Juliette Allen

PaySauce – an invaluable part of Farm Focus!

Juliette Allen juggles a few balls, so saving time and money is a priority.

Juliette manages the financials on her family farm – an 1100ha sheep and finishing beef property at Ponatahi, 30 minutes south east of Masterton. Being in the heart of the Wairarapa she says the farm is summer dry so they also grow feed crops for their own use.

In addition, Juliette and husband Mike have two young sons Jimmy (3) and Patrick (2), plus she works part-time at Farm Focus to round off a busy schedule.

Juliette says time is precious with a young family so she's a big fan of working smarter rather than longer which is a complete turnaround in thinking from the previous generation of farmers.

"Our parents lived and breathed work and there was no such thing as spare time. Almost everything was done manually, and down time was regarded as unproductive or largely wasted time when you could be doing something else on the farm! We enjoy so many advantages our parents didn’t even dream of. Technology for example has had a huge impact on the way we live and work and has given us choices we need to take advantage of."

Juliette says the family business had been using Cash Manager RURAL for 20 years before switching to Farm Focus to take advantage of the new application's time and cost saving abilities.

"Enjoying time together as a family is important so Farm Focus attracted my attention straight away. I like the work-flow aspect because you are directed easily around where you need to go. The invoice coding application has also saved me a huge amount of time, plus it’s great to store all our information in the one place for future use."

Juliette says that since moving to Farm focus she has also noticed that her dad is happy to stand back and let her manage the business accounts because he can see where all their information is stored and knows he can access this info anytime.

"Dad used a wage book which is not possible now – it's been superseded by PaySauce because, as an accounting application, wage book can’t meet current business needs. Working off-farm I know my dollar value per hour and can quantify for example that PaySauce is definitely a cost-effective tool that saves time and money."

She says moving away from wage book was a challenge for her dad and the way she sold it to him was you need to value your time. "I asked him to consider the amount of time spent every week remembering to do your filing, keeping track of time sheets and the need to be across all leave possibilities involved when filing."

"Staff now share ownership of their information which has led to much improved recording of sick or annual leave for example. PaySauce definitely promotes a more collaborative relationship between staff and business owners because staff have ownership of their information. They provide their payroll details electronically straight into the system where PAYE is automatically completed, and they're paid. Their ownership of their information has also led to improved recording of details such as sick, special or annual leave."

"Special Leave, holiday pay or days in lieu have to be accounted for and these are covered off automatically by PaySauce which definitely provides peace of mind for me because I know we’re compliant and our staff are receiving their dues."

Juliette says one example where PaySauce would've immediately picked up a mistake was around a staff member's KiwiSaver payment.

"Wage book allowed for free entry so while he asked $100.00 per week be deducted from his pay straight into KiwiSaver he didn’t actually meet the salary scale required for this deduction. PaySauce would’ve picked the correct deduction amount automatically."

She says when discussing how PaySauce benefits the family business she comes back to the question - what farmer has time to keep on top of changes to employment law and changes to regulations around tax deductible items? Add in reading and researching all the latest compliance information each month and $46 per month for PaySauce starts to make complete sense.

"Peace of mind is a good feeling and knowing our business is compliant is priceless. I don’t even have to think about it before simply pushing the pay button. We're compliant, job done!"