Press release Data from milk invoice automatically transferred to accounting package: administrative simplification through data sharing in dairy sector

Manually entering the figures from your milk money statement into your accounting package every month. It can be simpler. By using the data-sharing platform DjustConnect, Milcobel and Boerenbond together offer a solution to make retyping and the administrative burden redundant.

For dairy farmers, this is another important step towards administrative simplification. Just like the data they need for their IKM audit, they can now also have the data from their milk payment statement automatically flow through to their accounting package. Milcobel as milk processor and Boerenbond with the accounting package Focus are the first to make this possible, via the data-sharing platform DjustConnect.

This means that the data that Milcobel generates when drawing up the milk payment statement - liters, price, protein and fat content of the milk delivered - immediately ends up in the right place in Focus. As always with DjustConnect, it is the dairy farmer who decides whether or not this data transfer takes place.

Tom Schiettecat, Director of Milk & Farms at Milcobel:

"Several of our supply chain partners have long been interested in the data on the milk payment statement or in market information in general. We held off until today due to concerns about cyber security and farmer data ownership. Today, the security, but certainly the guarantees in DjustConnect that our dairy farmer-cooperators can each decide for themselves whether to share their data or not, pull us over the edge. "

It is also an important condition for Farmers' Union that farmers retain 100% control over their data. In addition, it must be administratively easy for them.

Guy Vandepoel, member of the main management team of Boerenbond: "We were asking for this administrative simplification for our members. Our business accounting system Focus gives dairy farmers insight into their figures and the functioning of their business. We noticed that filling in all the basic data takes time and attention from the dairy farmers, with the risk of errors. Through this data link we can unburden them and avoid errors. The data from other dairy farms, feed companies, phytosanitary and fertilizer suppliers, etc. still have to be entered manually today. We also hope to change that soon by realizing even more data links."

“Yes, I want to, what do I need to do?”

For dairy farmers who want to activate this automation, all they need to do is sign up for DjustConnect. How to do that, you can read in this handy step-by-step plan. On your personal dasboard all data requests are listed. You click on the 'FOCUS card', can read which data is involved and for which purpose your data will be shared. For each request you give or withhold permission. It is in this same place that you can withdraw your consent afterwards. The sharing of your data will then stop immediately. In this way, farmer data always remains in the hands of farmers.

DjustConnect is accelerating

Previously, the specification IKM already took the step towards administrative relief for dairy farmers via DjustConnect. That resulted in IKM-NET, the first application to use DjustConnect. Since then, the data-sharing platform has been worked hard on. New applications also outside the dairy industry were added and the dashboard for farmers became even more farmer friendly.

Stephanie Van Weyenberg, DjustConnect coordinator at ILVO: "I call on companies and organizations with digitalization plans to come and talk to us. Together we want to ensure that tools for farmers do what they are supposed to do: support them. Optimal ease of use without overtyping, that's what we're going for together."