We welcome Eric Jasinski from Ambrook, a financial management platform designed specifically for farmers. We discuss the challenges farmers face in managing their finances, and how Ambrook aims to simplify bookkeeping and accounting for agricultural operations. The conversation covers the onboarding process, data security concerns, and the importance of understanding farm profitability. Eric shares insights on how Ambrook's features can help farmers track expenses, manage invoices, and ultimately improve their financial health. The episode concludes with a discussion on pricing and the value of trying out Ambrook's services.takeawaysAmbrook is designed specifically for the agricultural industry.Farmers often struggle with traditional bookkeeping methods.The onboarding process is crucial for user experience.Data security is a top priority for Ambrook.Field level profitability tracking is a key feature.Users can automate their bookkeeping processes.Ambrook offers a mobile app for convenience.The platform aims to make financial management enjoyable.Pricing is straightforward with two tiers available.Testing out the software is encouraged for potential users.Chapters03:06 Meet Eric Jasinski and Ambrook05:59 Eric's Unique Background in Agriculture09:07 Understanding Ambrook's Role in Agriculture12:00 Challenges of Traditional Accounting in Farming15:01 Why Switch to Ambrook?17:57 Onboarding Process and User Experience24:01 Mapping to Tax Schedules and CPA Interaction27:48 Understanding Field Level Profitability30:51 Banking Integration and Data Security Concerns34:24 The Importance of Data Privacy in Agriculture36:14 Creating Enjoyable Accounting Experiences42:11 Understanding Ambrook's Pricing Structure46:19 Incorporating Personal Expenses into Farm Accounting49:14 The Power of Knowledge in Farm Management51:17 Getting Started with Ambrook Want Farm4Profit Merch? Custom order your favorite items today!https://farmfocused.com/farm-4profit/ Don’t forget to like the podcast on all platforms and leave a review where ever you listen! Website: www.Farm4Profit.comShareable episode link: https://intro-to-farm4profit.simplecast.comEmail address: [email protected]/Text: 515.207.9640Subscribe to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSR8c1BrCjNDDI_Acku5XqwFollow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@farm4profitConnect with us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Farm4ProfitLLC/
I've onboard a lot of customers. That's one of the things I do. And I've sort of a lot of that conversation at the beginning is like, what are you doing today? What are we bringing over? Sort of what'd you do in the past? And I think a lot of folks use QuickBooks or whatever it is because they know that they should be doing something, right? And they've used it.
They've got a history with it, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have a good history with it, right?
Ladies and gentlemen, farmers, ranchers, and distinguished guests, thank you for listening to the Farm for Profit podcast, where we discuss the latest ideas, methods, trends, and techniques available to help your farm achieve higher levels of farm profitability. Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.
And listeners, welcome back to the Farm for Profit podcast. This is Tanner. Corey's here. That's great. It is. Is it?
You see if I can stay here. Apprehensive. Well, my stomach maybe doesn't feel so well from that food we ate on the way here. Already? Yeah. Oh, man.
I might have to host this one by myself. Dave's off on a beach. Screw him. Dave. He'd go on vacations. He might have the better end of the gig there. What vacation is this? Like nine for the year for him? Hey, more power to him, right? Yeah, it is. That's the power of farming for more profit. I get it. Yeah. It all goes to Dave.
Ori knows exactly what his expenses are and knows that the year end is near and needs another write-off. Has a business meeting.
Yeah, it is a business meeting in Orlando, Florida. Yeah.
Wow. Listeners, we appreciate you. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you've got a topic for us or a beach that we should go see, you should reach out to farmforprofitllc at gmail.com. Got a text message on our text line last night, 515-207-9640. It was a gentleman from North Dakota and it was blowing out of the Northwest yesterday. So I told him to shut your back door.
I don't need the wind and the cold. As far as that goes, it was fun to interact there. Lots of suggestions for shows. We appreciate that. It's going to lead to a pretty good 2025. Yeah. Probably not much for beaches up there in North Dakota right now that you know, visit. No, not a ton in North Carolina. Yeah, that's, that's absolutely correct. No, North Dakota. Oh, North Carolina.
There are some beaches. I already got my brain. Wow. And where I want to go. Okay.
All right.
Have you been to North Carolina?
Uh, just the airport. Is that Charlotte? Yeah, that's that's the only place time I've been there. So I know I don't consider that me being in North Carolina.
OK, yeah, well, that's fair. Anything else for listeners before we jump into the topic today?
I don't think so. Besides that, this is just another one of those shows that to me is an extremely boring topic, but very necessary. What a great way to leave. We're here to bring value to your farm. This is not one of the things that I consider fun. So we're going to try. This should be fun by the end of this.
Yeah, we're going to try. It should be a lot more fun than what you have been having. Yep. Well, we get to introduce you to a new friend of ours. We got to have a conversation with him the other day where he was trying to be extremely helpful with his limited time. abilities due to our local small town banks. He is currently recording this episode sitting on the median of the street.
So if you do hear car horns, they're just honking at the sign that says, honk if you love Farm for Profit. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Well, Eric, welcome to the podcast. Let's get a full introduction from you. Tell us what your name is, the company you work for, and then we'll dive into a little bit of your background.
Yeah. Hey, my name is Eric Jasinski. I work here at Ambrook. We are a farm bookkeeping platform, financial management platform. And yeah, I work on the product team with our customers and I like highways. And I like highways.
Where are you at right now?
We have one office of ours that is in Manhattan and that's where I'm sitting from. And then we have another office in Denver and then we've got some folks from
california down to well the bottom of california um so other parts of california so when we talked earlier this week were you in denver no i was in california actually i was visiting some uh some colleagues up in uh san francisco yeah that looked not manhattan-ish wow no what gave it away the
natural windows.
