The beauty of having a business structured

One thing I have come to discover that runs businesses around here down is when entrepreneurs/business people fail to separate business from self. They run business in such a manner that there are no records and personal/family expenses are not separated from business expenses. It is such that proper accounting for the business is ignored. Since the entrepreneur reports to nobody but himself, he is not under any form of pressure to keep records and proper accounts for the business. It is common here to find business people who just deep hand into the business money to pay tithe, do naming ceremony, furnish home, buy cars for pleasure not necessarily for the business to the extent that they do not even realize when they start eating into the business capital and then the eventual collapse of the business.

Besides having the business separated from me in respect to accounting and expenses, as the day goes by, it becomes more obvious to me that I cannot handle this project all alone if I am to move fast. I have to have capable hands that can work even independently to some extent. Until now, everything depends and revolves around me.

Armed with this knowledge, I decided to give our farming business a structure and a corporate outlook from this point. More so, we are looking at making good business out of farming contrary to what is mostly obtained here which is subsistence farming. We are looking at having a farming business that will stand the test of time and outlive the originator. A farming business that will incorporate all the necessary value chain, taking it from production to processing and then packaging.

In giving my farming business a structure and a corporate outlook, first I decided to get administrative / accounting personnel who would take care of the administrative aspect of the business.

Fortunately, I asked an old friend who is a seasoned administrator and an accountant who happened to be very much interested in our project and willing to work with us. She immediately swung into action and have been able to set up a couple of things in respect to giving us a corporate outlook.

Business Registration

First, we registered the business with the corporate affairs commission (CAC). CAC is the body in charge of registering and regulating business registration in Nigeria. Here, we had to submit 2 names for a name search to ensure there is no existing registered business bearing the same name. We submitted these names viz;

• Max Multi Agro Enterprise

• Anyachor Multipurpose Agro Concepts

Anyachor Multipurpose Agro Concepts was approved for us meaning that the other name has exactly or similar name existing in their database. With the approval, we went on to complete the rest of the registration process. So, the name our business now ears is Anyachor Multipurpose Agro Concepts.

Tax Identification Number (TIN)

The next action was to obtain a Tax Identification Number (TIN) from the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS). Every business in Nigeria is expected to have this TIN for the purpose of remitting taxes to government. Businesses submit their accounting reports monthly for tax assessment and subsequent remittance. After due process, we were given a Tax Identification Number (TIN)We gathered that the Agriculture sector of the Nigerian economy is exempted from both the Company Income Tax CIT and Value Added Tax VAT. So we are going to be enjoying the tax exemption, however, it is mandatory that we submit monthly our income statement as well as our bank statements.

Opening of A Corporate Bank Account

We proceeded to opening of a corporate account with of one the commercial banks here. Part of the requirements for opening a corporate account are; the CAC Registration Certificate and the TIN Certificate which we had already got and other items. After making available the necessary requirements we were able to open a corporate account in the name of Anyachor Multipurpose Agro Concepts.

Structure of Our Business/Organogram

At the apex of course is me the entrepreneur as I prefer to address myself or the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) if you like. Thereafter, is the administrative/accounting personnel who is responsible for all our administrative and accounting works. She is equally concerned with recruitments, public relations and managing our social media platforms.

Next is the farm manager, though for now, we do not intend to hire one because after some attempts at hiring one, we discovered that the cost of having a farm manager at this point will be too high for us. Nevertheless, we hope to do so whenever it becomes very pertinent. However, I decided to work with attendants in the interim. This is to minimize cost of staff for now. So, I double as the farm manager and CEO.

The organogram is peculiar to us and does not fit any formal standard or method. This is as is suitable for now.

After the farm manager are the attendants for the following sections

• Animal husbandry (Poultry, Fishery, Piggery, Snailery)

• Crop farming: Root crops: cassava, yam; Cash crops: coconut, paw paw; Vegetables: cucumber, spinach.

• Food Processing Factory: Here, we have a cassava processing mill that processes our cassava to garri from start to finished. We also mill other cassava derivatives like ‘Alibo’ as well as cereals like maize.

• Water Distribution: If you have been following my blog, you will remember I shared how we discovered water in my farm. Now, this water is more than enough for the farm only so we decided to use it to meet the need for water in my community. We distribute the water by means of a water tanker and then we have selling points for retail purposes.

Like I said earlier, there is a limit to what I can handle alone. So I am really considering getting as more hands as we can carry financially. So, we plan to hire 3 attendants, 1 administrative personnel and myself. A total of 5 staff for now.

Challenge of staffing

Hiring quality staff and dedicated staff has been a challenge since we embarked on recruiting staff for our farm. Finding dedicated staff who would be on salary has been a hard nut to crack. Here, laborers are already used to daily wage so they want to be free so that they can easily go for jobs that offer higher wage for the day. Again, it is farming season, so there are available farm work both for self and wage pay.

However, we are not discouraged, we keep searching for such permanent staff until we find them. By dry season, you find labourers idling away, in fact, they come begging for jobs to do to earn the day’s wage. Here, farming is seasonal, when the rains are no more, peasants lose jobs and are available for work.

Cost of staffing

Yes, cost of staffing ( I mean having people on a payroll along with the other hiccups of managing people)may be expensive but the question one might ask is; how much does the business stand to gain or lose vis a vis hiring or not hiring. If the business will improve and can cover the cost of hiring added hand, why not?

I would not have come this far if I were to do everything alone. Now, we are looking at a situation where the business will outlive the owner/originator or entrepreneur. So we want to start now to give it a structure so that everything does not depend on the entrepreneur.