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Friend's Auto Electric, now Friend's Lawn & Hobby is an auto and small engine parts and repair company with five employees. They began using SBT Accounts Receivable in 1992 for their charge customers. In 1996, they decided to put all their bookkeeping functions on SBT and add Point of Sale.
Friend's Auto Electric relied upon GB Consulting to design, install and set up their computer system. Prior to the initial installation in 1992 with receivables, Friend's Auto Electric did not even use a computer. The original system is still in use today.
The installation was begun in the middle of March and everything was up and running by the end of March. Their inventory is approximately 100,000 parts and the major suppliers' pricing and parts lists were installed from the suppliers' disks, saving considerable time in hand entry. The periodic price changes are also supplied on disk.
Friend's is running Point of Sale, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Payroll and General Ledger.
The Point of Sale is by TransAct and links electronically to the SBT accounting modules. Friend's has two terminals on the parts counter and the server in the office. They use a cash receipts printer for the cash sales and a dot matrix printer for the standard size invoices for charge customers. The system allows the employees to access parts information quickly and easily on the computer and the employees are very happy with it.
Accounts Receivable tracks customers and receivable invoices, prints statements and controls inventory. At the push of a few buttons, statements are printed ( this takes about 10 minutes on the computer) and then are sent out in window envelopes. Before SBT, Friend's did approximately 100 statements per month by hand! All customer information is available on one screen from year to date sales to last payment and current balance due.
Accounts Payable tracks vendors, payables invoices, writes and tracks checks for payables and maintains the bank reconciliation. Having the checks printed by the computer saves a good deal of time. The checks fit into window envelopes so the step of addressing envelopes as well as writing the checks is skipped. Accounts Payable makes taking advantage of discounts very easy as it tracks the discount availability dates and automatically deducts the discount if applicable. All vendor information is readily available from year to date purchases to current amount owed for each vendor.
Payroll tracks employee and payroll tax history, calculates payroll, prints paychecks with a deductions stub and prints W-2s and 941s. Payroll takes about 10 minutes per week and this includes all reconciliations. At month, quarter and year ends, everything balances.
General Ledger receives data electronically from the various modules. The sales are broken down into a total of 29 various lines such as Briggs and Stratton, Kohler, etc. to allow management to track the different lines' performance. Monthly financial statements are printed from General Ledger.
The computerized system has dramatically reduced the time required to do Friend's bookkeeping. The average time spent each week is only six hours. It also provides timely financial information to management. The point of sale module has reduced the time required for counter people to process sales and check parts availability and pricing.
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