Garden Center Automates Business Processes with Integrated ...



Overview

Country or Region: United States

Industry: Retail

Customer Profile

Texoma Home and Garden is a family-owned garden center in Vernon, Texas that also provides landscaping. It employs approximately 8 to 10 people in the busy season and has one server, four workstations, and three mobile computers.

Business Situation

Owner Chris Schatte wasted time with manual invoice creation and wanted to make better use of his landscaping contract data, stored in Microsoft® Office Outlook® 2003, to improve visibility into the business.

Solution

Schatte migrated from QuickBooks Pro 2000 to Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006, which integrates with his current Microsoft Office programs.

Benefits

■ Automated invoice creation

■ More accurate inventory management

■ Improved understanding of the business

■ Increased accuracy of the books

■ Better customer management/service

■ Improved bottom line

| | |“Poor integration with Office was a drawback with QuickBooks. Small Business Accounting 2006 integrates with Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager so I can track billable hours. Perfect!”

Chris Schatte, Owner, Texoma Home and Garden

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| | | |Texoma Home and Garden is a family-owned garden center in Vernon, Texas. The company’s accounting |

| | | |solution, QuickBooks Pro 2000, forced owners Chris and Joni Schatte to manually manipulate data for |

| | | |landscaping invoices and purchase orders. It was also difficult to track and forecast inventory. |

| | | |Schatte wanted a better understanding of the business and looked for an integrated, easy-to-use |

| | | |solution for bookkeeping and managing landscaping contracts. Schatte implemented Microsoft® Office |

| | | |Small Business Accounting 2006 for accounting and Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 with Business |

| | | |Contact Manager Update for managing customers and vendors. Now his books are more accurate, |

| | | |contributing to increased profits. He has automated invoice creation, improved inventory management, |

| | | |increased visibility into the business, and improved customer management—and he’s going home on |

| | | |average, two hours earlier every day. |

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| | | |[pic] |

| | | | |

Situation

When Chris Schatte decided to return to his hometown and open his own garden center in Vernon, Texas, he drew upon his many years of experience working for a large retail nursery. He knew that to compete with large chain stores, he had to grow most of what he sells, provide personal customer service, and keep a diligent watch over the company finances. With a wholesale operation and a 12,000-square-foot retail store, Texoma Home and Garden serves approximately 25,000 people in northern Texas and southern Oklahoma. The company also runs a successful landscaping business.

Schatte is a technically savvy business owner who has high standards for the software he uses to run his nursery. “I deployed Microsoft® Windows® Small Business Server 2003 because it was a perfect fit for the functionality and ease of use I required,” he says. “Small Business Server 2003 gives me the flexibility I need to stay in touch with the business from home.”

However, his accounting program did not deliver the same satisfaction. Schatte had been using QuickBooks Pro 2000 for several years, and he was frustrated with the manual process required to create invoices for his landscaping customers because QuickBooks offers limited integration with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, the desktop productivity suite he and his staff use on a daily basis. “I track billable hours for my landscaping crews and do all my scheduling for these contracts in Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003,” he says. “I would have to cut and paste that data when it came time to creating invoices.”

Schatte also had to manually write purchase orders for items the store ran out of during the week. “With QuickBooks, I kept my entire inventory in Microsoft Office Excel® 2003, so it was awkward to keep transferring the data back and forth between programs,” he says. “I didn’t have as good a handle on inventory as I wanted.”

Because Texoma Home and Garden grows nearly all its plant stock for the retail market, accurately tracking product from the time it’s ordered, received, potted up in retail containers, and finally sold in the store or used in landscaping jobs is important. “QuickBooks did not offer an integrated way of tracking a product right through its life cycle, and I always had a hard time getting an overall view of the business,” says Schatte. “I needed to improve my understanding of product and landscaping trends and seasonal variations in consumer behavior in order to perform accurate sales forecasting and boost customer service.”

Schatte was on the verge of upgrading to the next version of QuickBooks, when he got an offer in the mail to participate in a beta program for a new product from Microsoft. After reading about and using Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006, he saw an opportunity to improve the fiscal management of his business.

Solution

Schatte installed Small Business Accounting 2006 on a workstation at the retail outlet. With Small Business Server 2003, Schatte can access the workstation from home, so he can catch up on work during the busy season. Schatte ran Small Business Accounting 2006 in parallel with QuickBooks Pro 2000 for several weeks. This took a little extra work but helped Schatte familiarize himself with the product from the ground up. “Small Business Accounting 2006 was simple to deploy and easy to learn,” he recalls. “I got valuable input from the online newsgroups and received several good ideas from other people about using the software. And when the time came, the Startup Wizard made it easy to import data from QuickBooks Pro 2000.”

Small Business Accounting 2006 provides comprehensive financial management for companies with less than 25 employees. Small business owners can easily prepare quotes, sales orders, and invoices; manage purchase orders and inventory; pay bills; track employee time; and monitor cash flow with a familiar user interface that has the look and functionality of programs in Microsoft Office 2003 Editions. Schatte was interested in the way Small Business Accounting 2006 shares information with other Microsoft Office programs, such as Microsoft Office Word 2003, Excel 2003 spreadsheet software, and the Outlook 2003 messaging and collaboration client.

Schatte is using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update. This program gives him a complete view of landscaping crews’ schedules, and of plant inventory and other details pertaining to each landscaping contract including a full view of his business contacts and communications, including e-mail messages, notes, appointments, opportunities, and documents. Now with Small Business Accounting 2006 integration he can see financial information on his customers as well. Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update shares information with Small Business Accounting 2006 in real time, making data reentry unnecessary. For example, he can easily convert opportunities to purchase orders or invoices with a click of a button.

