Catawba Valley Archives cuts AR processing by 80% with VCK
There’s got to be a better way
Catawba Valley Archives, located in Hickory, North Carolina had been utilizing Visual Corporate Keeper (VCK) to manage its records center for nearly five years. According to owner Aaron Blizzard, the application was initially setup with the intent of fully implementing all features and functions. Unfortunately, this is not what transpired, as it was becoming evident that the records center was realizing a fraction of VCK’s capabilities – mostly the creation of work orders and activity tracking of boxes and files. As a result, even though customer setups were seemingly complete and invoices were generated monthly, all accounting and reconciliation was created manually through QuickBooks. On the surface, this would not be noticeable to an untrained eye since there were scanned activity records, completed work orders and generated invoices. To the staff members responsible for managing the company’s accounting processes, they knew there had to be a better way.
A clean slate
Aaron called support one afternoon seeking information regarding VCK’s export to QuickBooks in the search for more efficient and accurate invoicing and accounting procedures. ASI’s Support Specialist Brian Chivers discussed setup parameters, cost and benefits. In less than an hour, it was clear to Aaron that implementing the VCK QuickBooks export function was a step that must be taken. The timing could not have been better. Now operating under a new company name and with a focus on technology, he was now in a position to create a new company file within QuickBooks. This was key, making the export utility even easier to work with since it will import all customers, accounts (GL codes) and items (service codes/media types).
Getting there
The process began with a review of certain criteria for tracking revenue within QuickBooks. After answering the ASI accounting questionnaire, the records center’s custom accounting export program was installed. The ASI Support Team also performed typical maintenance to ensure data compatibility. For example, QuickBooks only allows forty characters when entering a customer and VCK contained a handful with names above this limit, forcing the user to edit the names prior to launching the export. Additionally, Support walked the user through the entire process, making sure to backup the QuickBooks file and then began importing the invoicing from VCK.
As anyone who works with software has learned, there are sure to be a few hiccups to get to the finished result. Here’s where the hiccups started. QuickBooks was far from correct since the billing output from VCK was never really used in the past. Support went into high gear, going back and handling all concerns until completed. This included everything from tax rates, to service code rates, to cubic feet billing vs. standard unit billing, to separate invoiced departments to Level 1 invoicing, to minimum billing vs. no minimum billing – you name it, ASI covered it on every single account in the roster. Thank goodness for making backups!
From hours to minutes
After working together for multiple hours to revise customer setups, globally manipulate data and recollect the invoices, the export utility finally had a clean set of data to import into QuickBooks. The time spent “cleaning up” the records center system was often fun, sometimes confusing and always educational. In the end, Catawba Valley Archives now has a records center software application that is sophisticated, yet easy-to-use and is accurate. The best part is that the time spent by staff to process the invoicing and post receivables is now reduced by at least eighty percent. What took the better part of a day manually creating invoices now only takes about ten minutes!
Taking it to the next level
If you are already using an accounting package and your staff is manually posting and entering invoices from Visual Corporate Keeper, the cost of ASI’s export can easily pay for itself in a short amount of time. If you are considering purchasing an accounting software package. it’s the perfect time to get more info on how ASI software can help reduce labor costs and expedite receivables. Contact us today to discuss our accounting export utility. It may be just what you need to reach that next level of productivity and customer service.