10 April 2025

Insight: The Truth About Being a Farm Secretary in 2025

The role of a secretary within the agricultural sector is quite distinct from that of other industries. For one, not many other sectors would warrant you having a spare set of clothes in the car!

The life of a farm sec in 2025 is far from ordi­nary. It’s a var­ied, mul­ti­fac­eted career that com­bines tra­di­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al knowl­edge with mod­ern admin­is­tra­tive exper­tise. Whether you’re man­ag­ing invoic­es, apply­ing for cat­tle pass­ports, or even mea­sur­ing a mat­tress(!), every day brings some­thing new.

Here’s an inside look at the life of a mobile farm sec­re­tary and the truths behind this reward­ing yet often chal­leng­ing profession.

Bio
What bet­ter per­son to get an insight from than Ann Davies, who has been a farm sec since the 1970’s and has also been a key mem­ber of IAgSA (the Insti­tute of Agri­cul­tur­al Sec­re­taries & Admin­is­tra­tors) for sev­er­al decades. We are proud to say that Ann has also been a long-stand­ing user of SUM-IT farm account­ing soft­ware for both her­self and many of her clients.

A Day in the Life: The Var­ied World of a Farm Secretary

What does a typ­i­cal week look like for you as a farm sec­re­tary? Walk us through it.
As a mobile farm sec­re­tary, no two weeks are ever the same. Here’s a glimpse into a typ­i­cal week:

Mon­day: Month­ly vis­it to an arable farm with a third of their acreage in Coun­try­side Stew­ard­ship. Here I large­ly spend my time inputting invoic­es, pro­cess­ing VAT and rec­on­cil­ing their bank. I also make sure Gate­keep­er is up-to-date.

Tues­day: An extra day at the Fri­day farm to input invoic­es. Some cus­tomers have already paid with the ​‘usu­al’ ones hav­ing been prompt­ed to pay the pre­vi­ous months invoice!

Wednes­day: I’m usu­al­ly at a dairy farm but not this week as they have a house full for Chel­tenham races! Here I am respon­si­ble for accounts, wages, apply­ing for cat­tle pass­ports using the dairy’s diary and fil­ing paper­work for farm assur­ance schemes.

Thurs­day: Anoth­er long-term SUM-IT User who buys in weaned calves to graze dur­ing sum­mer, sold to a fin­ish­ing unit after their sec­ond sum­mer. They also rent their best arable ground to a local veg­etable grow­er for sal­ad onions and their oth­er land grows grass, maize and fod­der beet for win­ter feed. I am respon­si­ble for all entries into their Total Accounts soft­ware & Total Field Man­age­ment soft­ware.

Fri­day: Every Fri­day I vis­it an arable farm (SUM-IT user) whose bespoke ani­mal feed busi­ness has grown over the years sell­ing direct to farm­ers, from ½ tonne bags col­lect­ed to 15t loads deliv­ered, with two full time employ­ees. Work involves inputting deliv­ery notes to pro­duce invoic­es, mak­ing pay­ments to sup­pli­ers, bank rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, fort­night­ly wages, record­ing straight feed deliv­er­ies in and mak­ing sure sam­ples of in and out deliv­er­ies have been tak­en. I aim to pro­duce the month­ly invoic­es by the first Fri­day of the month. One third are sent by email but the major­i­ty by snail mail. 

The Highs and Lows: Rewards and Chal­lenges

What are the most reward­ing aspects of your job? And the most challenging?

• Most Reward­ing: The sat­is­fac­tion of an emp­ty in-tray at the end of the day and know­ing paper­work is filed sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly for easy retrieval.
• Most Chal­leng­ing: Track­ing down receipts for debit/​credit card trans­ac­tions — often found in unex­pect­ed places like jack­et pock­ets or pick­up dashboards!

What are some com­mon mis­con­cep­tions peo­ple have about the role of a farm sec­re­tary?
Many peo­ple under­es­ti­mate the com­plex­i­ty of this role:

• Some peo­ple don’t realise that cat­tle have to have pass­ports and move­ments of all ani­mals have to be record­ed with­in a set time limit.
• Farm Assur­ance inspec­tions need SO much sup­port­ing evi­dence that goes beyond basic record-keep­ing. SUM-IT helps keep farm­ers on top of this with their bespoke reports and thor­ough organ­ised records.

What skills are essen­tial for being a suc­cess­ful farm secretary?

To thrive as a farm sec­re­tary, you need to be able to lis­ten and give an answer that is rel­e­vant – it is so much eas­i­er now the inter­net can pro­vide a start­ing point with­in minutes.

Evo­lu­tion of the Role: How Tech­nol­o­gy Has Changed Farm Secretaries

How has the role of the farm sec­re­tary changed over time, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the intro­duc­tion of new tech­nolo­gies?
My first farm sec­re­tary job was rear­ing the calves each morn­ing and evening, and in the estate office between times. When my hus­band and I moved, I was offered a job in a farm sec­re­tar­i­al bureau. I was employed to go to the same farms each month. Every­thing was writ­ten up by hand in a cash analy­sis book. 

