When Tara Ostendorf talks about her farm in central Minnesota, she’s not just talking about goats. She’s talking about contracts, infrastructure, and the future she’s building for her family.
What began as a meat goat operation has evolved into a complex, diversified business. In addition to raising livestock for sale, Tara uses part of her herd for targeted grazing contracts that control invasive species like buckthorn. Through a subcontracting arrangement, her goats help manage wooded areas and pastures, making the farm both a production enterprise and a provider of ecological services.
But scaling her operation meant reaching a crossroads. “We either had to go big or go home,” she said. “You can only get to a certain number of animals before it's too labor intensive.”
For Tara’s family, the goal was clear: grow the business enough to support their agricultural lifestyle and raise their kids within that community. But with older children already in their twenties and younger ones still at home, they needed a plan to make things more efficient for the future, “for when the kids all leave, and then we have to do it by ourselves.”
That meant investing in infrastructure, including securing an FSA loan for a new barn. But with growth came a new challenge: managing the books.
Before Ambrook: "Mostly just panic"
Despite her professional background as a project manager handling funding strategies for an engineering company, Tara struggled with farm accounting due to the lack of tools built specifically for the complexities of ag.
"It was mostly just sheer panic at the end of the year," she said, describing her annual scramble to get the farm finances in order.
Her process was a combination of solutions that never quite worked: color-coded spreadsheets, QuickBooks attempts, farm accounting books, and receipt-tracking apps that didn't talk to each other.
"It was kind of like, let's just export a bunch of stuff from my bank accounts and then try to create the spreadsheets I created last year. But oh, I don't remember how I did that. Now I gotta, like, do it all over again," she rehashed.
The disorganization wasn't just stressful, it also made funding more difficult. When applying for their FSA loan, compiling the required financial documentation became "a year and a half long process."
"And I do that for a living," Tara said, referring to her professional work with funding applications. "So I was like, oh man, if this is hard for me, it's going to be really hard for somebody who's never had to try to do a startup operation like that."
Finding Ambrook: "Eureka"
"I think I stumbled upon an Ambrook ad through Facebook," she said. "I was like, eureka. If somebody actually put accounting software out there that does only farm stuff, that would be amazing."
What sold her wasn't just the agricultural focus. It was the structure. Unlike QuickBooks or Quicken, which required creating custom charts of accounts, Ambrook came pre-built for agriculture.
"I think what was most helpful and why I was instantly hooked on Ambrook was that they had already created chart of accounts that were based off the Schedule F," she said.
Real-time results
The change was immediate and dramatic. Instead of annual panic sessions, Tara now manages farm finances in real-time.
"I'm probably doing general accounting maybe once a week, going through when I'm just waiting at a dentist's office or something like that. I'm just doing my transactions right there," she said.
The mobile accessibility has transformed her workflow entirely. With transactions automatically importing from connected bank accounts, the old system of exporting CSVs and hunting down receipts has become obsolete.
Perhaps most importantly, working with her accountant became more collaborative. During tax season, instead of preparing spreadsheets and printed summaries, Tara discovered Ambrook's "Ask Your Accountant" feature.
"One day he was asking me a whole bunch of questions, and I said, can you just try this "ask your accountant" link? And I sent it to him and he opened it up and said, 'oh yeah, I can see everything I need to see so I don't have any more questions," she recalled. "That was pretty sweet. We were looking at the same data."
Quantifying the impact
When asked about time savings, Tara's estimate was striking: "I think Ambrook is probably saving me hundreds of hours."
The improvement was particularly evident during her 2024 tax preparation, which coincided with additional FSA reporting requirements for their new barn construction.
"Now I feel like I'm in a much better position to do that than I was before. Before I would just be like, how many reports do you need? And where am I going to make that information out from?" she said.
Ambrook's real-time visibility also enables faster operational decisions: "Should I buy that hay? Should I not buy that hay? Is it going to matter at the end of the year?" Questions that previously required long analysis sessions can now be answered quickly through the real-time data in her Ambrook account.
Human support
Beyond the software itself, Tara values the human element behind Ambrook.
"I feel like I am getting a lot of value for what I'm paying for because I know that I can just reach out and somebody will help me," she said. "I'm not just talking to like Microsoft Chatbot. It's nice to actually call and have the same people show up time after time."
Advice for other farmers
For fellow farmers considering a change, Tara's recommendation is straightforward: try it.
"If you're somebody that's been doing this a long time, trying to be your own armchair accountant, let me tell you: the support that's behind Ambrook, and the way the platform is set up, makes it a lot easier to get your time back," she said.
She's already making recommendations to other farmers, including some who've been in business for decades. "Just try it and see if it is something that could help you out. Get some of your freedom back from having to do all the book work all the time."
For new operations, the path is even clearer: "If somebody's in a position that I was in, where you're trying to do a startup and you're trying to build your business from the front end, Ambrook gives you a super easy way to learn with support."