Operating a successful horse business is a laborious task by any measure. Not only are the days long and the work hard, but the ever increasing cost in an unpredictable market only adds to the difficulty and risk.

One of the most important initial business decisions you will make is which horse business management system do you need to help you manage your business? And yes, you do need one! There is just too much at stake to try and manage your business using scraps of paper and or depend on your memory. You need a horse business management system that not only helps you manage your business, but also helps you measure it providing you the information you need so you can make good business decisions.

Unfortunately, there are many products advertised as horse business management that only keep records. By definition, recordkeeping records an activity or task. There is no mention of management in a recordkeeping definition. If you select a recordkeeping system you will need to purchase additional software to manage and account for your business. There are many advantages to using a business management system that cannot be achieved using a recordkeeping system.

1. A recordkeeping system does not connect your financials, horse care, business operations and customers. A management system makes the connection and measures and manages their interactions.
2. When using a recordkeeping system you incur the cost of additional programs – and possibly the cost of additional staff. An accounting program alone can cost you more than $200. Accounting records your financial history. Accounting is recordkeeping and doesn’t manage your financials.
3. A recordkeeping system requires as much time to setup as it does to setup a management system and a management system adds value that a recordkeeping system cannot.
4. When using a recordkeeping system with other programs your valuable time is wasted having to enter the same information multiple times. Using multiple systems increases the risk of making data entry mistakes or worse, losing information.
5. A recordkeeping system is no more than organized scrapes of paper and cannot provide the connection and interaction of information that is necessary to measure and manage your business.
6. Because a recordkeeping system doesn’t connect your financials, you are subjected to the ‘checkbook management’ trap. Running your business out of your checkbook is a path to going out of business – unless of course, you have an infinite source of money. You might have checks, but just having checks doesn’t tell you if you have the cash to meet your next payroll, and or make your next horse trailer payment, and or purchase the feed you will need in two weeks.

There are some recordkeeping systems that include invoicing, but they are still missing the financial connection. Without the financial connection you cannot easily connect an invoice with the money you receive. You are unable to easily manage and or analyze your income sources for breakeven and or ways to increase your profitability. You are unable to easily manage and or analyze your customer’s receivables and any past due amounts without additional expenditure of your valuable time – and time is money. The true cost of using a recordkeeping system instead of a management system is not in its purchase price, it is its cost of ownership.

Believe it or not, your horse business management system has a lot do with your business’s degree of success or failure. Selecting the ‘right’ horse business management system can assist you in making good business decisions. It does this by providing you with up-to-date information that is analyzed based on the connection and the interaction between your many business activities, tasks, income and expense.

‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’

This isn’t just a nice cliché, it is a fact! The right horse business management system will organize your business so that it can be measured, thus allowing you to manage your business’s finances, horse care, business operations and customers and their interactions. You won’t have to purchase additional software. You won’t have to enter your information more than once. The ‘right’ horse business management system will save you time and money. You will have the information you need in a single system that will provide you with intelligent reports that will assist you in making good business decisions. Getting organized is easy. Organizing and managing your horse business requires a management system.

However, underlying the success of any horse business management system you chose is your commitment and ‘business discipline’ to keep your system current and use the information it provides to assist you in making good business decisions. Believe me; you need a horse business management system! But, purchasing one if you do not have the ‘business discipline’ to keep it current and use it is a bad business decision, and probably not the management system’s fault!

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Happy Trails, Good Management and Business Discipline Always!

Bob Valentine, Ph.D.
President
GenieCo, Inc.
Box 271924
Ft. Collins, CO 80527
970.682.2645 or 970.231.1455
bob@genieatwork.com