Schatte saw opportunities for time savings by sharing financial data with the Office productivity programs he and his employees use every day. “Poor integration with Office was a drawback with QuickBooks,” says Schatte. “Small Business Accounting 2006 integrates with Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager, where I keep my crews’ billable hours. Perfect!”

Benefits

Using Small Business Accounting 2006 in conjunction with Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update, Schatte is benefiting from easy-to-use financial and customer management software that provides both comprehensive functionality and the ability to drill down to the granular level required by professional accountants. Since migrating from QuickBooks, Schatte is working more efficiently, improving his understanding of the business, increasing the accuracy of his books, and improving the company’s bottom line.

Saving Time Through Integration with Office Programs

Using Small Business Accounting 2006, Schatte is saving time managing an important part of Texoma Home and Garden’s business—his landscaping contracts. Unlike the retail portion of his company, which is more seasonal, landscaping and maintenance work provides a steady source of revenue all year. The benefits of automating common accounting processes associated with this part of the business tend to make a greater impact because of the repetitive nature of the tasks. “The integration between Small Business Accounting 2006 and Outlook 2003 is the number one benefit for me,” says Schatte. “Repeatedly generating invoices by hand is not a good use of my time. Now Small Business Accounting 2006 creates the invoices automatically.”

Using Small Business Accounting 2006, Schatte saves time throughout the entire life cycle of a contract, from creating a quote for a landscaping job—including plant inventory, other products, and pricing—to tracking expenses, and generating the invoice with billable time uploaded from the crews’ schedules stored in Outlook 2003.

And because Small Business Accounting 2006 uses Word 2003 templates, it’s easy for Schatte to add the company logo or customize any business documentation generated in Small Business Accounting 2006 from his existing business letterhead. Now there’s no more cutting and pasting inventory data from Excel into a separate program. Instead, Schatte has loaded his entire inventory into Small Business Accounting 2006, and he can easily export data into Excel 2003 to perform more in-depth analysis.

“I’ve also improved our purchase order process,” he says “Instead of writing out purchase orders for items we run out of during the week, I just open up a PO in Small Business Accounting 2006 and add to it as the week progresses. When I receive the items, I can assign the items to a landscaping job, where the expense is tracked all the way through to the customer invoice. I don’t have to do any data entry.”

Automating manual bookkeeping tasks and streamlining workflow saves time and allows Schatte to focus his work in other areas of the business. “Instead of staying at the store until 8:00 or 9:00 at night, I can leave at 6:00,” he says. “Compared to the amount of time I spent on QuickBooks, I’m working much more productively.”

Understanding the Business Better

Small Business Accounting 2006 is helping Schatte make better business decisions through summary information available at a glance, customizable reports with varying levels of detail, and improved tracking and sales forecasting. Using the Company Home Page feature, Schatte gets a high-level, daily snapshot of his company’s fiscal health: cash flow, reminders, bank accounts, vendors, and customers. “I find the Company Home Page extremely useful,” he says. “I have customized it to highlight all the reminders I need to keep on top of things, including deposits, quotes, back orders, reorders, and vendors to pay.”

Customer records kept in Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update are now integrated with financial history to give Schatte a better understanding of his landscaping and maintenance account customers. “It’s really nice to have your financial history in your contacts,” he says. “I can easily spot customers who regularly pay at 45 days instead of 30. I can see over time what products they like and can tailor my marketing to targeted customers. If somebody has a lot of landscaping done, I can come back and ask about new plantings next year, or try and up sell a maintenance contract.”

With QuickBooks, there was no easy way to forecast sales; however, with Small Business Accounting 2006, Schatte is looking forward to using the Sales Forecasting Tool for his ordering this fall. He is also planning on exporting data from Small Business Accounting 2006 into Excel 2003 to analyze financial information, create “what-if” scenarios, and improve his understanding of the business.

Improving the Bottom Line

With better inventory management at his fingertips, Schatte is saving money on overstocked items and avoiding the hassle of returning unsold product to vendors. “With Small Business Accounting 2006, it’s a lot easier to manage inventories and ensure that product gets where it’s supposed to go: landscaping jobs, maintenance contracts, or retail sale. During the spring months, we order on average 150,000 plants to pot up to retail-size containers. Compared to last year, Small Business Accounting helped us track our inventory more accurately, and it was easier to order the right amount of soil, pots, and growing supplies we needed.”

With newly automated accounting processes, Schatte is also saving money on paper. However, with Small Business Accounting 2006, Schatte believes it’s the ability to keep more accurate books that will provide lasting improvements to the bottom line. With better visibility into the finances and a more granular understanding of the landscaping business, Texoma Home and Garden is already increasing its profitability. “I already know that our profit is up this year, and I believe that’s from being more accurate with my books,” says Schatte. “What more could I ask for?”

Microsoft Office System

The Microsoft Office System is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office System, go to:

office

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| |Software and Services

■ Microsoft Office System

− Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003

− Microsoft Office Excel 2003

− Microsoft Office Outlook 2003

− Microsoft Office Outlook with Business Contact Manager Update

|Microsoft Office Word 2003

− Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006

■ Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003

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© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Microsoft, Excel, the Office logo, Outlook, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published July 2005 | | |

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For more information about Texoma Home and Garden products and services, call 1-866-540-1019 or visit the Web site at:

“I already know that our profit is up this year, and I believe that’s from being more accurate with my books. What more could I ask for?”

Chris Schatte, Owner, Texoma Home and Garden

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