Customer Stories

"Building a good team around us has been critical to our success. It's vitally important to be able to keep everyone on the same page — and part of the success for succession planning is having everyone in the loop and heading in the same direction."
— Graeme Shaw, Clover Hills Ltd.

Waikato dairy farmer Graeme Shaw has a target of not owning any farms when he's 70. At 69 when we spoke to him, he says he's on track.

The plan for his Te Awamutu property, run as Clover Hills Ltd. with his wife Margaret, is for daughter Marie and son-in-law Sam Ravenscroft to take it over. The pair came on as contract milkers eight years ago, and have since built up a 50% ownership stake in the business — with the plan to grow that further over the next few years.

Keeping everyone on the same page has been vital to the success of this process, which is where Graeme's long-time adviser, Ed Wagstaff from Diprose Miller, and Figured come in. 

Watch their story to see how Ed and Figured are helping Graeme's family work as a team, plan ahead, and move in the right direction.

Transcript

Graeme: Farming has given me the ability to spend quality time with the family over the years. Because the financial rewards have been great, it’s given us opportunities to help the family and at the same time achieve all our own goals. So it has been really good.

I am Graeme Shaw, and along with my wife Margaret, we run this farm as a company called Clover Hills Ltd. Our daughter and son in law, Sam and Marie Ravenscroft, have run the farm as contract milkers since we bought it in 2014, and our plan is for them to take it over. And they’re on track to do that.

Ed: So I’m Ed Wagstaff, I’m a director at Diprose Miller. Diprose Miller is a predominantly rural firm, based in Te Aroha, Morrinsville, and Thames. Probably 60-70% of our client base is dairy farming. We were the first accounting firm to be a platinum partner with Figured.

So Graeme is one of those farmers who has a lot of information in his head, and a lot that he writes down. He’s always been very good, as I’ve been working with him, with anything on-farm, and knowing the data in terms of the numbers, the finances, the feed, and everything, but Figured has helped to be able to draw that out to make that visible to everyone. Without that one central repository for all the information, then it would be a lot more of his time to be able to pass that information on. Whereas now with Figured, it’s all there, and it’s all accessible from anyone that needs it.

Graeme: Building a good team around us has been critical to our success. It’s vitally important to keep everybody on the same page. And part of the success for succession planning is having everyone in the loop and heading in the same direction. I find once you get everybody to set their goals, and heading in that direction, and they can see their own progress, it just happens.

Ed: If you’re a farmer that wants to be on top of your numbers and understand them and know them as they impact your business, as opposed to six months, 12 months down the track, then having an accountant that uses Figured, and knows Figured, is crucial in that, without that, then you’re going to struggle to get that information you need then and there. You’re always going to be looking in the past to try and look forward. Those decisions that are crucial to the farm’s ongoing success, having the data right there gives us the ability to work through those complexities of those decisions a lot quicker and a lot sooner than we have historically. It’s just enabled us really to answer problems faster.

Graeme: The plan going forward is to be work with Diprose Miller, and Figured, and Sam and Marie, and really looking at maybe in the next four or five years they take over the last 50%. At this stage they own 50% of the company, and they’ve built that up over the last eight years. I have a target of not actually owning any farms when I’m 70, and I’m coming up 69, so we’re on target. Pretty close.

Read more about how Diprose Miller is helping redefine agri-accounting for Kiwi farmers.

Or to learn more about solving planning challenges in NZ dairy, download our free Dairy Farming Insights Brief.