In business since 1997, Gold Coast Flooring provides specialty hardwood flooring, laminate, floating floors and exotic specialty items to tradesmen, contractors and customers. With headquarters in New York, the company supplies a vast assortment of hardwood flooring tools and accessories that produce the flooring creations their customers’ desire.

Providing personal, one-on-one customer service with a knowledgeable team of experienced flooring specialists is the foundation of their success. Reporting eight figure annual revenues with only 14 employees, the company knows how to build a solid, profitable business from the ground up.

The Challenge

Since Gold Coast Flooring’s inception, its continual growth plus complexity in their transaction processing of regular and custom orders provided several business challenges which significantly impacted their internal operations.

Processing flooring requirements and delivery dates was challenging for most customer orders. Flooring materials are ordered by customers in square feet but orders are delivered in full cartons or wrapped bundles which required time-consuming hand calculations to determine the final order quantity in square feet. Another problem was managing order delivery dates. Delivery dates could not be changed systematically and adjusted to customer requirements. This resulted in costly delivery inaccuracies.

Handling custom orders added further complication for the company. Costs for non-stock inventory items were entered at zero dollars which inaccurately skewed inventory valuations and inflated year-end profits. Also, custom orders required up-front deposits but did not result in the generation of the internal paper-trail needed to place, track and follow-up appropriately.

As a result, employees spent valuable time and human resources each month managing orders. Mike Mahoski, Co-Owner of Gold Coast Flooring explains, “We didn’t spend enough time focused on growing our business because we spent so much time solving day-to-day problems.” With a perpetual bottleneck in processing customer orders, Gold Coast Flooring required a smart business solution for managing its growing infrastructure.

The Solution

After conducting a thorough needs assessment, AccountMate Business Partner, Digital Strategies, recommended upgrading the company to the latest version of AccountMate SQL accounting system. “Gold Coast Flooring had numerous industry-specific operating challenges and they needed specific solutions that fit their business requirements and growth objectives,” said Paul Joinnides, President of Digital Strategies. By upgrading and customizing their AccountMate system, Gold Coast Flooring could leverage their original investment with this modifiable solution that provided superior scalability for their growing business.

Digital Strategies implemented the company’s new solution and trained its staff thoroughly to maximize the system’s benefits. The resolution for inaccurate inventory valuations and inflated year-end profits was to eliminate the need for employees to enter costs for all non-stock inventory items.

The next step in the company’s technology make-over included an overhaul in the placement, tracking and management of custom orders requiring prepaid deposits. To handle these transactions, Digital Strategies built a highly customized system within AccountMate to insure deposit money collected would be applied appropriately as a “pre-payment” instead of “open credit”. As a result, the necessary internal paperwork required to place, track and follow-up on custom orders was automatically generated. This change has enabled Gold Coast Flooring to effectively manage custom orders with minimum effort.

Another company hurdle involved calculating the conversion ratios for flooring materials. Employees had used manual calculations to convert customer flooring requirements from feet to cartons (prefinished materials) or wrapped bundles (unfinished materials). Flooring requirements had to be adjusted to include waste and prevent partial carton or wrapped bundles from being ordered. This process was complicated, time consuming and error prone. To solve this business complexity, Digital Strategies customized AccountMate logic to convert square footage into full cartons or bundles and place the revised quantity in square footage in the Sales Order. Similar logic was added to insure that partial cartons or wrapped bundles did not ship. Automating the conversion process now saves the company resources by eliminating manual calculations while increasing order accuracies and improving accurate inventory levels.

The final step for them involved revamping delivery date options. Contractors accept flooring deliveries on specific dates, and orders delivered early were returned to the warehouse and re-delivered on a revised delivery date. With increasing fuel and vehicle maintenance costs, this process was financially inefficient. To solve this challenge, Digital Strategies created a customized solution for Gold Coast Flooring to manage pre-determined delivery dates. Employees now enter a specific delivery date which appears on all reports: invoices, sales orders, pick lists and packing lists. Delivery dates can be systematically updated as needed and multiple delivery dates can appear on customer orders. This enhanced delivery date process builds in system flexibility that dramatically increases accuracy of costs, resources and deliveries.

The Results

After working with Digital Strategies to implement these customized solutions, Gold Coast Flooring’s accounting, order processing and delivery scheduling have significantly stabilized.

The systemizing and streamlining of the transaction process with AccountMate’s software now allows the company to spend less time solving internal business problems and more time growing their business. “We have control of orders and delivery dates,” says Mahoski. “Now I see the beauty of this system—we can do anything we want”.

About the Client

Located in New York, Gold Coast Flooring is a large wood flooring supplier to flooring tradesmen, contractors and customers. Founded in 1997, Gold Coast Flooring is a member of the National Wood Flooring Association. Gold Coast Flooring can be reached at (516) 932-0434.
www.goldcoastflooring.com

About Digital Strategies, Inc.

Since 1987, Digital Strategies has provided high quality, customized business applications to large and small businesses. With an experienced team, AccountMate Business Partner, Digital Strategies provides custom, seamless business solutions that increase productivity and profit for their clients. Digital Strategies can be reached at (908) 273-8983.
www.digitalstrategies.com

About AccountMate

Founded in 1984, AccountMate develops and markets fully modifiable business accounting software. Systems range from single user versions to those that support hundreds of users simultaneously. AccountMate software is distributed exclusively through a worldwide channel of authorized solution providers. AccountMate can be reached at (800) 877-8896 or at www.accountmate.com