Adrienne and Warrick Wilcock have been dairy farming in the Waikato all their married life. The couple, are both from farming backgrounds, Warrick grew up on the very farm he and Adrienne now own. The property has been in his family since 1932. Although not from a dairy background, Adrienne was only too familiar with farming life, her parents were sheep and beef farmers at Otorohanga in the King Country. The couple’s farm at Walton, is fortunately in an area that was not to badly affected by the drought. “The drought did make things hard” says Adrienne “but we are lucky to be on the flats and we did get a little rain we did not need to do any irrigation at all.” Milking 450 cows on their 150 hectare property, they have worked hard building their farm into a successful and thriving business, plus raising their three children. Like many couples, they have combined their individual skills and strengths to form a strong working team, helping to make everything run smoothly. Adrienne readily admits to always having a love of figures and bookwork, this made her the obvious person to be ‘in charge’ of the farm accounts and finances. One of the first things she did when she took on this role was to buy a computer and farming software. “I must have been one of the first around here to buy a computer and a copy of Cashmanager RURAL,” she says, “I had to teach myself to begin with how to operate the computer, I am totally self taught and there are probably things I still don’t know. ” That was in the early nineties, and Adrienne has never looked back. She believes having the right tools for each job is important, making work easier, and has continued using the program. Over the years Cashmanager RURAL has continued to develop, always moving with the times, and changes in farming and technology. “Cashmanager RURAL” says Adrienne, “is versatile enabling us to monitor how we are doing and how the finances are.” “It is especially good when breaking things down to see what money is being spent on, something such as animal health, which can be a huge expense for farmers or to supply figures to the bank manager,” says Adrienne. If managing the finances of one farm was not enough, recently they have bought into another farm in the South Island at Gore, an equity partnership with three companies plus Adrienne and Warrick. Adrienne’s strengths have again put her in the position of managing the finances a role she is happy to fill. Adrienne says, each person in the partnership comes from a totally different background, all with their own areas of expertise enabling them all to contribute something. There are three companies in the equity partnership, made up of two couples besides themselves and one other person. This new farm is also dairy and has a milking herd of 500 cows; it is something that Adrienne sees as a challenge. The finances of the new property will be done on Adrienne’s Cashmanager RURAL program for this coming year. She may then consider advancing onto a new version of the program that has just become available, CMR online. Designed especially for equity partnerships, CMR online is Cashmanager RURAL Online. The software and your data are run and stored from a central server and you can access it across the internet. This means that several people can share that same data from their place anywhere in the country or the world. Users log in to their data using access rights that control what they can see and what they can alter. This is useful for two of more people to share the information. Adrienne has no hesitation recommending the program to anyone, “It’s a great program that can do as much or as little as you want it to. It gives you control and saves a lot of expense with accountants.”