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Distributor Streamlines Sales and Warehouse to Increase Profitability
Customer
Tech Trading / DPI
www.dpint.com
Corporate Profile
Headquarters
Wyckoff, New Jersey
Type of Business
Wholesale distributor of copier and printer supplies
Number of Locations: 1
Number of Employees: 45
Users on System: 28
AccountMate Modules in Operation
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Customer Inventory
General Ledger
Inventory Control
Pricing Control
Purchase Order
Return Merchandise
Authorization (RMA)
Sales Order
"AccountMate will be crucial for our organization as we strive to be the industry premier low cost, specialty distributor of name brand copier and fax supplies."
- Brian Tedesco,
President,
Tech Trading
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Tech Trading is a wholesale distributor in the highly competitive copier and printer
supplies industry. In order to grow and stay profitable, Tech Trading needed a
scalable and customizable business system that would provide information to
operate efficiently, handle high volumes and generate profits on very tight
margins.
The Challenge
Tech Trading was operating with outdated proprietary software for sales order,
purchase order, inventory control and accounts receivable. EDI, General Ledger
and Accounts Payable were not integrated. Warehouse operations for receiving,
storing and shipping 3000 products were manual processes. Tech Trading
management knew that further investment was needed to stay competitive and
grow the business.
Customer retention in this industry is based primarily on competitive prices and
reliable order fulfillment. The software systems, manual warehousing, nonintegrated
shipping and EDI systems needed to be replaced.
The Solution
Steve Rosenstein and Bill Papanestor of Figtree Consulting, Inc. worked closely
with Tech Trading management and staff to build a system that streamlined Tech
Trading sales and warehouse procedures to increase profitability.
Figtree started with the AccountMate accounting system. AccountMate could be
modified and enhanced to exactly fit Tech Trading's requirements as well as
provide an order entry system that allows for quick data entry and was easy to
learn.
The enhancements provide the immediate, interactive information needed to
make profitable sales decisions.
Tech Trading required a sales order solution capable of automatically allocating
available inventory to sales orders on a first come, first serve basis with the
ability to override allocations. Automatic commitment of inventory to orders and
printing of pick lists, consolidation orders, automatic credit hold, multi-level
pricing, and enforcement of minimum prices and minimum margins were
essential to staying profitable.
The old system required entering purchase order receipts four to six hours after
receiving goods. This was not acceptable, nor competitive. Real-time updates
to the inventory system for warehouse receipts, bin transfers and picking was
implemented in order for the sales reps to book orders as well as to commit the
product to open sales orders.
Tech Trading has thousands of items in inventory. AccountMate's sophisticated
inventory control gave Tech Trading many of the features that they need to help
them manage their business. Figtree integrated ACCU-DART software to simplify
and provide real-time shipping and receiving from the warehouse with the
accounting system. Container and pallet content information is captured using
the handheld terminals and is available to the Starship software system for UPS
shipments and to AccountMate to generate Packing Slips.
Ninety percent of shipments are sent through UPS. Customer invoices for freight charges and tracking
numbers are updated by the Starship system which reads directly from the sales orders and produces
the end of day manifest reports.
The RedTail Solutions EDI interface was enhanced to include Tech Trading specific business rules for
importing trading partner purchase orders into the Sales Order module. The time consuming and
cumbersome batch files used to run exports and imports were replaced by this fully integrated EDI
solution. Importing EDI purchase orders, maintaining cross reference tables and handling exception
reports is now a simple clerical function.
Figtree's AccountMate Add-On, Sales Analysis Reporting, helps manage sales by providing an accurate
picture of sales by sales rep, product line and customer. It provides comparison's of dollars, units and
margin.
The Results
The AccountMate solution, together with best-of-breed vertical applications, provided a better information
system which allows Tech Trading to operate more efficiently, handling more volume at higher profits.
About the Customer
Tech Trading began as a wholesaler of printer supplies to large resellers; and recently added a division
to sell to smaller dealers and VARs. While these businesses sell the same products, they are very
different in many respects. Wholesaling to large suppliers is a very high volume, low margin business
with special requirements such as consolidated shipments. Selling to smaller resellers, by comparison,
has a higher margin but requires the ability to drop ship and requires a great many more small sales to
be worthwhile.
About Figtree Consulting, Inc.
Figtree believes that an accounting system should increase profitability, add management control, and
streamline business processes. Each client is unique and requires a system appropriate to its needs.
Developing a business system is a joint effort between the members of Figtree's professional staff and
their clients.
www.figtree.com
About AccountMate
Since 1984, AccountMate Software Corporation has provided customers with powerful and flexible
accounting and business management software. AccountMate provides the most stable and
technologically innovative modifiable accounting solutions for the mid-market. The accounting systems
are sold by the module which enables customers to acquire the software they initially need and add
modules as their business needs increase. The availability of source code makes this software highly
modifiable so that it can be adapted to any changing business environment. AccountMate accounting
modules are available for Microsoft SQL, Microsoft MSDE and LAN.
AccountMate's software can help manage global operations with multi-currency capabilities and a builtin
translation engine for multi-lingual businesses. A wide variety of independently developed programs
are also available to further tailor AccountMate software to specific industries. AccountMate products
are sold worldwide through our authorized resellers.
For additional information please contact AccountMate Software Corporation at:
www.accountmate.com
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