Farm Business Planning Guide

CIBC offers resources including in-depth information, financial planning and management worksheets to help you plan your business more efficiently and profitably. CIBC has developed the Farm Business Planning Guide to help you organize and record your past accomplishments, as well as your present resources and commitments. The Guide will assist you in applying for a CIBC Farm Loan and with ongoing business planning and development.
 

Assets and Liabilities

Listing and detailing assets and liabilities helps you keep accurate figures for use in your Statement of Net Worth and it provides you with a record for future reference. When preparing your list, please remember 1) that current market values are used when evaluating land and buildings, machinery, equipment, livestock and crop inventories and 2) to include any outstanding interest on loans as well as any payment arrears.
 

The Statement of Net Worth (Owner's Equity)

The Statement of Net Worth provides a complete financial picture of your farm operation on any given date and details your equity in that operation. Comparing these statements from year to year gives you a good indication of your financial progress over a specific period of time. This section also includes the previous year's income and expense statement, which allows a cash-based statement to be converted to an accrual based statement that more clearly illustrates the farm's previous year's profitability.
 

Farm Business Plan

This section includes the detailed Business Plan, from which you can build a projected income and expense statement. Similar to the previous year's income and expense statement, the projected statement allows for accrual adjustments to develop an accrual income statement which illustrates your farm's profitability. The Net Farm Income represents your return on labour, capital, and farm management, which in turn must be sufficient to cover family living costs, income taxes, and long term debt servicing.
 

Cash Flow Worksheet

CIBC developed this worksheet to assist you in the preparation of cash flow projections.

Farm Business Planning Guide (PDF, 3 MB)