Lew Wolfe Pools has been servicing and maintaining pools in the Philadelphia area for approximately 20 years. Formerly a family-owned business, LWP was acquired by aACE partner All Solutions 360 in 2018. The company was doing well, but new owner Bryan Anderson immediately realized there was a problem: they used QuickBooks for accounting, and everything else was done the old-fashioned way – on paper. If he wanted his new venture to grow, Bryan knew he had to modernize his business operations.
As an aACE partner, Bryan already knew what the solution could do. But that doesn’t mean that he took the decision to implement it lightly. He and his team did their due diligence, examining both general business management solutions and industry-specific software. What they found was that only one solution could power their growing business while remaining adaptable enough to add support for workflows unique to their industry.
That solution was aACE.
When Bryan first took over the business, describing the monthly billing as a time-consuming task would have been a major understatement. During their off-season, the process of collecting and approving the previous month’s invoices could take up to seven days. In the busy summer season, that time more than doubled to 17 days – over half a month spent just catching up with the previous month’s billing. “We’d have hand-written tickets, and we’d have to go through each one, organize them alphabetically, and bill them manually,” Bryan explains. “It was really, really bad.”
The longer it took to bill customers, the longer it took to receive payment for services that Lew Wolfe Pools’ staff had performed. “It could be weeks before we got the previous month’s billing done,” he recalls. Bryan wanted to spend his time moving the business forward, but instead had to spend hours each month just keeping up with the paperwork.
aACE’s smart automation cut that time drastically. “Now when we do billing, it’s a push of a button,” Bryan says. “When we go to bill a client after work has been performed, the service record passes into aACE as a sales order, where it consolidates all of that information. And all of the pricing is set inside of aACE, including pricing for specific customers.” aACE references each line item, the quantities, and the customer’s pricing, then automatically generates an invoice that’s ready to be reviewed and delivered.
“We’re able to review the bills and get them out on a daily or weekly basis, depending on the specific policies in place for each account,” Bryan says. “In some cases, we’re getting payments the same day that a service was performed.” This enables them to stay on top of their cash flow and invest more time into growing the business.
When the business was run largely on paper, Bryan had little visibility into what – or how – his company was doing. There was no centralized repository for data; each ticket, work order, and invoice was an island unto itself. This made it difficult to grow the company or even to plan for the next year. After all, how can you improve your operations when you don’t know where you’re starting from?
aACE changed all of that. “By implementing aACE, we were able to eliminate all that paper-based information we were using in the past and put it into a live database,” explains Bryan. Digitizing that data gave him insight into the business that he didn’t have before. This enabled Lew Wolfe Pools to streamline their operations, allowing the company to grow even as the overall number of employees has shrunk.
“We originally had 12 employees when we acquired the company,” Bryan says, “And we were doing five times less revenue than we are today.” Since implementing aACE, they’ve had one employee leave – but their new processes are so efficient that they didn’t need to backfill the role. “It was a huge savings,” says Bryan, and it had a major impact. “Every year we’ve been able to basically double the business.”
When Bryan first took over the business, there wasn’t much in the way of inventory. “Traditionally, the pool maintenance industry hasn’t had to hold much stock,” Bryan says. “When I first bought the business, we were holding $2,000 worth of inventory going into the season.” Paper record-keeping, while still not ideal, may have been fine for that small amount. Then the pandemic came.
“With the demands that COVID-19 has brought, now we’re actually holding $200,000 worth of inventory,” he explains. “That’s a dramatic increase. And if you don’t have inventory right now, you don’t have sales for the following year. So managing inventory and the supply chain is becoming more and more important.”
aACE’s inventory engine makes it easy for Bryan’s employees to see exactly what they have in stock. As sales orders come in, the staff can see at a glance what they have on-hand to fulfill them – without digging through a stock room or calling around to distributors. “Now we can see how many of an item we have to sell versus how many are on a purchase order, and things of that nature,” Bryan says. He adds that his competitors don’t have the visibility into those details that aACE provides, giving Lew Wolfe Pools a strong competitive advantage.
