In addition to the ability to select from flexible report periods for an appropriate management season, Phoenix allows data to be collected from a longer period if costs and income did not occur during the report period. For example a long fallow wheat crop has a management season that is far greater than twelve months. For such a wheat crop the time from first tillage or chemical application to payment for grain sales may be two years or greater.
Phoenix Financial Pro has the ability to allocate costs and incomes of a farm management enterprise to the appropriate management season. All transaction dissections can be allocated to any management season available for the enterprise. The default season is the season implied by the transaction date.
An example of the value of seasoning data is shown in Figure 1. The upper section of this figure shows transactions as they would appear in the financial cash-book. If the profitability of the wheat enterprise for a particular year was to be based on the information appearing in the cash-book, gross inaccuracies would be obvious. Such errors result because:
a.Cost during the period may not relate to income generated in this period. This problem is particularly evident when the size of an enterprise changes from one year to the next.
b.The management cycle and subsequent period of costs and income generation is greater than twelve months.
An accurate report is generated by allocating costs to the management season in which they are expected to generate income and allocating such income to the same period. This is reflected in the management cash-book of the Figure below. By seasoning costs and income in this way income will be directly related to inputs used to generate it.
During data entry of dissections allocated to farm management enterprises, the option of selecting the appropriate management season is available. Data seasoning does not apply to non-farm management enterprise data, such as overhead, personal drawings and capital purchases.