That was the sirens that we're missing. Ah, too quiet up there. Yes.
So you are in all of these places that there's not a lot of ag, but I would say, or that I typically associate with ag. So how does that come into, how does Ambrook come into play into ag?
Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, the thing about working in ag for us anyways, is like, if you're really working in ag at large, you're kind of going to be a little bit of everywhere. And so sometimes it's actually more useful to be near an airport. So you can like get out to people, visit them.
Um, you know, we've got, uh, we've got folks down in Texas, we've got folks in California, we've got folks in Florida. Um, and we try as often as we can to get and visit them. And so, um, that's kind of like how I think about it anyways. Definitely, definitely makes some sense. Um, you know, before, before I was at Ambrook, I used to work in ag out in, um, California, um,
up near Palmdale, um, a little outside of LA. And so definitely spent some time, some time out there on the farm. But, um, yeah, these days I got folks back in New York and so I found myself, um, coming home, but just this way and, uh, feel fortunate to get to, you know, still stay in the, stay in the industry, but sort of spread, spread my wings.
So as far, as far as young Eric goes, tell us a little bit about your background. Were you a farm kid or what was, what's your background?
No, I was not a farm kid. I grew up outside of New York as well. And the way I got into ag was actually a little bit backwards. I used to work in finance, sort of like budgeting, forecasting, operations, spreadsheets in the cannabis industry, actually, starting in 2017. And so I did that for a while.
And then basically what happened was I was making all these budgets for all these farms that we worked with and eventually I was like, damn, I got to figure out why we're, why we're not hitting the budgets that I'm making. And so I went out to the farm in California and, um, spent about three years working in a greenhouse out there.
So going to the office day to day, I mean, it's not, you know, I say farm, maybe I'm being a little, a little charitable, but there's a greenhouse, there's water, there's nutrients. We're doing a lot of trimming and plant caretaking and stuff like that. And so, yeah, that's, that's how I got into it. And basically doing everything I do at Ambrook except for one operation back then.
And a couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to do it for other farms too. And here we are.
So you got into ag that way. But on my sheet, it also says that you went to film school, which seems to be now you're in finance, which seems to be the complete opposite of what you went to school for there. Talk to us about that.
Yeah. I mean, you know, uh, I went to a school that, that has a film program is what I would say. And I think, uh, spent some time in the spreadsheets and then I found out there were these classes you could take to walk movies. And I signed up for those and turned out, turned out pretty good. And then they gave me a diploma and it said film on the bottom.
Next thing you know, you went to film school. Um, and, uh, you know, I think that gets, uh, everyone likes movies, right? So it's been a blessing.
I want to go to film school. Can you make me a diploma?
You know, that would probably help us.
We would have better quality. Three movies a week, and you're going to get a diploma sent to you in the mail.
Ah. Three movies a week.
Yeah, that's all.
That's actually kind of hard. I mean, planting season might be all right if I throw you out there.
Oh, you have to watch three movies a week? Is that like a Redbox thing? What do they even send them to you now?
Do they even have Redbox anymore?
I think they went under. Like Blockbuster?
Kind of. Yeah. Kind of sad. It is. It is. I was just scrolling TV the other night and I was looking through all the apps and you go into one app and you're like, I don't want to watch anything there. You go to another app like, man, it used to be a lot easier to try and find something on TV.
Yeah. Pretty soon you got $200 wrapped up in all these subscriptions that you cut cable to go to these smaller subscriptions. Do you know what?
No. I bet you Ambrook. would help notify you or at least provide you the opportunity of understanding if you have subscriptions out there that you didn't realize you had. I could see that. It's a good dovetail. Yes. Okay, so we learned a little bit about you. We'll come back to probably some more of that later. But now tell us what Ambrook actually does.
Yeah, so Ambrook makes software that is bookkeeping and accounting software specifically designed for farms or I guess the ag industry in general, so farms specifically. ranches, you know, veggie, CSA type operations, you name it. But basically trying to design something to help you track your expenses and look at your profitability at the sort of whole enterprise level.
Ambrick started back in 2020, actually, right around COVID. Backstory was trying to help farmers get grants from the CFAP program during COVID and did a lot of that, facilitated probably, you know, upwards of $1,000 Grant applications for small farms trying to get by during that time. And then the sort of key takeaway there was that terms out applying for grants is actually a lot of paperwork and
Turns out that farmers hate paperwork and don't really want to pull together P&L and don't really have a balance sheet handy. And so sort of once that job was done, the next thing to do is really just build financial management software and sort of take a bottoms-up approach.
So get your expenses, get your bills, get your invoices, get it all in one place, and then help you sort of figure it out and figure out what subscriptions you got, figure out how much supplies you're buying, and sort of make a plan from there.
So at this point, Corey, on your farm, how do you track your expenses?
So I was going to go into that and I am, I feel like a major hypocrite because I am on the Farm for Profit podcast and we are always preaching that you need to run your farm like a business and You know, do all this stuff that businesses do. And I am probably one of the worst. So you just farm for fun? I am a farm for fun type of guy. That's why I like the farm for fun shows.
But the way I described it on our call earlier with Eric, he was walking us through this stuff, is my process is a dumpster fire.
Oh.
Like the sirens they might be going to put out.
Yeah, exactly.
That's why the sirens are going. And I just had a spreadsheet is all I used. Now, I will preface that I myself am a small farm. And then my dad and what I am an employee of, Hillable Family Farms, is a little bit larger. So I'm not talking on that side of things has ran very well. I'm transitioning into that.
