Diprose Miller has spent over a decade building a different kind of relationship with its farming clients—one that goes well beyond year-end compliance. Here's what that looks like, and what it could mean for your farm.
Over the past decade, Figured has worked closely with a small number of forward-thinking accounting firms helping shape how farm financial management is done today.
Diprose Miller, based in the Waikato, is one of those firms. As Figured's first Platinum Partner and a long-standing contributor to the platform's development, they've played a key role in defining what modern agri accounting looks like in New Zealand.
Today, they're a leading example of that new style of relationship, and why it works. But should you be expecting the same of your own accountant?
In this article:
Annual compliance is important. But it only looks at what you’ve done, not what's coming next—and that’s where farmers need the extra support.
Diprose Miller saw the need coming over a decade ago, and began a strategic shift to get ahead.
“There was a conscious decision by the firm to move to more cloud-based accounting, more data-driven decisions,” said Ed Wagstaff, a director at the firm, “and to get alongside clients and help them in real time with what they're doing and the decisions they're making on a day-to-day basis.”
The problem with compliance-only accounting, as Ed sees it, isn’t that it’s useless—it’s that it’s too slow for the environment farmers are working in now.
“If the payout's swung $2 in a year and you're still looking at data that’s 12 months old,” he added, “then everything's changed in 12 months. There are too many variables to just do compliance and then advise on those decisions even 6 months later.”
Diprose Miller works with farmers at every stage, and the rhythm of those relationships looks quite different to a compliance-only offering:
“We can be beside our clients a lot more and offer a lot more than just your once-a-year/end-of-year check and ‘here's how much tax you've got to pay’,” said Ed.
“We can make decisions about buying the next farm, or bringing in the kids, or putting on a sharemilker, or whatever it may be—today. We don't have to wait till the next GST period ends or till the end of the financial year to get a full grasp of what this means for someone’s business going forward.”
At Diprose Miller, two areas where this partnership-based approach makes a meaningful difference are succession planning and the pathway to farm ownership, both common challenges in the current NZ farming environment…
For a lot of farms across NZ, the parents might have everything written down in a book, or held in their heads, but the next generation doesn't want to write everything down on paper; they'd rather have it at their fingertips, digitally.
That’s where education plays a major role in Ed’s succession planning work. He walks the whole family through their finances together, showing how decisions affect the bottom line and getting everyone to do their own data entry, so they understand what they’re looking at, not just what they’re being told.
In this way, cloud-based farm financial tools play a key role in helping hand the farm down cleanly. There’s less chance of something critical getting lost when it's all visible, up to date, and accessible to everyone involved.
These days, the pathway to farm ownership looks much the same as it used to…except longer.
Equity requirements have increased, it takes longer to build the assets required, and the margin for error has shrunk. Meeting these requirements can be a challenge for future farm owners, but it’s also a point where Diprose Miller can make a significant difference.
"The traditional pathway of contract milking, sharemilking, and farm ownership is still there, but it's a lot harder now because of the numbers involved."
“It does take longer than people sometimes expect. You talk about a 5-10 year progression from sharemilker to farm ownership, and often that may mean being prepared to move districts to get a farm you can afford—and not be so geared up that you’re just farming it for the bank.”
For all of this to work, Ed’s team needs current data.
Cloud-based tools are how they access it. Diprose Miller adopted Xero back in 2015-16, and also started on Figured. In fact, Ed and the team have played a major role in how Figured has evolved over the past decade, giving regular feedback that has helped shape it into a contemporary farming tool that now informs financial decisions on over 35,000 farms around the globe.
Where it used to take a week of back-and-forth to land a final forecast (print it…review it…change it…send it again) now Ed can sit with a client in a meeting room, on the farm, or over a video call, and change numbers live on the screen. Both parties can see the impact on the farm’s year-end balance in real time.
“We can do it all within an hour and have the result basically then and there,” he said.
“Technology has definitely enabled more frequent discussions, and at times that suit the farm. Previously, contacting a farmer during calving was a no-go. Whereas now, if you can do it online, you can have that conversation over lunch basically.”
Ed’s most northern client is near the bottom of 90 Mile Beach. His most southern is in Winton. He talks to both regularly, with the same live farm data in front of each of them.
"It's taking the barriers away from having those conversations."
Technology didn’t replace what an experienced adviser like Ed brings to the table. But it made that experience more accessible than it has ever been before, enabling his team to deliver it to more farmers, with better results.
Watch this space: Ed reckons that within 5-10 years, advisory will be more embedded on the farm team, more relational, and closer to what you could call an offsite CFO than an external compliance partner.
Diprose Miller is already recruiting for that future—looking for people who don’t just know the numbers, but who can sit across from a farmer and their family and have a real conversation, understanding the full picture of what decisions mean for the farm and family. After all, in farming, family and business are intertwined more than almost any other industry.
If you want a financial partner standing in your corner year-round, not just at tax time, it’s time to see what more your accountant could do for your business.
Find out more about Diprose Miller and how they work with farmers across New Zealand at diprosemiller.co.nz.
Or to learn more about solving planning challenges in NZ dairy, download our free Dairy Farming Insights Brief.