Red Sky Farm Performance Analysis was launched on 28 January 2003 with the latest upgrade released on 22 February 2008.

This latest version has a Scalar function with Copy or Rollover which allows you to select a change to farm area or livestock numbers, after which the program scales all relevant numbers within that Year.  This will ensure that creating business plans and budgets can be done with considerably more speed and efficiency

Previous versions allowed all users to edit the split of effective milking area versus effective youngstock area without using up an Editable Area Year.  Simply go to ‘View Area Details’ on the General tab of any year and make the required change to ‘Effective Milking Area’.

For users of Annual Report licenses, you can now rollover or copy a previous year’s data, tick the ‘Make Editable Area Year’ on the General tab, and then edit any of the areas you wish.  Then when you synchronise the latest farm data for the first time, these new areas will be locked up.

We have recently developed a number of new reports that are positioned under our ‘Key Data’ tab.  We have also moved several of our mixed enterprise reports to this tab (i.e. sheep & beef reports, or combined sheep, beef & deer reports).  This is also where our ‘Farm Gate Nutrient Balance’ and ‘Budget’ reports now resides.

For operators of the ‘Udder’ software there is now an automatic calculation of the Per Cow and Per Hectare costs that should be used with this program when calculating the economic impact of changes to farm policy.  These numbers are situated at the bottom of the ‘Land Detail/Fertiliser’ screen.

Included in recent versions is new code that results in “Hectare” replacing “Area” in most screens and reports.  For sheep and beef data there is also a locale function that will ensure Australians see “DSE” and New Zealanders see “SU” in all screens and reports.  For those users who do not use dollars as their currency then Pound, Euro or Rand will now be visible.

The Red Sky Summary report has been further summarised so that there is a genuinely short report that just concentrates on the key performance indicators of a farm business.

There is a "Run All Calcs" button at bottom right of the General tab that when selected runs all calculations for that Year.  This will ensure all calculations as well as all reports are correctly populated. There is also a NEW Red Sky print driver for printing Adobe Acrobat PDF reports.  This now allows you to maintain an electronic file record of any reports and then email these to clients or advisors.  The PDF installation file is also available from our free download web page, which after downloading you should double click on the file and follow the prompts.  Then when you go to print a report from within Red Sky you select 'Red Sky PDF' from the printer selections.

There has previously been a number of enhancements that have been developed to improve speed and user friendliness so that reports can be delivered in a shorter time. Recent versions runs faster on your computer (and use less RAM), as well as there being no restriction on size of databases.  You will be able to have as many farms and years in a single database as you wish with little or no change in performance as more data is added. We also launched a Fertiliser/Farm Gate Nutrient Balance module, along with some specialty reports for sheep and beef farms.  These reports can be viewed under the ‘Special’ tab in Reports. There is also an option to hide the second stock breed/type and hiding this will be the default setting when you install the new version.  To make visible the second stock breed you will need to un-tick the checkbox in the Options screen.

Previous versions significantly broadened the application of Red Sky to cover a more diverse group of farms as well as a wider group of rural professionals.  The main functionality was full stock reconciliations for each livestock class, including fuller reporting of both livestock sales and purchases, and product sales.  There was an expansion from 4 to 6 farming enterprises, with cropping now having its own specific class and individual crop types recorded separately.  There have been a number of other enhancements that continue to improve the accuracy and applicability of Red Sky.

SHEEP AND BEEF FARMS

There have been some major changes to simplify the entering of data for sheep and beef farms.  With the ticking of a checkbox you can now have Red Sky split all data entered between sheep and beef.  Whether you are importing data or entering data line by line, you simply enter the total number and Red Sky will do the rest.  For those wanting to analyse the business in more depth there are stock reconciliations so you can confirm the reliability of opening and closing numbers, as well as stock movements.  This then automatically populates many other Red Sky screens so that tracking of sales and purchases, reproductive performance, and death/loss rates is straightforward.