But that's why I need a company like Ambrook because I think a lot of farmers use QuickBooks.
I don't know, 20, 30% from what it seems like when I talk to farmers, but it's not set up for agriculture and Schedule F. So that's why we're here to talk to these guys to hopefully make things nicer because the stuff that my dad is using, although it is very good and effective, I can't stand it because it feels like it came off a floppy disk.
I still remember the software that my parents used and it was the green letters and numbers on a, on a black screen. Oh. And then they got upgraded and it was like gray with lighter gray cells. Yeah. It was literally like you, you couldn't use your mouse anywhere. Everything you had to use a tab key. So that's how I first started using that.
Then you got to go to like coding school just to figure out how to get through it and insert your name, you know?
So, Eric, you probably have the statistics. What is the makeup currently now of agriculture and what programs or processes that they're using? Are a lot of people pen and paper, Excel? What's it look like?
Yeah. I mean, I think I don't have the exact statistics next to me, but I think like you look at farming in America, it's majority small farms. Like the most, most folks are sort of under a certain size and under a certain revenue threshold.
I think like within there, it could even be 50, 50, like saw pen paper or spreadsheets, which I kind of lump into one category or software, you know, quick books, zero quick in just to name drop a couple of folks that we definitely, you know, see, see folks, uh, transitioning over from.
And then I think you do have, um, a lot of the sort of power law you got farms using, uh, net suite, um, you know, like granular maybe on the, on the row crap side and some of these more like enterprise solutions. Um, and I think the way that we think about it is, uh, I often think, honestly, I think about our competition is really spreadsheets.
Sometimes the spreadsheets are good and they do a lot of things. And I think if you can make a software that sort of like can make you feel like you're using a spreadsheet in terms of approachability and like how dynamic it is and how like how customizable it is, that's a huge win for us.
And then like Corey was saying, like, I think when you look at a farm, you know, most big farms secret is they probably start as a small farm. Right. And so like you got to start somewhere. you got to build a habit. Um, you got to have a track record and sort of as you're growing and thinking about growing, you want to have some source of truth that you're looking at. What did I do last year?
What were my ratios? You know, where am I losing money? Um, things like that. And so, yeah, I think like in general, we're, we're definitely seeing like a large percentage of farmers on a number basis or on like, be it that intro cookbooks program or be it that spreadsheet. Um, and those are the folks that are just trying to make, uh,
We're trying to make Forty have more fun when he does podcasts about bookkeeping.
Yeah. And I think what you could also see in ag is there's a lot of companies that are doing a pretty good job at your agronomy side. And, you know, like John Deere, like John Deere Ops, and like they're starting to integrate a lot of, I'm going to say QuickBooks-esque easiness to your agronomy. And it even has a financing side to it.
But none of it is tailored towards really helping you with your taxes that you can take to your CPA. It has some aspects of it. It's just – so it's like that's what really is kind of irks me. It's like we've got – I feel like we've got the stuff at our fingertips. It's just not quite been made readily available to take to your CPA.
Yeah, I know. And when we've had conversations on the podcast before, QuickBooks can be pretty overwhelming. You know, that's what we run Farm for Profits books through, right? So I've got experience in QuickBooks. Corey and I have an entity that we share together that is ran through an Excel spreadsheet, right? It's not a super complicated one.
You know, so I think our listeners are going to relate with a lot of things that we get to talk about here over the next little bit. But if we are a farm that's using QuickBooks, why would we want to switch to Ambro?
Yeah, I mean, I think that we... I've onboard a lot of customers. That's one of the things I do. And I've sort of a lot of that conversation at the beginning is like, what are you doing today? What are we, what are we, what are we bringing over sort of what'd you do in the past?
And I think a lot of folks use, use QuickBooks or whatever it is because they know that they should be doing something right. And they've used it. They've got, they've got a history with it, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have a good history with it. Right. Like they still have that, like that income is just sales and product income. Don't really know what product, right.
don't really know how you sold it. And they've got five years worth of sales of product income. And so I think when, when folks come over to Ambrook, it is both a chance to use software that like build better habits and be almost like a chance to rethink what you've been doing in the past. Like maybe you've got experience like using QuickBooks quote unquote, right.
But you haven't actually been like using it to improve your situation or better understand where you're at. And you're kind of like checking the box. And I think like a lot of our goals are to like, Turn the whole habit and turn the whole process into something that's relatable and something that is empowering and basically like something that hopefully you enjoy doing.
And like I sort of say that as somebody who likes doing this stuff. And so, you know, I get it. Don't don't don't get too mad. But at the same time, like that is sort of the if we're really doing our job right, that's what's happening.
I hate to say it, but I actually did enjoy sitting down the other night. I don't know if it's just because it was something new, but I put in one of my credit cards into your guys' system and it brought all of my purchases for the whole year. And that process of what I did, I had everything sorted out, divvied out to what buckets it went to and all that probably in an hour or two.
And I think that would have taken me... Probably by the time I procrastinated and swiped through TikTok and all that, printed off all my sheets and went through that, went to my banking statement, it would have taken me all day. I know it would have.
Yeah, I'm definitely, obviously our listeners know that that's my financial mind and background. I'm definitely that guy that'll go into QuickBooks and I'll get all of my... my monthly expenses categorized and I'll make sure that the deposits line up with the invoices. But then I spend another 30 to 45 minutes just geeking out at the reports. What's my P&L look like?
Okay, what's the margin on our ad sales? Where are we looking at our percentage of projected net revenue? I love that kind of stuff. And I'm glad that Corey already went through that. He can tell now how much you spent on fuel.
