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Small firms are pushing the limits.
How CPAs can get their SoHos up to speed.
The wall magnets should have been a tip-off. Unwilling to use the inventory functions in QuickBooks because he thought their descriptive capacity (item name, code, and price) was too limited, Dan Hurwitz resorted to shifting magnets across a board with columns labeled "Need," "Ordered," and "Received."
"I would put 'Mitsubishi exhaust manifold' or whatever on a magnet, and move it through the stages," recalls Hurwitz, owner of Falls Church, Va.-based Mach V Motorsports, a specialist supplier of turbo car parts. When the parts came in, the hunt was on for all back orders needing the component. "You'd always miss one," which meant a dissatisfied customer-and a delayed sale.
That wasn't all. "Of course, my simple [purchasing] system had problems when things got more complicated, like if we got a partial order [from the vendor] or the order had to be returned," recalls Hurwitz. It's worth mentioning that, the company carries over 1,500 items in stock.
After four years, it was time for Hurwitz to think about upgrading his accounting system. Admittedly, he hesitated. Not only was he too busy, he was also reluctant to give up a package that he found "particu larly intuitive if you are not a CPA type. It has ment options like 'Enter a bill' and 'Make a new invoice.' Very simple."
But there were all those mounting problems: no provision for return merchandise authorizations; no provision for running the Mach V Web site directly off the QuickBooks database; and a shipment error rate that was exceeding 10 percent. "It was difficult to produce even a simple income statement or a statement of cash flows since QuickBooks at the time used the invoice as its only order record," even though orders can be cancelled or changed, notes Hurwitz.
What finally got him to switch was the package's five-user maximum. With annual sales volume at $2 million, Mach V now has eight employees to handle, on average, 40 orders a day. Employees were playing musical chairs, waiting for an available terminal to press ahead with an order.
As luck would have it, Hurwitz got a direct mailing from Icode, whose Everest Standard Edition encompasses accounting,...