Free tools and paid advisory services that turn your Schedule F into a real profitability picture. Farm financial ratios, accrual-adjusted income analysis, cash flow projections, and benchmarks — built by a CPA who came up through ag lending.
Field CFO is a financial analysis framework and advisory service purpose-built for farmers and ranchers — not general-purpose finance software bolted onto agriculture. The analysis starts from where producers actually live: the Schedule F, the balance sheet, and the operating loan.
It's developed by Lone Cowgirl Company — my CPA practice in Redmond, Oregon, specializing in agriculture. Before I started this practice, I was a Relationship Manager and Branch Manager at Northwest Farm Credit Services. I know what lenders look at, what the ratios mean, and where farm financial statements typically fall apart. Field CFO exists because I couldn't find an analysis framework that did farm financial analysis correctly, so I built one.
This is not accounting software. Field CFO doesn't replace QuickBooks or your CPA. It's a management accounting framework — the analysis layer on top of your tax return that tells you whether your operation is actually creating value, how your ratios compare to benchmarks, and where the financial pressure points are before your lender meeting. I do the analysis for you as part of an advisory engagement.
Your Schedule F shows when money moved. Field CFO shows when value was created. That's the gap between cash-basis tax accounting and management profitability — and it's where most farm financial decisions go wrong.
Free tools to start your analysis, premium Excel downloads for deeper work, and a paid advisory engagement for producers who want the full management accounting picture done by a CPA.
Enter your Schedule F line items and get a full profitability analysis back: gross farm revenue, net farm income, operating profit margin, and an accrual-adjusted income picture. The fastest way to convert your tax return into something useful for decision-making.
Try it now →An offline Excel workbook with all Schedule F categories pre-built, formulas for key farm financial ratios, and benchmark ranges for each metric. Download it once, use it every year. Built for producers who prefer spreadsheets over web tools.
Download the template →A six-section financial analysis I deliver for farm operators: income and profitability, liquidity, solvency, efficiency, enterprise view, and debt and risk. I work through your numbers and deliver a management accounting picture with KPI analysis, benchmark comparisons, and prioritized recommendations.
Learn more →Multi-year profit tracking with year-over-year comparisons, margin trend analysis, and enterprise-level breakdowns. See whether your operation is improving or deteriorating across multiple seasons, and which enterprises are driving the results.
Learn more →Twelve-month rolling cash flow projections with scenario modeling — base case, optimistic, and stress-test. Built around the seasonal cash flow patterns of farming: input purchases, planting, harvest, sales, and debt service. Know your cash position before it becomes a crisis.
Learn more →Comprehensive benchmarking against regional and national agriculture data. See how your farm financial ratios compare to operations of similar size and enterprise type. Includes peer comparison reports, lender-ready financial statement templates, and ratio interpretation guides specific to agriculture.
Learn more →Cash-basis accounting — which is what Schedule F uses — records income when you receive it and expenses when you pay them. That's fine for taxes. It's wrong for management decisions.
The problem shows up in two ways. A profitable year on paper can look like a loss on Schedule F if you prepaid next year's inputs or deferred grain sales into January. A losing year can look profitable if you drew down feed inventory you built up previously. Neither picture reflects what actually happened economically.
Any producer who wants to understand what's actually happening in their operation — not just what their tax return says at year end.
If you've ever said "I think we made money this year, but I'm not sure" — that's the problem Field CFO solves. Your tax return isn't designed to answer that question. Your management accounts are. Start with the free Schedule F Decoder, or work with me directly through a Field CFO advisory engagement.
Pull out last year's Schedule F. Enter the numbers. Get back a full farm financial analysis with profitability ratios, benchmark comparisons, and an accrual-adjusted income picture. Free, no account required.
Profitability isn't just whether you have cash in the bank at year end — that's cash flow. True farm profitability means your operation is generating more value than it's consuming, on a management accounting basis. That means looking at net farm income, operating profit margin, return on assets, and asset turnover ratio — not just what your Schedule F shows. Schedule F uses cash-basis tax accounting, which can show a profit in a year you consumed inventory. The Field CFO analysis framework converts your tax return into a real management picture — either through the free Schedule F Decoder or as part of a paid advisory engagement.
The five farm financial ratios that matter most are: (1) Operating Profit Margin Ratio — what percentage of gross farm revenues becomes net farm income from operations; (2) Return on Assets — net farm income plus interest expense divided by total assets; (3) Working Capital to Gross Revenue — your liquidity cushion as a percentage of revenue; (4) Debt-to-Asset Ratio — total liabilities divided by total assets, the primary solvency measure; and (5) Asset Turnover Ratio — gross revenues divided by average total assets, measuring how efficiently your assets generate revenue. Lenders look at all five. Tracking them year-over-year tells you whether your operation is improving or deteriorating.
No. Schedule F is a cash-basis tax document — it records when money moved, not when value was created or consumed. A farm can show Schedule F net income in a year it drew down feed inventory, sold breeding stock, or received a prepaid crop insurance settlement. Conversely, a farm that grew its livestock herd and built up inputs might show a Schedule F loss while building real value. Management profitability analysis adjusts for inventory changes, accruals, and capital transactions to show the real economic picture.
Management accounting for agriculture means analyzing your operation's financial performance for decision-making purposes — not for taxes. It starts with an accrual adjustment to your cash-basis Schedule F (adding back inventory changes and accrued income/expenses), then computes profitability ratios, liquidity measures, solvency ratios, and efficiency metrics. This is the analysis that tells you whether a specific enterprise is pulling its weight, whether your debt load is sustainable, and whether you're generating enough return on your assets to justify the capital invested.
Every farm operation should produce four core financial statements annually: (1) an accrual-adjusted Income Statement — not just Schedule F; (2) a Balance Sheet with both cost-basis and market-value sections; (3) a Cash Flow Statement built from bank records; and (4) a Statement of Owner Equity showing how your net worth changed year-over-year. Lenders expect all four. The Field CFO advisory framework covers each one — if you want help building these for your operation, reach out for an advisory engagement.
No. Most farm financial analysis starts with your Schedule F and a balance sheet — not QuickBooks. The free Schedule F Decoder takes your Schedule F line items and produces a profitability analysis instantly. For the full six-section review — income and profitability, liquidity, solvency, efficiency, debt and risk, and enterprise view — that's done as part of a Field CFO advisory engagement. None of it requires accounting software — just your tax return and a rough balance sheet.
Field CFO is how I do that work. If your operation needs a CPA who understands agriculture — management accounting, Schedule F analysis, entity structure, lender presentation, or financial cleanup — that's what my advisory practice is for. Book a discovery call and we'll figure out where to start.
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