And what you're spending on, you know, we keep joking about subscriptions because isn't that what you hear all the time is, hey, sign up for this app and it'll tell you to, yeah, we don't need that, right? We're going to have Ambrook. We don't need these other platforms because we can categorize and put everything together. So I want to talk about that.
Eric said he does onboarding and does a lot of onboarding for Ambro. Yep. And that's technically what he did with you earlier this week.
Yeah. I would say probably a condensed version because we just got to the point of bringing your accounts in, your bank accounts, credit cards, things of that nature. And that's probably about as far as I got. And that's really all the further I was wanting to go because I'm preparing for the end of the year. Mm-hmm.
I am interested in the rest of it, but they have a billing system, an invoicing system, all the charts and everything performance-wise that you were talking about. I'll get into those more, but I've got to get all this other stuff done since I'm late to the game.
So, Eric, what's that look like, a normal onboarding meeting with Ambrook?
Yeah, well, as you might imagine, some of that has to do with the time of year. And so if somebody, it's that time of year, you got a year's worth of books to catch up on and you're ready to commit to the system, it looks a little bit more
like Corey's what we're going to focus on is getting transactions in and sort of backfilling and getting the chart of accounts set up, but all that stuff standard. So, you know, fast forward, let's pretend it's January and you were ready to close up books in one place. And I just like start fresh.
Um, a lot of the things we would focus on a lot of the same things as far as categories and enterprises, which I'm happy to talk about that, um, a little bit more, but like, uh, and it's a conversation about what is your business? What do you care about? Like in an ideal world, what are you tracking? Um, And maybe your answer is just taxes, but maybe it's not.
Or maybe it's like, I just do taxes today, but I actually want to know field profitability tomorrow or something like that. And so that's kind of like, I think the big difference, it's all about how you get started, right?
And so if you get started with a structure that's going to work for you and you can buy into, then you put in that work over a year and you're going to come out the other side feeling Feeling better and having analytics that maybe you didn't even think you'd be able to get if somebody hadn't talked to you about it and sort of like showing you the end state before you get there.
So honestly, it's a conversation we say, you know, how do you make money? Like, where do you sell? Are you invoicing? Is it all checks? Do you have prepaid stuff? Like, what does that balance sheet side look like? And just like really peeling back the onion and trying to figure out where the opportunities are to give you insights that that you didn't have.
And I say that with the caveat that you can just be like income, expense, tax done. And that's that's also a totally accessible solution.
Yeah, and I got to sit in on this onboarding call. I was waiting for Corey to kick me off and he didn't. But what I was noticing is the difference because like I said, I'm a QuickBooks user.
I don't mean to keep bringing them up, but this I can tell is a better fit for a farm background because just like you were saying, the categories that you were talking about, the enterprising like you were talking about. I mean, for you listeners, what he means by enterprises is most operations are not just Corey Hillibow farms.
Right.
Most operations have a holding company for the real estate that they own. And then they have maybe an LLC for the custom work that they do, whether it's livestock or fertilizer spreading or trucking. Or they've got an LLC that is the actual operating entity or that's a sole proprietorship or whatever it looks like. And what Eric was able to very easily do with Corey is, oh, you've got all these?
This is how it folds up into one.
Yeah. Basically, farming is a big habit. Or not a habit. It's a bad habit in some cases. I think we're one of the only industries that we want to farm so bad that we have to have all these other entities and jobs. So maybe you go cut lawns, or maybe you push snow in the winter, or maybe you go in town and just get a wage. That's right. You talked about W-2 income. Yeah. And I have all of that.
You know, we've all, we've all got this sickness that we want to farm so bad that it's just not as straightforward. Whereas a spreadsheet probably would be just okay. If it was just, you were a corn and soybean farmer and you have your inputs and going out and income, you're selling grain coming in, but it's not that easy.
So I, I handed on the enterprises there, Eric, if you want to expand on that, but I also want you to talk about the categories.
Yeah. I mean, well, two things come to mind. I think like, like you're talking about, um, within a farm, it's like, you know, I'm row cropping, I have this extra equipment, I'm going to do some custom work and I want to be able to say, all right, like how much is my farm making? Like, I know I can cashflow all these other ways, but I want to know like, what is the actual farm product origin?
And so, you know, that's one way to think about it. I do think like something that you just said that reminded me of it, like, We onboard a ton of farms. We get to know them and talk about their stuff and then like find out, oh, wait, you're a farm, but you are a trucking company or you are a hospitality company or something like that. Right.
And then, you know, that's the nice thing is like so we have categories, categories of what we call incomes and expenses in Ambrook. And so, yeah, I'll get you set up with cold cow sales, red cow sales, elevator sales, whatever it may be.
And then if you want to go have rentals, property income and property insurance and property taxes as categories, like we're not quite so one dimensional that we can't figure out what some good categories might be. I think that's like the nice thing about building bookkeeping software is like this is. this is like a law of physics type thing.
Like it's going to apply to your other, your other situations. And so that's a lot of the category discovery process. And then, you know, like, like we talked about a little bit setting you up. So we got farm categories and we can map those to a schedule F. Right.
And so a lot of folks may, and like, maybe, you know, Tanner, you probably know this, like when you're underwriting a loan or something, you'll say, Hey, let me get three years of your schedule up. And that's 32 boxes, whatever it may be. And there's a model and it can give you a credit score and do all that stuff. great, but that might not be enough for you.
