How to Set Up Your Farm Budgets and Cashflows with CashPeek

Running a farm without a clear financial picture is like planting a crop without checking the forecast. You might get lucky, but you're flying blind. CashPeek, developed by Australian Software company Aglytica, was built specifically to solve this problem — giving farmers and their advisors a simple, powerful way to build budgets and forecast cashflow without drowning in spreadsheets or over complicating the process.

We want our users to feel smarter using it not dumber.

So here's a step-by-step guide to getting up and running with CashPeek.

What Is CashPeek?

CashPeek is an agriculturally focused budgeting and cashflow forecasting platform designed for farm businesses, their accountants, and financial advisors. It was developed together with farmers and farm management consultants to address the real-world challenge of quickly putting together farm budgets, forecasts, and identifying peak debt periods. It connects directly to Xero and MYOB, pulling your actual financial data and turning it into live, visual cashflow forecasts that update automatically.

Rather than waiting until tax time or manually maintaining clunky spreadsheets, CashPeek lets you see how your farm is performing today and plan confidently for the year ahead.

Step 1: Sign Up and Start Your Free Trial

CashPeek offers a 28-day free trial, so you can get a feel for the platform before committing. Head to cashpeek.aglytica.com and create your account. You'll be prompted to set up your business profile, which is the foundation for all your budgeting and forecasting work.

If you're an accountant or advisor managing multiple farm clients, CashPeek supports multi-account management, so you can oversee several businesses from a single login.

Step 2: Connect Your Accounting Software

One of CashPeek's biggest advantages is its direct integration with Xero and MYOB. Once you've created your account:

• Navigate to the Connections section of the dashboard.

• Select either Xero or MYOB and authorise the connection.

• CashPeek will sync your data each time you log in, ensuring your actuals are always current.

CashPeek uses a "smart matching" system to automatically map your existing chart of accounts codes to the relevant fields in the budget platform. For any codes that can't be auto-matched, a simple dropdown or text lookup lets you assign them manually. This process takes much of the pain out of initial setup.

If you're not yet on Xero or MYOB, CashPeek also offers a Business Basic plan that allows you to build cashflow forecasts manually, without an accounting software connection — a good option for farms on legacy systems or planning to transition in the future.

Step 3: Import Your Previous Year's Financials

Once connected, CashPeek imports your previous year's actual financial performance from your accounting software. This becomes your budget template for the upcoming year. Rather than starting from a blank page, you're working from real numbers — your actual income lines, expense categories, and timing patterns.

This is a significant time-saver. Instead of rebuilding your budget from scratch each year, you simply review what happened last year and adjust the figures to reflect your expectations for the year ahead.

Step 4: Build Your Budget

With last year's actuals imported, you're ready to build your budget. In CashPeek, you overwrite the historical figures with your forecasted results for each line item.

Here's how to approach it:

Income lines: Enter your expected gross income for each enterprise — whether that's livestock sales, grain, wool, or other revenue streams. Think month by month, reflecting when you realistically expect to receive payment. CashPeek's worktables can help here, performing calculations and differentiating between cropping and livestock enterprises.

Expenses: Go through your operating costs — fuel, fertiliser, chemicals, labour, machinery, repairs — and estimate when those costs will fall. Accurate timing is essential, because it's the monthly view that reveals your cashflow peaks and troughs.

Non-P&L items: CashPeek handles both P&L and non-P&L items, which is important for farm businesses where capital purchases, loan repayments, and drawings all affect cashflow but don't necessarily show up on a standard profit and loss statement.

Bank accounts and debt facilities: Add your bank accounts and any finance facilities.

CashPeek allows you to differentiate interest rates between different facilities and choose whether interest is assigned to that facility or your working account — giving you a more accurate picture of your debt position and peak borrowing needs.

Step 5: Track Actuals vs Budget in Real Time

One of the most valuable features of CashPeek is its ability to track your actuals against your budget as the year progresses. Each time you log in, the platform syncs with Xero or MYOB, pulling in real transactions so you can immediately see where you're ahead of budget, where you're behind, and how that affects your projected cashflow for the remainder of the year.

This replaces the old cycle of waiting for your accountant to prepare quarterly or half-yearly reports. You have live figures to work from at any time.

Step 6: Run Scenario Planning ("What If" Analysis)

Farming is unpredictable — prices shift, seasons surprise, and costs can spike unexpectedly. CashPeek includes scenario planning tools that let you model different outcomes without touching your core budget.

Want to see what happens if wool prices drop 15%? Or if a wet spring delays harvest by six weeks? You can build alternative scenarios, compare them side by side, and understand the financial impact before it becomes a crisis. This is particularly useful when talking to your bank or advisor about risk exposure.

Step 7: Collaborate with Your Accountant, Advisor, or Bank

CashPeek is built with collaboration in mind. The platform includes a simple sharing process so you can give your accountant, bank manager, or farm advisor access to your budget — without having to email spreadsheets back and forth.

You can also export your completed budget, including any notes and worktables, so your reasoning is documented alongside the numbers. This helps when presenting to a lender or preparing for a finance review, as the thinking behind your figures is transparent and easy to follow.

Step 8: Use the Dashboard to Stay in Control

The CashPeek dashboard gives you a real-time view of your cash position at a glance. You can see:

• Projected cashflow month by month across the budget year

• Peak debt periods — the months where your working capital is under the most pressure

• Budget vs actuals — how your real performance compares to your plan

• Financial summaries suitable for sharing with stakeholders

  
  

The visual, intuitive layout means you don't need to be a financial expert to read and interpret the information. It's designed so that farmers, not just accountants, can use it confidently.

Who Is CashPeek Best Suited For?

CashPeek works well for a wide range of agricultural businesses — from cropping and grazing operations through to mixed enterprises and horticulture.

It's particularly valuable for:

• Farmers who want to take greater ownership of their financial management

• Farm advisors and consultants managing multiple clients

• Accountants and bookkeepers who need a streamlined way to prepare and review farm budgets

• Banks and finance brokers assessing the financial health of agricultural borrowers

Getting the Most Out of CashPeek

A few tips to make your experience as effective as possible:

Be realistic with your timing. Getting the month-by-month cashflow right matters more than getting the annual total right. A payment you expect in July is very different from the same payment arriving in October.

Review your budget regularly. Don't set and forget. Log in monthly, check your actuals, and update your forward projections if circumstances change.

Use the notes and worktables. Document your assumptions. If you're estimating a grain price or wool cut, note where that figure came from. It'll save time at your next review and add credibility when presenting to a bank.

Leverage the collaboration features. Share access with your accountant early in the budgeting process, not just when the budget is complete. Collaborative budgeting produces better outcomes.

Final Thoughts

Financial clarity is one of the most powerful tools a farm business can have. CashPeek makes it practical to maintain that clarity without becoming a full-time job. By connecting to your existing accounting software, automating the heavy lifting of data entry, and presenting your financials in a clear, visual format, it helps you shift from reactive financial management to proactive planning.

If you've been relying on annual figures from your accountant or hoping a spreadsheet will hold together, it's worth giving CashPeek a try.

The 28-day free trial is a low-risk way to see how it fits your operation.

Learn more at aglytica.com/cashpeek.