Boston National

When a business starts to outgrow aging accounting software, it can be tough to decide when to pull the trigger on an upgrade. Aside from the substantial monetary investment, an upgrade can be quite time consuming, from the software selection process to implementation to training. And when a business is growing, employees don’t tend to have a lot of time on their hands. But growth is the goal, and growth is stunted by inefficient, outdated software, so at some point, the trigger must be pulled.

Boston National had been using QuickBooks as their accounting software, and had reached the point where they had outgrown the system. Boston National had six subsidiaries doing their accounting on six databases that were not integrated. Managing the finances of all six at once with QuickBooks became tedious work as they had to export the data into Excel from all six databases for consolidated financial analysis. In addition to QuickBooks, they also use two other software systems for title and escrow production, RamQuest and AtClose, neither of which, of course, was integrated with their financial management software.

Boston National controller Ben Allison was brought in to implement Microsoft Dynamics GP on the company’s side, as he had used GP for three years and was very familiar with the software. “QuickBooks is not good for businesses to use; it’s more for an at-home user.” He was concerned about the lack of controls in QuickBooks. A person “can go in and delete checks,” he says, and the software does not keep track of such changes. It “could be manipulated to create any numbers.”

With his previous experience working with Dynamics GP, Ben Allison knew what exactly he could control. There are more security roles and history of what users are doing in the system. “Microsoft Dynamics GP gives you the proper accounting controls that you want from your software package” says Allison.

Boston National’s six accounting databases have been integrated with Dynamics GP enabling one-click consolidated financials. According to Ben Allison, the accounting team is now “delivering much better data for the management team. Boston National took two to three weeks to close the books with the old system. After being on [Microsoft Dynamics GP] for three months, we closed in six days this past month.” He says that “Management Reporter gives us the power to produce financial statements very quickly.”

Software integration appeared to be one of the main issues Boston National was dealing with. After the software integrations, including software systems RamQuest and AtClose, there was a noticeable productivity increase. Allison points out, “We have added integrations from our operating system that have freed up weeks of time for our operations team.” Tasks that had been slow and manual in nature are “now completed through quick automation.”

Boston National’s subsidiaries are located in New York, Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and California, but the company’s accounting is now centralized in the North Carolina office. By using SafePay within Dynamics GP and the integrations with their other software, Boston National is able to have better visibility and control over fraudulent payments for vouchers. The information now goes straight into Microsoft GP instead of being exported with Excel only to be imported again into another system. This saved Boston National time and money and gave them more control over all payments. As many can attest, visibility over your finances at any given moment is imperative. Now they not only are able to avoid fraudulent payments, but are able to secure payables easily within one system.