Farriers are an independent lot. But sooner or later, they’re likely to find themselves sitting across a desk from a person who doesn’t know a driving hammer from a tack hammer — but who can discern things out of a balance sheet that the farrier has never dreamed of.

It’s the loan officer at your local bank, savings and loan or credit union and he or she is one of the best reasons you’ll ever find for keeping good and accurate financial records. You may want to buy a home, take a second mortgage out on a home you have or buy that new shoeing rig that you just know would make your life easier and might raise your shoeing business to the next level.

Rigging The Question

For ABC Horseshoeing, our fictitious horseshoeing company based on real farrier records, we decided to go with the new rig scenario. We asked our panel of experts to look over the records we provided them with and tell us if — in their opinion — a loan officer would be willing to give ABC’s owner a $25,000 loan for a shoeing rig, based on what the records contained. We got varied answers, but were left — as we were so often in the first two articles in this series — with a belief that more complete records would be a good thing.

“If I walked into my bank to finance a new truck with these records, my banker would ask for my…