The existence of a balance sheet is evidence that someone, somewhere, in some form, has prepared a property list or lists. Elsewhere, someone has entered similar information into an accounting chart of accounts. And (chances are) someone else has made a similar list for insurance purposes, and an accountant may be using another list for depreciation purposes. And more.
These features of the agMIS database are designed to support those varieties of needs. All by itself. And more, too, because we've added to it, the ability to prepare its own balance sheet. Even multiple balance sheets, in instances where both 'cost' and 'market-level' reports are prepared. And all without resorting to creative accounting entries to 'write up' and 'write down' the values of assets.
Users decide for themselves how they'll use the six 'value' spaces in their long-term asset records. In the free-text area of the 'Feedlot improvements' record below, the user has inserted its depreciation mode, and the current depreciated value and annual depreciation in the 5th and 6th 'value' spaces. He doesn't use the 3rd or 4th values here, but they can be useful, perhaps to track economic depreciation for cost accounting purposes, separate from accelerated modes for tax purposes.
Many families, too, have assets beyond those on their farm balance sheet, and perhaps some 'retired' farm assets, too. Be sure to notice the ways these agMIS features offer help in managing more than 'farm' assets.