We're trying to fit square pegs into round holes here. With Ambrose, you can both run your business with the categories that you actually need, get that Schedule F box filled out, and something that you didn't see because it didn't come up is we do the same thing with Schedule C. It's like, I have a farm enterprise here. Here are my categories. Here's my Schedule F mapping.
I run that rental business. Here's my Schedule C mapping. So on and so forth. That's what we do today because those are the biggest overlaps that we see in the market right now, but The foundation's there. It's easy to imagine. Additional forms, additional mappings, and things like that.
So you said this is mapping to the schedules. You're not saying that Ambrook is going to prepare the tax return for me, though.
No, we do not do that. The way we think about it is if you think about maybe a typical meeting with the CPA or the way you're prepping for the year, maybe it's three meetings. Here's my shoebox. Okay, here, let me answer all these questions you have about my shoebox. Third meeting is like, okay, here's your filings.
Maybe we can cut a meeting down or something and knock a little hours off the bill or something like that, save some back and forth. Just one of the ways we think about it.
So the other thing I witnessed while I was half listening to your onboarding call is Eric, you, you also mentioned something about being able to establish field boundaries. Can we actually track field level profitability in this too?
Yeah. So, um, what it doesn't mean is like, I'm not going to geofence it like Google maps sort of set it up that way, but, um, you have an enterprise tag. We talk about tags as different ways you might want to cut your data. And location is a thing that we support. And so you can tell us about your field, tell us how many acres it is. You can put an address in. We don't do anything with it.
But maybe if you forget, you can just check Ambrook for your directions or something like that. But I think a lot of that comes back down to benchmarking too. So you can establish a field, you can tell us about a location, and you can allocate income to that field. You can Expense to that field to make it really easy to split like a utility bill or water bill across the field.
And then the last thing you can do in addition to telling us acreage is tell us output. So you can be like field A, acres X, bushels Y or something like that. Right. And what that's going to do is get you a benchmark for. How many dollars do I have to spend to grow a bushel per acre I want to maintain? So then maybe you're thinking about leasing a new land or something like that.
And you think about what's my carrying capacity? What can I afford? How much money do I have? What are my next steps? And so having the ability to say, this is my per acre, per location type of profitability is really the first step in starting to think about that decision.
Very interesting. So we had our onboarding. And, you know, a lot of farms are in rural areas and we use small banks. And one of the, not your guys' fault, but one of the issues that we did have was my bank did not like the third party source that you use to input that.
Because that's handy.
Right. Right. Because at that point it makes it living and breathing.
Yeah. It just imports because you tried other things. Yep. And it imported directly in, right? Like you said, your credit card. You were able to go through everything on your credit card.
Yeah, my Chase credit card went right to, you know, almost like it was their website. You know, it went really well. And so I don't know. I mean, look, I could still upload, go download my CSV file from my bank and upload it, and it worked great. It came in seamlessly, and I've got it up right now with all my expenses. Oh, let me look. And debits and credits. But yeah, it's not your guys' deal.
But how do we get some of these smaller banks to come on board with it? Because I appreciate it if it's an extra layer of security. I'm not a fan of it if they just go, no, sorry, you're out of luck.
Yeah, I mean, no, totally. I think like, listen, if I could snap a finger and have every bank in the world do it, do an automatic sync, that would be great. And then a bunch of people would just be, you know, saving one step on the bookkeeping, I think, to your point, like with regards to the transaction port. and try to make that as seamless as possible.
And like, back to your other question, you know, call your bank, tell them you want to use Ambrook and we'll be happy to get on the phone with them and we'll, we'll work it out with their team directly. If we have to, like, we would be, we would be all the happier to do that.
But, you know, obviously there's a lot of banks in the world and it's going to take a lot of phone calls to, to do something like that. So we do have the transaction import, which is good. If you, you know, do it once a month, there's, you can split the workload up and like, you got a whole year done in an hour. And so you can imagine maybe if that was, a smaller bite size thing.
And then we have other ways that some folks like to, like to go about it. I think like the interesting thing when you're coming off of pen and paper is like, some folks are used to writing down in their checkbook, like check X for this purchase. Right.
And like, if we can just change that habit and have your register be on Ambrook, you're getting the same input, but you're getting output that lasts and can be reviewed later. Or, you know, maybe you just want to snap a picture of a receipt and have a transaction generated from that receipt. You get two birds with one stone. And so yeah,
Yeah, I mean, listen, every bank in the world would be great. In the meantime, we're basically just trying to make sure that there are as many ways to get that data in and have that for reference later as we can think of.
What do you think, Tanner, was their concern with it? Because the third party is well known. Everyone's heard of it. Yeah.
I would say probably the only level of concern is there's probably just limited knowledge within these small banks. Like the compliance team or the IT team that is running these small banks is probably relying on third-party vendors that are IT consultants. And it's just a lack of knowledge. And there's so much going on with,
The demand for small banks to have online bankings that are smooth, to be able to offer businesses ACH sending and wire initiated. It's more probably a staffing issue would be my guess, like a lack of knowledge than it is a fear for security. Okay. I mean, ultimately, if you get audited as a bank, a bank gets audited all across the board.
They get audited for their financials, but then they also audit a loan portfolios for risk. They audit securities and investments for risk. They audit compliance teams for making sure that they're adhering to the regulations. They audit the IT department for safety and all these audits that go into place.
And if you don't have somebody on the team that can stand up to an auditor and explain why this is safe or why it's in compliance, then you probably just say, no, I'm not going to deal with it.
One thing that I was kind of thinking in the back of my mind as I was going through and connecting my bank account and my credit cards and all that, I'm like, boy, I'm putting a lot of my information out here to my life. And farmers, as much as anybody, care about their data. We got economy data, we got yield data, we got application data, a lot of stuff. Now we have financing data.
