Musselroe Beef is a family-run operation on 6,000 hectares in the North East of Tasmania, Australia. While still a relatively young farming business, Musselroe Beef has grown quickly, starting with 1,000 head of cattle 7 years ago, to now have between 3,000-5,000 head of cattle, depending on the time of year.
Managing Director, Greg Bradfield, says the operation has grown with the support of Commonwealth Bank, who from day one, had an understanding of what Musselroe wanted to achieve as a business and the strategic advice from their accountant at ProAdvice.
Using Figured and Xero, alongside their advisors, Musselroe Beef can accurately track production and cashflow, while also focusing on growth, looking ahead and making timely, informed decisions for a prosperous future.
Transcript
[Musselroe Beef] I don’t know whether it’s being a bloke or being a farmer, I'm just not the best filer. And if I've got pieces of paper flying around - you have a look at my desk, it just looks like there's a cyclone gone through it. But the beauty about Figured and Xero, is that doesn't matter what I do, what ends up in the bin under my chair or what the dog eats, I know it's in the cloud all the time. And I know it's there, I know it's accurate, and I know that the people that need to have access to it, Andrew and Sam, they can just jump online and find it.
[Commonwealth Bank] Farming's a business that does involve some unexpected changes. An example of this was recently ProAdvice and Musselroe Beef identified a potential gap in their cash flow.
[ProAdvice] There was a delay in some sales that were coming through, and so we needed to have a discussion with the bank. So Greg and I had a chat. We had a look at the at where the cash flow was, where the changes were occurring, made some changes to the forecast.
[Commonwealth Bank] At CommBank, we were able to look at the Figured budget, understand where the gap in the cash flow was coming from, understand when the cash position would recover, and because we had high-quality, real-time information, we were able to provide Musselroe Beef with short term finance in a very, very short space of time.
[Musselroe Beef] So we've been in business for seven years and we've more than tripled the size of our herd, so we are continually growing and what gives me confidence, my board confidence, Sam from CommBank confidence and Andrew from ProAdvice confidence, is that we don't only plan one year out - we can plan three and four, five years out.
[Commonwealth Bank] What we've seen with Mussleroe Beef and ProAdvice is a more accurate, more up-to-date budgeting program, and a more informed financial decision made by all parties.
What we anticipate in the future, is more and more farms taking up this technology, more accounting firms supporting their farmers in ways better than just providing tax returns, but actually providing some analysis into their business direction.
We see that as being where things are gonna go in the future, and we wanna make sure that CommBank are a part of that.
[Musselroe Beef] What Figured allows us to do is make more objective decisions in a far more timely manner, and knowing the full financial impact at the end of the day.