Lew Wolfe Pools offers four services for their customers: installations of new pools, renovations of existing pools, weekly maintenance services, and repairs. These tasks used to be two-person jobs, but aACE enabled them to cut the workload in half. “We can do the same number of pools in one day with one technician that we used to do with two technicians,” Bryan says. This represents a 100% increase in the number of jobs they can do each day.
How did aACE help them accomplish such a huge increase in efficiency? With smart automation and increased visibility.
Previously, each step in a workflow was divided into multiple tickets, with two technicians dividing up the tasks for each job and manually writing down notes after each task was complete, documenting what was done by whom and when. With a custom-built field service app that integrates into aACE, however, Bryan eliminated all that manual work – and accelerated past his competitors.
“Most businesses in this space never get above 100-150 clients ever, because it’s too hard [to manage],” Bryan explains. “They don’t have the software.” He adds that typically these companies were handed down from parent to child, with processes that remain static despite technology evolving around them. “We use iPads and iPhones in the field all day long,” Bryan says in contrast. “Every one of our guys has a computer. Even our water-testing equipment is computer-based. And so aACE has been a huge supporting factor. I can’t imagine doing this without it, honestly.”
While his mom-and-pop competitors seem to be happy staying small, Bryan has a bigger vision for Lew Wolfe Pools: “One of my goals is to be the #1 service and installation company in the Philadelphia region. We’ve already grown our business by over 500% in 42 months, and our goal is to get to 2,000 customers.” To do that, Bryan has already acquired an additional pool company, Suburban Turn-Key Pool Services, with plans to add more. For now, he’s keeping both companies separate as he figures out what each does best and where improvements may be needed. Fortunately, aACE makes it easy to manage multiple companies separately within a single solution.
“Being able to look at, for example, Suburban’s clients vs. Lew Wolfe’s clients and things like that is huge,” says Bryan, adding that the feature will only get more important as they continue acquiring more businesses. “We’re going to want to be able to see all that data, and being able to go into one database to see it is by far the best option. I can’t tell you what a huge thing it is to have the ability to do that.”
Bryan and his team chose aACE because it was the only solution that offered the power they needed for their core transactions and the flexibility to integrate with tools designed for the particular needs of a pool service company. But when it came to finding those tools, Bryan had a problem: nothing he found on the market was capable of integrating with an ERP solution.
For any other business this could have spelled disaster, with duplicate data entry making costly errors more likely and wasted staff time a guarantee. But Bryan and the team at AS360 saw it as a golden opportunity. They developed a software package that addressed the pool industry’s unique workflows and integrated seamlessly with aACE.
“aACE is a great mid-market product,” Bryan says. “I believe it fits the needs of most companies out there. But aACE doesn’t have tools for managing, for example, bodies of water, which is fine because that’s not something aACE really needs. So we built that outside of aACE, and now we can sync data between aACE and our custom solution with the push of a button, which is awesome. It’s so much easier than trying to re-key data.”
So much easier, in fact, that AS360 plans to make their solution available to pool service companies across the country – paired with aACE for a complete, all-in-one business management system with additional features tailored to the needs of their target market. In addition to Lew Wolfe Pools, AS360 has already begun deploying their custom add-on to select clients, with extremely encouraging results. “We’ve had as many as 50 trucks a day running our software,” Bryan says. “I think that speaks dividends.”
Here’s what Bryan had to say about the results of his aACE implementation:
“There are so many companies out there that could benefit from aACE. It’s not just industry-specific, and that’s the beauty of it. Anybody that needs job costing – there’s a great job costing module in there. Anybody looking at Microsoft, anybody running multiple companies, any distribution companies… aACE could give these companies a chance to add value. Anybody who’s looking for more long-term support, it’s a great opportunity.
“aACE has got a great support team, one of the best out there. We’ve gone from less of a partner to more of a customer after reinventing ourselves, and any time we’ve needed something the team has always been there.
“And for us, aACE has more than paid for itself, over and over. Most people in my company hadn’t used it until we introduced it to them, but getting everyone up to speed was so much easier than with other products I’ve used in the past. I have so much control when it comes to who can access which areas of the system –some user groups have access to inventory, others can see sales orders only, and things of that nature. That’s going to be of huge value to us as we grow. And I’d really like to thank the aACE Software team for all the work they’ve put in, because aACE is a great product.”