Is there any merit to my concern of where my data is going? Is it getting sold off somewhere? I mean, I already know like our credit cards are selling our stuff off, right? Because as soon as you buy a Lululemon deal for your wife, I mean, you got an ad that pops up on Facebook. So...
No, totally. I think like at the end of the day, like we don't make money from data. We make money from users having a good time. So like and like having a better experience analyzing their business. So, you know, your data is on Ambrook for your access and for your convenience. And you pay us money for us to provide a place where you can see that data.
And, you know, we have we have a wallet product where we get yield if you hold a deposit with us and we share that yield back with you, by the way, if you use that product. So. We don't sell data because that's just not what we do. We're not in the business.
We're sort of in the trust business, and we're in the help business, and we're not really in the benchmarking, selling stuff type of business. And we do actually work with a nonprofit called Ag Data Transparent who certifies our use of data every single year. We renew that, basically verifying exactly the concern you're talking about because, as you can obviously imagine...
A lot of farmers, this is probably top two things that come up whenever we speak to somebody.
Well, you have access to a lot of farmers are just very personal or, you know, they don't even want to tell their neighbors, you know, what their yield was, let alone here's all of my life.
Totally. Yeah. No, I mean, we, we, we take that, that's genuinely like a responsibility that we take super seriously, you know, from end to end security all the way through privacy. Like that's, that is a hundred percent what we're built on.
Good. So your, your mission is to help American businesses stay independent by building accounting tools that helps farms, ranches, and other industrial operations be more profitable and sustainable. Very well written. But I think you need to make a tweak to it because I think I've heard him say he wants you to have a good time. He wants you to have fun. He wants to make this more enjoyable.
Like you've got to be the ag accounting software that people enjoy using. And then I think you've got to bring back some old timer commercials that you're just out having a blast and someone's laughing and having a great time. You look at what they're doing and they're reconciling on Ambro. Yeah.
I mean, I will say one of the nice things about working in my capacity anyways is the support side. So you onboard a customer, you take them from dreading the process to actually enjoying the process. And then they keep you posted. I had a guy write in the other day to our customer support chat, basically saying, hey, I don't need anything. I just like this change you made to the menu.
Like, thanks. Keep up the great work. It's just like a really, really rewarding message to get from somebody.
Hey, that's like our listeners. When they send us a message like that, they're like, hey, just wanted to let you know I still love the podcast. Great. Thank you. That's the best kind of message. I mean, mom, you don't have to send me that message every week. But you didn't see that one coming, did you? No.
Hey, you're a funny guy.
Uh-huh. Rachel said she was laughing hysterically earlier. Just that funny. But you brought up a good point when you were talking about what happens after the onboarding. what does that look? Is there support for a listener if they sign up and you know, you get past onboarding?
Yeah. I mean, we, um, that's something we pride ourselves on and we have staff like myself that are fully dedicated to, to being around. Um, I, you know, I make the joke that, uh, there's, there's some bookkeeping help that goes on there. Sometimes people just want someone to say hi to like, you know, you got another human on the other end of the line. Um, but a lot of what, uh,
a lot of the things that help build habits, especially for six months, right. It's like, Hey, um, I know you told me how to do this thing on the onboarding call. I forgot, like, what do I do about this bill? How do I match this payment?
And I think like, without having just like that, knowing that you have that in your back pocket from a helpfulness perspective, like it would be much harder to build the habit and you might not, you might not. So like, that's definitely a part of the experience for us is like, we're in the empowerment business first and foremost.
And like, honestly, you probably hear less from folks that have been on the platform for six, 12, 18 months. Cause they do have a life. And like at the end of the day, like I, you know, they don't really want to talk to me that bad, but for the six months that I got, it was a good time.
The, the, I just, you know, can't stop thinking about the marketing that you can do around having, having a lot of fun and, and like I said, building those relationships, um, I think it's neat that there are people seeing enough value in this to where they do still communicate with you. I mean, that does speak a lot to the difference it's providing them.
Whether they are going pen and paper to this or they're coming out of a more complicated software, it can get overwhelming really fast. Very much so. You remember those letters to the editor? Like be like lost in San Francisco and they write a letter about how would you have handled this situation?
Yeah.
This would be lost in numbers and you just write to Ambrook and they provide you the answers. Ambrook. Farm finances that don't suck. Farm finances for fun.
Yeah.
There you go. And seriousness. With a number four because we know that's the best market. Yeah, right.
So you guys, you mentioned your wallet. So you can hold funds on Ambrook and you can get a yield and obviously there's gotta be a reason you're holding funds there. What does that allow you to do?
Yeah. So the, one of the things like to your point about the bank, for example, right? Like some banks don't offer automatic sinking, but you have a bunch of card transactions. So what we decided was, all right, having a business cash account that you can use for things like receiving invoice payments or,
Paying your bills with ACHs or mail check, having a debit secured card that you use, or you have farmhands that you use, or maybe you just want to split out the personal from the from the business expenses. We basically have all of these banking-style services that we offer on Ambrook with the main goal of helping you keep everything consolidated.
So it's like, say you send an invoice out and you receive a payment on that invoice. Today, that payment might hit your bank account. You got to find that thing in your bank account, find the invoice, sync it up. It adds steps. And if you don't do it over a couple of months, then you're trying to remember which payments go to which invoices.
And next thing you know, you're double counting income or something like that, which obviously you don't want to do. And so if you do all of that on Ambrook, like the matching happens for you, the deposits get reconciled. And like it kind of, again, it's like reducing friction and making things feel better. And so that's why we offer those things.
