Grower prepay and booking contracts, reconciled against what was delivered for your office to check.

In the off-season a grower signs a contract or a booking sheet: which seed, fertilizer and crop protection products, at what price and quantity, with a prepayment against them. Through the season, deliveries and custom application tickets draw that balance down. At the end someone in your office matches every delivered line to a booked line, works through the substitutions, decides what is owed or carried, and sends the grower a statement.

For the test, AI reads copies of those contracts, delivery tickets and payments and drafts the reconciliation: each booked line with its product, price and quantity, what was delivered against it, any substitution and the price it carried, and the unused balance by product. The draft statement shows every step. Anything it can't match goes on a list for a person, and it never decides a refund, a credit or a carryover.

The contract's wording decides what the money is. Rural Tax Education's August 2025 guide says a cash-method farmer can deduct prepaid supplies in the year paid only if the payment is a purchase and not a deposit, which it ties to a binding commitment to take a specific quantity at a fixed price with no right to a refund. Signs of a deposit include no specific quantity, a right to a refund of any unapplied credit at the end of the contract, the seller treating the payment as a deposit, and a right to substitute other goods. The deduction is also generally limited to half of other deductible farm expenses. So what your statement says about substitutions and unused balances matters beyond your own books. The draft quotes each contract's terms and calls nothing a purchase or a deposit; that stays with your accountant and the grower's.

Seed is often counted, not weighed. University of Wisconsin agronomists budget corn seed in bags of 80,000 seeds. Soybeans moved the same way: one large seed company changed its unit from fifty pounds of seed to 140,000 seeds for the 2013 planting season. A booking in bags and a delivery in bulk have to meet in the same count before a price applies, and a returned unit has to come off the right booked line. The draft shows the conversion on every seed line.

Fertilizer and crop protection change form on the way out. A booking might name 82-0-0, 46-0-0, 28-0-0 or 18-46-0 by the ton and leave the plant as a blend, or as gallons on a ticket. Crop protection booked by the jug or case can be delivered as bulk. EPA's rule for refillers who aren't the registrant, 40 CFR 165.70, has them keep the registrant's written contract, add a net contents statement and their establishment number to the label, and record for each repackaging the registration number, the date and the serial number or other code of the container, for at least three years. The draft ties each bulk delivery to that entry where your records show it and lists the ones where they don't.

Discounts have dates on them. A University of Illinois farmdoc analysis of seed corn prices from October 2019 found most companies no longer offering an early pay discount by mid-March, with early pay and volume discounts calculated from the base price and added together. North Carolina's extension service notes that some programs take advance payment into an account for seed bought later, and that most early discount programs don't apply to purchases on credit cards. The contract date, the payment date and the method of payment can all change the price on a booked line, so the draft carries all three and names the program your records cite.

Substitutions and leftovers are where accounts get argued. A hybrid sells out and another takes its place, a herbicide program changes after planting, a field gets replanted, or a booked load is never taken. Each one can move a line to another price or leave a balance behind. At a cooperative the same lines feed patronage, which federal tax law, 26 U.S.C. 1388, bases on the quantity or value of business done with each patron, so the account a line lands on matters. Your reviewer, usually the credit manager or whoever closes prepay accounts, checks the matched lines first, then substitution prices, the unused balance by product and the totals, and any line without a clear match stays held for a person.

If your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, the same reconciliation runs on accounts closing over the next 30 days or so.

A person checks every statement before a grower sees it, and every refund, credit or carryover stays your office's decision.

Any further job is decided and priced on its own, with monthly support after that.