Interested in learning more about what aACE can do for your SMB? Read our feature highlights to see how aACE can help you take your operations to the next level.
“We have so many moving pieces, just being able to coordinate it all together has really helped.” – Tushar Shah, Founder and President, Lifeline Medical Inc.
Lifeline Medical Inc. provides high-quality medical supplies to hospitals, clinics, and doctors, filling this need for over 25 years. They also operate Skin for Life, a separate division focused on their performance skin care line. Running two thriving product lines was demanding, but running them on a patchwork of solutions that didn’t communicate with each other was an even bigger challenge. That’s why Lifeline turned to aACE Complete in 2017 – and when the COVID-19 pandemic struck 3 years later, they were glad they did.
Before switching to aACE Complete, Lifeline relied on QuickBooks alongside an inventory management solution called Acctivate. The two solutions were intended to work together, but managing the data was still difficult.
“Using two different programs was cumbersome,” says Tushar Shah, Founder and President of Lifeline Medical Inc. “We had to waste time trying to figure out what the issues were every time they didn’t sync right. aACE has definitely saved time because everything’s in one system.”
As Tushar noted, aACE provides a seamless integration of sales, operations, and accounting. By putting everything into one system, Lifeline was able to reduce time spent on duplicate data entry, as well as the time lost in trying to troubleshoot communication breakdowns. Thanks to aACE’s unified approach, Tushar estimates that Lifeline has seen time savings of 10 to 15%.
Lifeline not only wanted to handle both of their divisions in one business management solution, they also wanted to ship products from both divisions from a single shipping solution. aACE+ ShipStation made this easy.
Since 95% of their orders go through their shipping solution, a seamless integration is a must-have – and they’re very happy they found one. “ShipStation’s been really good,” says Tushar. “We are probably shipping about 300 packages a week, and we’re able to manage both divisions together in a way that works really well.” And the integration with aACE means that the staff members taking in orders, those sending out product, and those managing inventory levels are all on the same page.
Lifeline deals with medical and skincare products, so it’s vital to be able to track inventory by lot numbers. aACE supports this critical need with comprehensive inventory management tools that offer the traceability required for such commodities.
With aACE, Lifeline can easily manage all the moving parts of their fulfillment process. aACE’s inventory engine is fully integrated with its order management, production, and shipping tools, so Lifeline’s staff members always have accurate insight into their products. And as business returns to normal, Tushar is looking forward to taking advantage of even more of aACE’s features in the near term, such as EDI and additional mobile apps.
As a medical supply company, Lifeline saw the spike in demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) when the pandemic hit and knew they had to pivot. Fortunately aACE was already in place to help them supply that life-saving equipment to the healthcare workers who needed it most.
“Initially we weren’t getting many online orders, but when the PPE thing went crazy, we were getting a hundred orders or more a day,” Tushar explains. They implemented the aACE+ WooCommerce integration, which enabled them to scale their operations to meet the growing demand.
Lifeline has three separate ecommerce stores – Lifeline Medical, Skin for Life, and the newly-launched Skin for Life Canada – and aACE+ WooCommerce ensures that all of their online orders flow seamlessly into a single aACE solution.
Periodically throughout the day, aACE checks WooCommerce for any new orders that have been placed through any of Lifeline’s online storefronts. New orders are pulled into aACE’s fulfilment engine, where they are processed and pushed to ShipStation. In the warehouse, a Lifeline employee logs into ShipStation, sees the order in his queue, and packages it to be sent out. This step is the only time a member of Lifeline’s staff needs to interact with the order – otherwise, the data travels from WooCommerce to aACE to ShipStation and back automatically. Once an order is shipped, aACE automatically updates the WooCommerce storefront with tracking information from ShipStation so customers always know when to expect their products.
“It was crazy,” Tushar says, recounting the early days of the pandemic when Lifeline realized they needed to ramp up their PPE production. “But it went well once we got the aACE+ WooCommerce integration up and running. It ended up being really good.”
Since 2017, Lifeline has leveraged aACE Complete’s comprehensive out-of-the-box feature set to increase their business’ productivity – including integrations with best-of-breed solutions. With aACE acting as their company’s central nervous system, Lifeline can rest assured that their business is as healthy as their products.
