Additional Information

Accounting and budgeting processes used in Breedcow and Dynama

The Breedcow and Dynama package is based on conventional accounting and budgeting concepts, as adapted to extensive beef cattle enterprises. The concepts of net income, the return on capital, net worth, gross margins and cash flow are employed in the construction of these software programs.

Breedcow and Dynama analyses are used to make better decisions on sales, investment and adoption or non-adoption of husbandry practices. Beef cattle enterprises operate on a production cycle of up to five years for turnoff stock, and ten or eleven years for breeders. Cash flow budgeting measures usually cut the production cycle into segments of one year and cash transactions occurring in one year do not tell the whole story, since changes in herd composition also add value to the business or take it away. Keeping track of the livestock numbers and values enables inventory changes to be valued and incorporated in analyses of profit.

For this reason, the Dynamaplus program pays special attention to calculating herd structures and projecting stock numbers by age and sex. The budgeting processes of the Breedcow and Dynama suite of programs use the same concepts and measures of financial outcome as used in accounting, although accounting records and analyses past performance, while budgeting attempts to plan or predict future performance.