Hi, first post here. I am opening a 12 horse boarding facility in 6 months. I am also a first time barn owner/manager (go big or go home, right?) I need a barn management software program that will help with invoices, organization, filing, medical, etc and can be used by multiple people and in an app. What do you recommend or use? Thank you so much!
There have been several threads on this topic and usually it boils down to talk with your tax adviser/CPA and get a program that will mesh with their software.
Using a program that I like most likely would be useless to many people, but my CPA prefers my information is a specific manor.
Just a general question… what did you plan on using when you wrote your business plan for this new venture? Also about the “go big or go home” … well, not really as there are market niches that often go ignored
The “go big or go home” refers to building a 12 horse facility dedicated to equine level and gut health instead of a 2 horse run in shed. In my area there is only one boarding/showing facility and its management and house/horse keeping is not up to my standards (high rates of colic, lameness, and mortality). So I’m creating the boarding barn I’ve always wanted to board at.
My plan includes barn management software, but since I’ve never used it before, I prefer to poll the audience on what you all like.
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I think you missed the most vital piece of clanter’s advice, which is very, very good: use whatever your CPA prefers. That person is going to be a very important part of your business, and you want your financial records to interface well with whatever system they use, as well as being understandable to them.
A fancy piece of software that works well for you but doesn’t talk to the CPA’s system and doesn’t make sense to them doesn’t help you at all in the long run.
A lot of people use Quickbooks for this reason.
My husband and I started up a similar size barn earlier this year. We looked at equine management software and decided to use the online version of QuickBooks. I think that our version is Simple Start. It works for our accountant and is easy to use for us. We just had to develop a chart of accounts that made sense for our business. I am glad to share it with you offline if you like. For medical and other tracking such as equipment maintenance logs, we just use spreadsheets. We use a separate payroll company to do staff compensation and that works well. It integrates into Quickbooks easily and is less expensive than using the Payroll option of QB.
Feel free to DM me if you have questions. Best wishes in your new venture!
Xero. PM me if you want more info!