Interested in learning how aACE can help you scale your business? Contact us today to be matched with an aACE Partner.
“There’s nothing that we’ve come across that aACE hasn’t been able to handle.” –Lane Carter
Southwest Auto Accessories is a wholesale distributor of aftermarket automotive accessories. Co-founders Lane Carter and Clay Waterman had experienced aACE 4 at a previous company, so when they set out to start their own business they already knew they wanted to run it on aACE. They were able to get up and running quickly on aACE 5’s Complete Edition with the help of aACE partner All Solutions 360 (AS360). Soon they found that this version of aACE was even better than the last.
When they started Southwest Auto Accessories, Lane and Clay already knew that aACE would do everything their new company needed. Even better, aACE did it all at a price their new company could afford. “We weren’t able to buy a business management solution outright like a lot of other software companies require you to do,” Lane says. “aACE Complete’s subscription model fit our budget and helped us get going right away.” Having to buy a comparable solution just as they were starting out “would have hampered our growth,” Lane adds. “What we’re doing now works well.”
Lane and Clay did their due diligence by researching other solutions before committing to aACE, but found that when it came to managing backorders, aACE’s competitors just didn’t measure up. “A lot of people say that their system manages backorders well, but they don’t. We have a lot of vendors to this day who can’t manage backorders,” Lane says. “We’re able to manage our backorders extremely well on aACE 5.” aACE automates backorder management for a more streamlined experience, requiring fewer steps from users and providing greater visibility into backordered inventory.
Tracking costs and material usage can be a headache, but aACE made it easy for Lane and Clay to know exactly where they stood. “We cut vehicle-specific paint protection kits,” Lane explains. “Once we put the order in the system, we’re able to monitor our material usage and get an actual material usage and kit cost using the Fulfillment tab. It lets us keep a very accurate cost of what we’re doing and what we’re producing. We feel good about being able to rely on that information.” The Fulfillment tab in each order record allows users to track jobs and tasks associated with the order, so they can be sure that each order is fulfilled on time and on budget.
The version of aACE 4 that Lane and Clay had used at their previous company had been heavily customized to fit their workflows like a glove. But with aACE 5, they quickly realized that customizations were unnecessary — the software already did everything their new venture needed. “We had never used an out-of-the-box program like aACE,” Lane explains. “But the out-of-the-box solution that we’re on now has been absolutely exactly what we needed. It does everything that we need it to do and it does those things extremely well.” And because the software was perfect for them as-is, they could dive right in.
As a fast-growing company, Southwest Auto Accessories needed a shipping solution that could scale with them. They found that solution in the aACE+ ReadyCloud shipping integration. “When we first opened, we shipped maybe 20 packages that month, and now we’re probably shipping 20 packages a day,” Lane says, adding that ReadyCloud’s ReadyShipper has allowed them to speed up their shipping process as demand increases. “Once the orders are transmitted to ReadyShipper, processing a package to get it ready to ship takes seconds — it doesn’t take minutes, it takes seconds — to complete the transaction and have the package ready to ship.” He went on to say that the latest aACE+ ReadyCloud integration has improved on the version he’d used at his last employer. “We’re able to ship packages faster than we were on our previous aACE program. With aACE 5 integrated with ReadyShipper, we can ship 10 packages in 5 minutes now!”
Southwest Auto Accessories’ aACE solution was implemented by AS360, a long-standing aACE partner. With over 20 years of experience, AS360’s Bryan Anderson worked with Lane and Clay to ensure they were able to hit the ground running with their aACE solution at the same time their new business was taking off. Thanks to their prior knowledge of aACE, Bryan was able to have them operating their business from the solution in just 30 days — an incredible timeline for a software package this comprehensive. “Bryan and his team did the set-up for us and they did a great job getting it ready to go,” Lane says. “As far as getting our information into the system, getting customers loaded, getting product loaded — all of that was spot-on.”