They're not mandatory to use, but basically like the longer you're with us, the more you find you're like, well, I'm already on here anyway. It's like, why would I not send a mail check through Ambrook? That doesn't, you know, that type of thing.
Now, are those add-ons extra cost? Because we haven't talked about how Ambrook bills or how that fee goes. So can you walk us through that?
Yeah. So Ambrook, as a headline, is base subscription fee. We have two tiers, $60 and $100 a month. So that's $1,200, $720 annual. You can get a 10% discount on both of those if you sign up for the year. So $50 I'm good at math. $54, $10.80 from a subscription fee. And that is basically all the fees that we make money from the customer.
The other fee on the platform that is often discussed is the invoicing fee. And so you send an invoice, your customer pays you with an ACH or a card. There's a payment processing fee. There's 0.4% with a cap on ACH. There's credit card fees, etc., We pass those on to the customers. We do not keep those.
And so some folks choose to pass them along, some folks for a convenience fee to their customers, stuff like that. And then no fees on the bill pay today and no fees for the cards whatsoever. Um, and so basically like, yeah, that, that's the whole structure.
And then I guess on the opposite end of the spectrum, like I mentioned, um, for folks that are using Ambro to hold funds, uh, we have a 1% yield that we started rolling out actually last week. And so, you know, we, uh, basically it's like a cashback program for your deposits. You can think about it like, um, like a high yield checking account.
So you get this sort of like 1% savings of a savings type account, but all the functionality of an operating account. And so we make yield on that, but we share it back to the customers.
Very cool. That is handy. I mean, I can see that, right, through the invoicing process. And I can already see the applications that... there's probably a lot of our listeners out there that are just like a lot of us here.
And what happens is you, you end up going out and bailing those corn stocks and you know what the guy owes you, you know what your neighbor owes you and you don't really get around to doing it. And now it's the end of the year and he's asking you for an invoice and you don't have time to go make an invoice that if it was a smoother process, you'd probably run it more like a business. Yeah.
Get done with it? Yeah. You go home, sit on your computer, knock it out?
And I didn't know. Actually, it's funny you say that. The thing I haven't mentioned is we do have a mobile app. It's included for all the tiers of the product. And so you can send that invoice from the go. You can use it on sale. You don't need to be connected to Wi-Fi. And so that's something that we've got built out. And yeah, so being in the field is no excuse not to get your money.
What is that app called? Because I looked for it the other day. I didn't see it.
It's called Ambrook. Right now, we basically have it. There's this app called TestFlight, which is basically a sort of gating app that we use to only let Ambrook members download it. So you sign up for Ambrook, we send you a code, and you download it. It's available on the Android store, but Apple's got policies and things that it's just a little easier for us to keep a grab it through that.
So I need to reply. But I'll send you a link because you are a freshly onboard customer, and so getting you onto that app is my job.
I mean, I did look for it.
So are you enjoying this conversation? I am. Is it making you nervous? No. So why have you colored all over your knuckle? Did I?
Oh, I didn't. I must put my hand down on the paper or the ink. To me, I was like, oh, gosh, I hate numbers so much.
No, I did not do that. I don't.
This is stressing me out. That is weird. I think I set my... Feel down on the ink on the paper. We're going to review the footage. Yeah, you can review it. Throw your challenge flag. You'll find that I did not physically do that to myself.
No, I mean, Eric, I appreciate you helping us talk through a topic that some don't enjoy. And the whole reason we wanted to share this with our audience is this is meant to make it more enjoyable.
You know, one of the tricks I used to tell my customers is I said, you got to make it a reward that if you're going to sit down and you do something, then after that you get to have a glass of bourbon or, you know, an ice cream sundae or whatever it is that sits down. I think that's what you should do, Corey. Maybe. It's not going to take you near as long to wait for the bourbon.
And maybe you could even drink the bourbon while you're doing it because it's so much easier.
Yeah.
Software. Farm financing software. So easy that Corey could do it. The caveman could do it. Yeah.
We're going to have a poster with Corey on there. It's so easy. I could do it.
Yeah. I do have a question on, so a lot of the stuff we've talked about is focused around schedule F farm income. Is there much of a personal or the QuickBooks side of the financing process? I mean, I was coming across medical expenses and, you know, stuff my wife buys or whatever that it needs to go somewhere.
Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, like most, I mean, a lot of farms have that mix. Like, honestly, when I get a customer and they're like, Hey, I have a separate business account. I'm like, all right, great. You can already start and that's easier. But it's kind of like I was talking about with trucking and hospitality. Like at the end of the day,
You know, your categories is an accounting software, first and foremost. Right. And so we have a bunch of things that may make farming easier and then a bunch of things that you can, you know, as creative as you want to get. You know, it's just like going to film school. You can you can get clever with your books and have your groceries, your medical, you know, your clothing budget, whatever.
And basically you just put that in that part of the P&L that is below an operating income. it's there. It's part of the balance sheet, but your, your accountant will ignore it. It won't roll up to your schedule. Um, and, and you can feel good about that too. Yeah.
That's, that's something I'm actually excited about. Cause it's a lot of times something that I've pushed off to the side. Like I'm going to do my farm stuff, but there's a lot of things that, you know, I office out of home, right? It's 25% of the house. According to the square footage and office out of the basement. Yeah. The whole basement. So it should be half really.
But I, so you can, you can get that, you can get that rent expense. You get it every month and you can sit there and be like, all right, you know, August I spent 75% of my, my time at home, 75% deductible rent, 25% person rent. And you can make that, you can flex it however, however you see fit.