There was plen­ty of work as many farm­ers had Farm and Hor­ti­cul­ture Devel­op­ment Schemes in place and there were forms to fill in at the end of the year.

My first expe­ri­ence of a desk­top com­put­er was on a large farm with 300 dairy cows. Instead of writ­ing cheques I was set­ting up pay­ments via online bank­ing. Also, at that farm there was a lot of work to get every ani­mal a cheque book style pass­port. Being NMR record­ed the process was sim­pli­fied. Also sim­pli­fied was reg­is­ter­ing the pedi­gree Hol­stein Friesian calves – orig­i­nal­ly the mark­ings had to be drawn, then pho­tographs were accept­ed, and then dou­ble ear tag­ging and pass­port came in.

The lap­top com­put­er makes every­thing more mobile. I have 2 farm finan­cial pro­grams on the lap­top and I can go online and access a cloud-based pro­gram which means I don’t always have to trav­el to the farm.

Won­der­ing if the Cloud could be use­ful for your farm? Check out our arti­cle here.

The Unusu­al Side of Farm Sec­re­tar­i­al Work

What’s the most unusu­al or inter­est­ing task you’ve ever had to do as a farm sec­re­tary?
I was at a quar­ter­ly farm vis­it and the farmer was off to the bank and to do some shop­ping. A bit lat­er the phone went – please would I go upstairs and mea­sure the mat­tress so he could buy the right size top­per — a reminder that this job isn’t just about numbers!

Stay­ing Organ­ised: Tips for Man­ag­ing Tasks

How do you stay organ­ised and man­age the diverse range of tasks involved in farm admin­is­tra­tion?
Clear desk space at the start of each day is key — you’ll need room to sort paper­work into piles that can be filed effi­cient­ly by the day’s end.

Time-Sav­ing Tools: The Pow­er of SUM-IT Soft­ware

What are some of the biggest time-savers you’ve dis­cov­ered in terms of SUM-IT software?

• The reminder flash­es up if the invoice is being saved with­out being paid.
• On enter­ing a name, the whole list of entries against that sup­pli­er appears so it is sim­ple to check where the pur­chas­es have been allo­cat­ed in the past.
• I can use the pro­gram on my lap­top for more than one client

What’s the biggest impact you feel you have on the far­m’s suc­cess?
My work ensures the farm is kept on the ​‘straight and nar­row’. This includes main­tain­ing good terms with the bank man­ag­er and ​‘jump­ing through hoops’ at inspec­tion time.


As a pro­fes­sion­al in the indus­try, do you feel you are able to charge a suf­fi­cient hourly rate to cov­er the valu­able ser­vice that you pro­vide your clients?
No! I drink their cof­fee and use their heat­ing while on the farm. At one farm I have cooked lunch so no need to cook when I get home. If I need some print­ing for a Brown­ies meet­ing, I can use the printer.

Are you able to charge for your trav­el costs?
I don’t both­er as I could be doing two vis­its in the same area, so cal­cu­lat­ing trav­el costs could become com­pli­cat­ed.



Address­ing Indus­try Shortages

What are the main rea­sons for the short­age of new entrants to this indus­try?
Full-time Agri­cul­tur­al col­lege cours­es pro­vid­ed a wide range of knowl­edge of what would be required in the farm office. 

Agri­cul­ture and asso­ci­at­ed indus­tries are quirky i.e. Mar­ket costs con­tra against the sale and the har­vest year end is dif­fer­ent from finan­cial year end so off the shelf finan­cial pro­grams don’t always fit the farm. I have not had sight of a cur­rent book­keep­ing course but I pre­sume they are writ­ten for the book­keep­er to go into a reg­u­lar SME com­pa­ny so at an inter­view a book­keep­er would have lim­it­ed knowl­edge of farm­ing terms.


What advice would you give to some­one con­sid­er­ing a career as a farm sec­re­tary?
If you’re con­sid­er­ing this career:

1. Be flex­i­ble — adapt your hours and sys­tems to suit each farm’s needs. Take on what they are using and slow­ly make changes.
2. Be avail­able at the end of the phone – some­thing they can’t find is prob­a­bly in the file they didn’t check.
3. Join pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies like IAgSA for net­work­ing and train­ing opportunities.
4. Keep spare clothes in your car — you nev­er know when a walk across a mud­dy yard might go wrong!

Thank you, Ann, for kind­ly tak­ing the time to share your wisdom.

Farm sec­re­taries real­ly are the unsung heroes of mod­ern agri­cul­ture, blend­ing admin­is­tra­tive pre­ci­sion with hands-on farm­ing knowl­edge to keep oper­a­tions run­ning smooth­ly. If you’re ready for a career where every day is dif­fer­ent and every task makes an impact, this might just be the role for you!

Here at SUM-IT we are the only agri­cul­tur­al spe­cif­ic accounts com­pa­ny who offer farm sec­re­taries the first 5 datasets at no addi­tion­al cost, sav­ing farm secs con­sid­er­ably amounts across their clients. 

For a free demo of our easy-to-use accounts pack­age that does it all, please com­plete this quick form.