But AS360 didn’t stop there. As Southwest Auto’s aACE partner, Bryan and his team have continued working with Lane and Clay to ensure that as their business grows, they have the infrastructure to keep up with demand. Though Clay had 30 years of experience in the automotive accessories industry, teaming up with Lane to start their own venture required him to take on a new role on the accounting and finance side of the company. It was a daunting prospect, but AS360 was there to help. “With some training from Bryan it became apparent that my fears of the accounting side of things were unwarranted,” Clay explains, adding that aACE’s accounting solution was easy to use even for someone new to finance. “While I still have a lot to learn on the accounting side, aACE 5 has made setting up and running our business so easy.” And his aACE partner has been there every step of the way. Bryan and his team act as Southwest Auto’s outsourced CFO, ensuring that their accounting is being done according to best practices now to prevent headaches later. And as Bryan trains Clay on those best practices, he’s able to use real-world examples in their aACE system so that Clay can see exactly what each workflow should look like.
Here is what Lane Carter, co-founder of Southwest Auto Accessories, has to say about their aACE implementation:
“We’re able to do exactly what we need to do every day with the out-of-the-box program. We haven’t found anything that’s limited us. We looked at a couple of other software companies at the beginning, and we just did not see anything that was going to work better for us than aACE was. We’re extremely happy with what we have.
“Knowing how aACE works and how it functions in the modules we were already familiar with allowed us to get into some other areas of aACE, because it was easy for us to understand. Especially the accounting side. At our previous company we had no experience with the accounting side of aACE, but Clay has been able to pick it up very quickly. Every part of aACE works pretty much the same way, so it was easy for us to learn how data flows through aACE, how to drill down to it, and how to find the information we need to get to where we want to go. Having a partner relationship is also an asset. Time is so valuable to us because there’s only two of us. Being able to turn to Bryan and his company for answers is a huge benefit.
“I would recommend aACE to anybody that does distribution or any kind of sales. I can see aACE working for anybody that’s selling products.”
And here is what Clay Waterman, co-founder of Southwest Auto Accessories, has to say about their experience with aACE partner AS360:
“Teaming up with Bryan Anderson and his team at AS360 has turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. Their knowledge, experience, and ability to support aACE is without question. And as my relationship with Bryan evolved, it became apparent that his past business experience and knowledge of finance and business management were an invaluable resource for a small business like ours. More importantly, he is willing to share those experiences to help others. Throughout the entire process Bryan has been steadfast in his resolve that we do things the right way – no short cuts. I truly value his opinion and experience; that’s why we utilize him and AS360 as an outsourced CFO. It’s great to have someone on the outside looking at the numbers and offering insight.
“Relationships are important to me. How we treat one another has long term effects on our personnel relationships and our businesses. My experience with Michael Bethuy and his staff at aACE as well as Bryan Anderson and his staff at AS360 have been top notch, first class all the way. They have been great people to do business with and I’m thankful to have them as business partners supporting Southwest Auto Accessories.”
Do you or someone you know need a change from one-size-fits-all ERP tools? Check out our feature highlights to learn more about whether aACE business management software for Mac and PC can help accelerate your company.
“Since moving to aACE+ VerticalResponse we have been able to keep our mailing lists much more up-to-date. Our email marketing campaign has grown exponentially since introducing this system, and we are seeing excellent results. The best part is that it is super simple for us to use, making it much more likely to be used time and time again.” -Doug Jacobs, co-Founder and President, Restylers’ Choice
Before their aACE implementation, Restylers’ Choice struggled to manage over 4,000 email addresses without enlisting the help of the owner of the company—a highly competent information analyst in his own right—to export every contact’s email address from their existing accounting program, AcctVantage. Now, Restylers’ Choice is not only able to compile precise lists of customers segmented by their purchasing history and product interest, they are also able to seamlessly upload those contacts and manage any number of email campaigns with Vertical Response.
Prior to aACE, the team at Restylers’ Choice did not have a way to easily manage, update, or organize their single list of email addresses. Instead, they had to enlist the help of owner Doug Jacobs to export contacts from their existing system, AcctVantage, and then manually remove duplicate or invalid email addresses before uploading the final mailing list. Lists generated with the aACE CRM tool integrate with Vertical Response for automated contact management.