Yep. So that's what I'm excited about. Cause I've usually just ignored a lot of that stuff just because I have a tough enough time getting everything else that I need to done. So, Yep. Got that, got daycare expenses, you know, all that kind of stuff that there's a lot.
You may be able to itemize, do itemized deductions instead of the standard deduction. Maybe. Based upon what you track. Maybe. Yeah. There is power in knowing, right, Eric?
Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think that like, I mean, I drove a little bit about how I want it to be fun and all that stuff. And I think that some of it is just like actually enjoying the habit, right? Some of it's like, it's also fun making more money, right? And it's fun growing and it's fun planning, like how are you going to get bigger? How are you going to sell more stuff?
How are you going to get that next plot? And you really can't do that stuff without taking this first step. And so like, you know, once you get that ball rolling, it's a dangerous game. All of a sudden you got expansion plans coming next year and it's a great problem to have.
Yeah, I do agree with you. The power of knowing is what can make it more fun. Because I think a lot of what makes it not enjoyable for folks is they don't know if they're doing it right or not. And you even mentioned to Corey, you can establish a category that is Ask My Accountant. Just because you're going through it, you don't have to know the answer today.
But maybe like you said, that shoebox of receipts, the Ask My Accountant questions is only 10 instead of 110. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, what have we always said that during your week as a farmer, you should spend... a couple hours or half a day in the office, at least depending on your business. I think if once you get everything set up and it's living and breathing and you just got to go select what this transaction was for or upload this receipt, I bet you could almost do it on the fly.
Yeah.
From your app or correct. Yep. Totally.
Well, and you can set up automations. Oh, it just spanned upon that.
Yeah. So, I mean, you know, if you got your, one of the nice things about, about having, having data is like, you know, I've been seeing that all my Best Buy transactions are a personal expense. Like I want all those Best Buys to automatically get tagged, send and forget it. You know, same goes for like your utility bill or maybe your 76 bill or whatever it is.
And there's just a number of things where, and you know, we have a button, it's the review button. So like you can filter that app to just see the stuff that you haven't tagged and set the automation up and that number is way lower and You're saving time. It's like, you know, we got those 45 transactions done in two minutes the other day.
I just tagged and automated my utilities for my house while we were on the – earlier on in the show. It took me 30 seconds. And all 12 of those transactions, I did not have to go click 12 times. I only had to click once. So it was pretty nice. Great. Saving time because time is money. I mean, it's the most valuable asset. Yep.
So Eric, before we let you sign off, what else would you like to share with our audience?
Yeah. I mean, I think that, um, I think the thing that I want people to, to, you know, keep in mind is, um, yeah, you may, you may think like, Oh, I'm a, I'm a family, I'm a family farm. Uh, and, and kind of whatever those expectations are about like what, what you should be doing or like what you can be doing. And I think like, um,
you know, I've taken for me, I work with a lot of our livestock operators, um, just as an example. And like, it doesn't really matter how big you are. Livestock's not a simple business, right? You've got a multi-year asset cycle, your inventory is crossing fiscal years, you know, and, and to plan for those things, right? Like, when am I going to call my cows?
When am I going to keep the placement heifers? How does that interplay with the market? Um, A, you have the chance to take advantage of your situation if you know what to look for. And then that's the type of stuff that we're trying to focus on. And so I think just because maybe you don't have a big stack for whatever your mental model is, you run a complex business.
And with that complexity, there's definitely opportunity. It's not easy. And we want to make sure you can take advantage of it.
So if someone's wanting to give this a try, what is the best process for them to go about it?
Yeah, I would say you can go to Ambrook.com. I think that probably we have a pricing page where you can see we have two tiers. That $60 tier I mentioned is basically just on invoicing. So if you don't do invoicing, that could be the right tier for you. If you do invoicing or you want to bring a whole team on, you're going to go to that higher tier package.
And I would expect by the time this rolls out, we're going to have 30 day free trials available. And so hop on, get on the platform, get those, get those transactions in and see it for yourself. You know, it's one of those things I've talked to a lot of people that are thinking about it. And it's really hard to be just using the thing and testing it out.
That's perfect. Well, it was a pleasure. One, it was a pleasure getting to meet you earlier in the week and to come back and have this conversation with you. I want to know how fast were the cars that are driving outside the door? Are we talking like 25 mile an hour? Are we talking 50 mile an hour?
You know, the problem is that we're talking like five mile an hour with some traffic and some riffraff in front of us. That's why you could hear it.
Right. So I think I could see this person cutting them off. They aren't going that fast. Do you use the horn a lot when you drive? No.
We're in Iowa. No, we don't. That is rude. We would never. You just use the finger. When you honk at someone, you might as well tell them, you know, F off. I hate your family. Yeah. That's bad. So I did, while we were sitting here, I did decide that my Spotify premium is education. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's work one way or the other. Right. It saves me time because I don't have to listen to ads.
It's research. Yeah. Podcasts are very educational.
You have to know what the competition is doing as far as podcasts go. Absolutely. Makes sense.
You'd be losing money if you didn't listen to us.
That's what I tell people. You'd be losing money if you didn't sign.
Yeah. It was Micah that was on the call with us too, right?
That's her.
And she was saying, you know, don't fret over how specific your categories go because there's only 22 options on a schedule left. And it's all going to have to fill back into one of those anyway. So don't overstress about it. But again, appreciate your time. Appreciate Ambrook for their support. And we hope you had a good one.
Likewise. Pleasure to meet you guys.
Thanks, listeners. Until next time, you have a good one.
Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.