CROP FARMS

There is a new CROP enterprise which has been designed to accommodate the specific needs of cropping farmers.  This includes options for grains, small seeds, forages, and a wide range of other crops such as cotton, sugar cane, kiwifruit, apples, grapes, and vegetables.  In addition to analysing overall farm financial performance, you can record performance per hectare on both a yield and revenue basis.

DEER, GOAT AND OTHER FARMS

There are now TWO “Other” enterprises so you can analyse deer and/or goats and/or forestry and/or off-farm investments separately.  The key physical reports record meat, fibre (or velvet) and milk (goats or sheep) separately.  You can complete a comprehensive analysis of all of these enterprises, or just as with the other enterprises you can rapidly import data and provide a range of reports in minutes.

FERTILISER USE & FARM GATE NUTRIENT BALANCE

The Fertiliser/Farm Gate Nutrient Balance is not quite complete so although you are now able to see the layout of the report under the Physical tab, this is not yet fully available.  There will not need to be a new version launch when this is available, it will simply become active after synchronise.  We will confirm by email when this is complete.

PREVIOUS ENHANCEMENTS

There are now Summary reports for each farming enterprise as well as for the total farm business.  These Summary reports combine key physical and financial data into a two-page report.  There are both comparative ratios and key performance indicators, as well as confirmation of the cash that has been paid and received by the business.  We envisage that in many circumstances this is the only report that rural professionals may provide to their clients.

There is also now an Operating Budget report which details annual revenue and expenses, as well as asset purchases, changes to liabilities, tax, drawings, and any other capital items.  This can be accessed under the Reports-Operating Profit tab and is called 'Budget'.  This report would be completed prior to developing a cash flow as it is more readily accessible and more easily manipulated.

There have also been a couple of new ratios released and some alterations to existing ratios to make them more applicable.

Previous releases of Red Sky provided the functionality to rapidly export data from APS to Red Sky and was developed in partnership with APS (Advanced Professional Solutions).  This provides a complete solution to the transfer of data between our two software applications and ensures data can be imported into Red Sky within minutes for a farm business.  Staff from both APS and Red Sky are available to provide support to get you started.  To learn more about this please go to 'Tips Using Software - APS' or click here.

Previous releases of Red Sky also provided for the importation of data from a freeform report designed to extract data from Solution 6.  Although this report will need to be adjusted for the coding used by individual accountancy practices, it will provide a comprehensive template for the rapid export of data from Solution 6 to Red Sky. Once this template is adjusted for a standard set of codes, this should ensure data can be imported into Red Sky within a short space of time for a farm business.  Red Sky staff are available to assist you to map your General Ledger data into the Red Sky import spreadsheet, as well as to provide support to get started.  To learn more about this please go to 'Tips Using Software - Solution 6' or click here.

Red Sky version 3.1.78 or later has the functionality to extract all data from the MYOB General Ledger for individual farm businesses. This data then needs to be mapped into the standard Red Sky import spreadsheet for direct importing into Red Sky. Once this has been done for one client this should provide a comprehensive template for the rapid export of data from MYOB to Red Sky. Red Sky staff are available to assist you to map your General Ledger data into the Red Sky import spreadsheet, as well as to provide support to get started. To learn more about this please go to 'Tips Using Software - MYOB' or click here.

Some of the other enhancements released with version 3.1.78 include improved ratios for irrigated farms, with pasture dry matter more accurately calculated for these areas.  Water use per irrigated hectare is also more appropriately calculated.  Comparative Stocking Rate has been added as a dairy ratio to the Physical report along with estimated pasture, forage and concentrate fed per cow. There have been a number of other changes of less importance that continue to improve the accuracy and applicability of Red Sky.

A strong quality assurance program has been implemented from the outset. We are confident that you can expect a trouble free and rewarding experience when using the software, including after each new version is launched.

Red Sky was initially developed after 20 months of use of a prototype product with dairy farmers in Australia and New Zealand. The reaction to this prototype version by farmers had been overwhelmingly positive. An enthusiastic response was also received from other sectors such as accountants, agricultural consultants and banks and this encouraged us to commence development of the web enabled version of Red Sky.