Restylers’ Choice depended on newsletter templates built using Microsoft Word’s mail merge feature, a viable yet time-consuming alternative to dedicated email marketing services. Looking to leverage as many aACE features as possible, Restylers’ Choice turned to Vertical Response, in part because of the seamless integration with aACE but also because Vertical Response offers tools for creating professional-looking newsletters at the simple click of a button.
Under their old system, once an email newsletter was sent the Restylers’ Choice team had no way of tracking their audience’s response. aACE+ Vertical Response Integration tracks who opens an email, when they open it, what they click on, and how the email campaign translates to incoming revenue.
By directly integrating aACE’s customer relationship management software for Mac and PC with Vertical Response, Restylers’ Choice was able to bypass much of the time-consuming aspects of email marketing and focus instead on designing highly effective newsletters.
Vertical Response offers many beautifully-designed templates that allow companies to easily generate newsletters without the need of dedicated, on-staff graphic designers. Anybody can create and tweak newsletters from the simplest company announcement to complex product launches, leaving their customers with the distinct—and accurate—impression that every detail has been accounted for.
Getting the campaign out the door is only a portion of successful email marketing. One of Restylers’ Choice’s best-loved features of Vertical Response is the ability to track all of their campaigns, including open and click-through rates, to see who is responding to their efforts and what, precisely, they are responding to. Powerful reporting tools allow Restylers’ Choice to gauge not only the success of their email marketing campaigns but also the value of them.
In the first few months of using aACE+ Vertical Response, Restylers’ Choice sent out 10 email campaigns to over 4,000 contacts, for a grand total of 40,000 emails in a matter of months.
Here's what Doug Jacobs, co-founder and President of Restylers' Choice, and Lane Carter, Director of Sales and Marketing, have to say about their aACE+ Vertical Response integration:
"Before, we weren't able to present our new product highlights and alerts very well due to an inability to update and process existing client mailing lists, which were often outdated and filled with holes. Now we can export mailing lists seamlessly with our aACE platform every Monday.
"aACE is perfect for many different types of businesses. It handles inventory very well, projects, general accounting... Due to the nature of the system, and the idea to customize it for a specific business need, it is really a good fit for almost all business types."
Click here to download Vertical Response Case Study
Do you or someone you know need a change from one-size-fits-all ERP tools? Check out our videos to learn more about whether aACE business management software for Mac and PC can help accelerate your company.
“I had done my research about aACE and the references were consistent: aACE had the experience and knowhow to get this done. Once we committed to using aACE, they asked me to trust them. I did and they delivered, and the process was much smoother than I ever anticipated learning just how much this program can do for us.” -Wendy Donenfield, CPA; M & R Controller
When aACE met M & R in April of 2010, they were using an off-the-shelf solution and a handful of database, Excel, and Word workarounds to manage their operations. Each and every transaction required substantial work from users because of their complex conversion and compliance requirements. It was a slow and potentially error-prone process that needed to be improved. M & R management researched a handful of options, but no software vendor could accommodate their unique requirements without painful workarounds – until they found aACE.
Text and cover paper is procured in units of 100 pounds but priced and sold in metric tons, and customers place orders by sheets or cartons. For each transaction, users of M & R’s previous software solution had to manually calculate the conversions between each unit of measure. aACE automates these calculations to improve accuracy and alleviate the bottleneck caused by this process.
In order to maintain FSC certification, M & R is audited annually to ensure compliance with their standards. aACE reports can be customized to meet even the most particular business needs.
M & R used to rely on an off-the-shelf solution with a handful of workarounds that required a lot of manual work from each user. This made for a time-consuming process that was prone to human error. aACE can be customized for the needs of most business without the use of messy patchwork solutions.
M & R previously did a lot of accounting work in Excel at the end of each month to manually account for products in transit. aACE’s inventory tracking handles this automatically so M & R can avoid labor-intensive workarounds.
aACE eliminated the need for time-consuming calculations by automating the conversions between the various units of measure; what once took M & R users an hour now only takes five minutes. For instance, inventory is stored and valued in metric tons even though it is purchased in units of 100 pounds. Users can enter sheets or cartons as requested by the customer; the “quantity” value (metric tons) is then automatically calculated based on the Sheets Per Carton and M Weight ratios for the Fine Printing Paper product. Purchase orders are auto-generated from the sales orders, and the quantity used for procurement is based on the CWT quantity (metric tons converted to pounds divided by 100).
aACE’s Cost of Goods Sold solution was customized to account for ownership of products while they are in transit. For M & R this eliminates a substantial amount of month-end accounting work previously performed in Excel.
