into Farm Focus for you automatically. Then, you simply need to review the data and create your batch payment as usual. This can be a huge time saver for many businesses!
- Automating Coding
Cash Manager had a feature called Auto Coding. This would automatically code your transactions. While Farm Focus has a similar feature, your existing auto codes will not come across into Farm Focus. You will need to set up new ones in Farm Focus. These are called Coding Rules. These allow greater flexibility when it comes to setting the rule up, identifying which transactions the rule should apply to and how it is applied to each transaction. Once set up, this will make coding easier than it was before.
- Enterprises
Farm Focus does not have Enterprises like Cash Manager did. Instead CSR invented Tags. Tags are essentially the same as Enterprises but there are two types of Tags.
Cost Tags allow you to track expenditure on costs in a certain area of your business. These are free as part of your Farm Focus subscription.
Management Tags, however, are an additional cost. You would use Management Tags to track costs for a certain part of your business, but you can also track income and stock. For example, if you have a dairy farm and a crop farm running through the same company, you would use Management Tags to track these two activities. If you decided to put a new irrigator on one of these farms, you might create a Cost Tag to track all of the expenses relating to the Irrigation project.
These are the six major changes we’ve identified that apply to most of our farming clients. However, there are many minor changes that aren’t covered in this blog post that might apply to you. As always, we’re just a phone call or email away if you want to discuss your specific business or Farm Focus set up. We also offer Farm Focus training sessions. You can contact us here.
