Greentree suits the smaller business well

This modest-sized company imports a range of electronic products, which it sells directly in its home state of Victoria, and distributes nationally. It has some 1600 items in its catalogue, and has to compete with online shopping as well as other, similar companies.

"I think what sets us apart from our competitors, is that we also provide a knowledge base for our clients if they have technical issues," says Alvin's administration manager, Lisa Rennie.

"Our mantra is 'quality of service and quality of product'."

Plug in, switch on

Now in its 25th year of operation, Alvin Electronics has six full-time employees and one part-time, and uses Greentree for financial management and distribution. Alvin was a user of Greentree's forerunner, CBA, and made the switch to Greentree with little fuss.

"It was a no-brainer for us to move to Greentree," Rennie said. "Nobody else could offer us anything close to what it had."

Alvin's requirements are not complex; Greentree synchronises with an Excel spreadsheet to provide the monthly profit/loss and balance sheet report, and warehouse staff can turn an order into an invoice themselves, as well as processing packing slips and doing stock inquiries. Greentree has also helped to reduce errors in orders.

"The beauty of Greentree is that you can backtrack easily to correct an error before an order or an invoice is despatched," Rennie said.

Streamlined process

For Rennie herself, Greentree has made the regular accounting process trouble-free and less time-consuming.

"The word 'streamlined' keeps coming to mind," she said.

"The old end-of-month regime doesn't exist anymore – you just click a box and it's done. Previously I could never take annual leave over the end of a month. I don't even have to think about that now. I love the ability to automate a lot of the processes, such as statements. If I'm not going to be there that week or whatever, I can just schedule it through the task queue."

"We've been able to rationalise the activity of our staff because the ease with which a lot of the processes can be done in Greentree. Our regular staff can multi-task, which means we no longer have to employ temporary staff for particular jobs."

As we mentioned before, being an existing CBA customer made Alvin's transition to Greentree relatively simple.

"When we decided that everything should go live, it happened without any issues at all," Rennie said.

Alvin's future plans include an online store handling direct-to-consumer orders for a small range of goods. If those plans firm up, Greentree's eBusiness suite will be available for quick implementation.

Rennie concludes: "We had a vision of what we needed this software to do."

"We saw that we needed to move with the times and future-proof ourselves, and I'd say the money was well invested.

"Because we're only using a small percentage of Greentree's overall capability at present, I have no doubt that for anything we want to do in the future, the technology that we need is probably already available, and we'll be able to use it."