Updates were made to various records and processes to accommodate M & R’s international logistics and shipping requirements. Documents were customized to account for bilingual requirements given M & R’s substantial business in Central and South America.
All processes and documents in M & R’s aACE solution are FSC compliant. The solution contains an FSC compliance report, making the annual FSC audit substantially easier than in previous years.
Here's what M & R's Controller, Wendy Donenfield, CPA, has to say about the results of their aACE implementation:
"The new system has been a great success. The staff was able to learn how to use it quickly. I have more tools at my disposal for resolving open orders and finding wayward invoices. We all spend less time processing day-to-day transactions and month-end processes, and reports have been customized to our specifications.
aACE was the ONLY system in our price range that was able to automate the computations necessary for us to buy and sell one of our main product lines. Additionally, the program was customized further to accommodate all of our product lines that have different parameters. [I would recommend aACE to] any company that needs a seemingly-impossible-to-achieve customized accounting system that will take them from inputting a transaction to the general ledger."
Do you or someone you know need a change from one-size-fits-all ERP tools? Check out our videos to learn more about whether aACE business management software for Mac and PC can help accelerate your company.
“Previously we were functioning like a Jedi with a limp lightsaber, but now we’re like a fully-armed Obi-Wan Kenobi on steroids.” -Cory Elliot, Founder & President of Troy Filters, Ltd.
In 2009, Troy Filters began selling filters directly to consumers through Amazon.com. For the first two years they averaged 100 orders per week through Amazon, which increased to 300 orders per week in the third year. As the demand for his product rose, Troy Filters Founder and President Cory Elliott found that his previous software solutions couldn’t keep up with his growing business. That’s when he turned to aACE.
There was no simple way to integrate their main software, AccountEdge, with Amazon. Using a third party software they had created a spreadsheet “patch” in a format that could be later uploaded to AccountEdge, but this was a temporary solution that did not always yield accurate results. aACE seamlessly integrates with Amazon out-of-the-box without the need for messy “patchwork” solutions.
Their previous shipping software was great for shipping but it lacked all of the other functions that Troy Filters Founder and President Cory Elliot and his team needed, so they constantly had to re-enter data in AccountEdge. aACE allows Troy Filters to use one piece of software to handle all of their orders, inventory, and shipping, eliminating the need to manually enter data and allowing them to focus on expanding their business without worrying about whether their digital infrastructure would support their growth.
Troy Filters was originally set up on Windows, and ensuring the server didn’t crash was a task in and of itself. They switched to Apple products because they offered greater stability and ease for their 8-10 user peer to peer network; therefore they needed a solution that was compatible with Mac. aACE is a cross-platform ERP solution for Mac and PC.
AccountEdge could only support a maximum of 10 users. As Cory looked toward the future, he wanted a software solution that would facilitate the growth and expansion of his business. aACE is designed to support up to several hundred concurrent users, making it the perfect solution for small but growing businesses.
Amazon orders go right into aACE as they come in, eliminating the need for a second software solution to handle those orders separately. This means Cory and his team no longer need to manually import and export data between two different software solutions, eliminating a major source of errors. They currently handle an average of 600 Amazon orders per week, something they could not have done before aACE.
aACE automatically breaks down the orders and generates shipments, saving countless man-hours on what was once a tedious task. Cory also states that inventory replenishment, cost tracking, and CRM functionality have improved by “light-years” since implementing aACE.
Because aACE is so user-friendly, Cory no longer needs to make sure his new hires are software-savvy and can instead focus his hiring strategy on finding candidates that can set up, pack, and ship the many orders coming in through aACE.
Since implementing aACE, Troy Filters has saved a minimum of 40-80 man-hours per week while increasing the number of orders processed from 300 to 600 per week. aACE has also exposed other inefficiencies in Troy Filters’ operations, giving Cory the chance to optimize his business’ workflow.
