MEMBERSHIP BASICS
Not Too Early for Tax Planning If you are considering deferring any income this year you will need to make the decision at least two weeks prior to your first delivery of the 2024 crop. Ideally, we’d like to have deferral forms in place and processed as soon as you make the decision to delay funds. It may seem early, but tax planning starts now. Touching base with your accountant soon to run scenarios will help you make the call if deferring is right for you. Unfortunately, we cannot retroactively defer payments from any sub-contract after you have received any funds for the crop year from that sub-contract . If you had deferred income in the past, we will be sending deferral forms directly to you for your convenience and prompt processing. Deferral forms are located at www.bluediamondgrowers.com or in the Grower Information Portal. Are You on the Portal? The Grower Information Portal is your all-access window to your Blue Diamond records and information. It houses all your recent and previous crop year’s delivery, grade, yield records, payment history and other key information. The system provides a current view of up-to-date data. One piece of feedback that I often hear from grower- members is how easy it is to keep informed with delivery and grade information as it gets posted in real time. Another nice feature is the handy library of preset reports that is helpful in record keeping and planning. The portal is accessible by any web enabled device including smart phones and tablets, as well as your computer at home. It is secured utilizing a two-factor authentication which keeps your account information viewable only to you. A good number of our grower-members are already on the system, and if you are not, I encourage you to sign up. For more information and to sign up please email Membership Coordinator, Daniel Dekeyrel at ddekeyrel@bdgrowers.com.
Your Regional Manager is here to help! One last focus item that I’ll mention is that in the past, the Grower Accounting Department has been open to receive direct calls from grower-members, and you might have noticed that our recent publications now list only the Salida Membership Office and direct contact information for your local Regional Manager. This is a change made to direct phone traffic directly to your frontline Regional Manager or the Membership office as your first point of contact. Our Grower Accounting Department experiences a high volume of transactions and I think you’ll agree that we would like their first focus to be on managing Blue Diamond ’s payment process. So, having our Membership team manage calls allows them to do what they do best: pay you. We are here to help you excel at the basics. I know that if we partner together to focus on the details, we will be ready for this year’s harvest!
Ben Goudie, Director, Member Relations, Blue Diamond Growers
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ALMOND FACTS
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