Here's what Cory Elliot, Founder & President of Troy Filters, has to say about their aACE implementation:
"We wouldn't be able to do what we do without what aACE does for us. We used to spend hours entering each piece of data by hand – aACE automates ALL of it, freeing up our employees to handle our increasing volume of orders. We can do a lot more now thanks to aACE's near-limitless functionality. [I would recommend aACE to] any business owner facing the challenging task of integrating their Amazon orders into one solution that handles all of their needs. There isn't much limitation to what the software can do, and it flows beautifully."
Do you or someone you know need a change from one-size-fits-all ERP tools? Check out our videos to learn more about whether aACE business management software for Mac and PC can help accelerate your company.
I occasionally ask members of my team if they miss our old system or if they are happy we made the switch. The answer is always the same: ‘We should have done this a long time ago!’” -Doug Jacobs, President of Restylers’ Choice
aACE Software offered a unique opportunity to integrate state-of-the-art ERP software with Restylers’ Choice’s in-house solutions. By teaming up with aACE, Restylers’ Choice was able to eliminate two days worth of accounting work per month, free up 2,000 square feet of warehouse space, eliminate two conveyor belts, and reduce overall labor requirements by the equivalent of four full-time staffers, among other benefits, in just the first six months.
Restylers’ Choice has four lines of business: traditional warehouse distribution, custom digital printing production, a custom paint department, and graphics installation services. On any given order a customer may purchase products from all four lines of business, and the fulfillment logic may be subject to complex interdependencies. Restylers’ Choice needed a solution that would automatically distribute orders to the relevant work order solutions. aACE’s inventory management software for Mac and PC can be customized to do it all.
The Restylers’ Choice team needed a solution that would manage the interdependencies of complex orders and automatically generate invoices when orders were shipped. They may not be able to ship the off-the-shelf graphics kit until the custom painted spoiler is complete, for example. aACE features robust and flexible solutions for managing the pick, pack, and ship process.
Restylers’ Choice needed a solution that would seamlessly charge clients’ credit cards when an invoice was generated and notify the shipping department when a card was declined so that the package could be held until an alternative method of payment was supplied. aACE’s payment dialog supports payment at point-of-sale, including fully PCI-compliant credit card processing.
Taken together, aACE’s integration with Restylers’ Choice’s own in-house solutions have eliminated two days’ worth of accounting each month, freed up 2,000 feet of warehouse space, eliminated a conveyor belt in each warehouse, and reduced labor requirements by the equivalent of four full-time staffers.
aACE automatically distributes orders to the relevant work order systems. Inventoried items are distributed to a solution that manages the pick and pack process via hand-held devices, while made-to-order items are distributed to the solutions that manage custom digital printing production, painting, and graphics installation services.
aACE takes into account various complex interdependencies to ensure that every order flows smoothly. For example, orders with a delivery type of “Ship With MTO” will wait until the made-to-order items are complete before shipping the order.
aACE shipments are integrated with NRG software, which provides seamless integration with FedEx, UPS, and USPS. Once a package is marked as shipped in NRG (which corresponds to the package being placed in an area designated for the courier’s next pick-up), aACE generates the corresponding invoice with the necessary shipping charges.
Credit cards are preauthorized for the entire amount at the time the order is taken, and automatically charged as soon as the invoice is generated. In the event that a credit card charge fails, aACE sends a notification to the shipping department so that the package can be held until an alternative method of payment is supplied.
Here's what Doug Jacobs, President of Restylers' Choice, has to say about aACE:
"Looking back at our transition to aACE, I realize how smooth the process went. Having been on our past system for more than 10 years, you know there are going to be problems and pains in transition. I had trusted advisors warn me that it would require years to "get comfortable" with the new system. The reality is that we were up, running, and processing orders very easily the first day of business on aACE.
The biggest benefit I have personally noticed is our in-house ability to further integrate aACE with our own in-house systems and add new functionality as needed. The system is designed in a very intuitive and easy-to-understand way that allows us to push and pull data to and from aACE, providing the foundation for an even greater ROI throughout our organization as time goes on."
Download Restylers’ Choice’s Case Study.
