Overview:
Abernathy & Timberlake Investment Group, LLC, based in Duluth, Georgia, is a large-scale commercial real estate developer. Specializing in shopping "power centers" that draw big retailers like Target, Old Navy, and Bed, Bath and Beyond, the company develops, owns and manages properties throughout the United States.

 
Peachtree by Sage Premium Accounting
Peachtree Direct Deposit

Abernathy & Timberlake Investment Group, LLC, based in Duluth, Georgia, is a large-scale commercial real estate developer. Specializing in shopping "power centers" that draw big retailers like Target, Old Navy, and Bed, Bath and Beyond, the company develops, owns and manages properties throughout the United States.

While most companies have their hands full managing one set of books, Abernathy & Timberlake Investment Group faces this challenge multiplied many times. With each of its holdings operating as a separate company, the firm's property manager/controller, Kelly Wallo, is responsible for managing the cash flow of 36 different companies and  31 independent checking accounts.

To simplify processes and take advantage of robust accounting features, Wallo uses Peachtree by Sage Premium Accounting with Peachtree Direct Deposit.

"Each piece of our real estate requires a different company, and there are separate books for all of them," Wallo says. "Peachtree has allowed me to keep up with these different entities simply and easily, as well as view the overall financials as a whole,  while delivering the features I need in the most cost-effective way. We're a small firm, and many features that were previously cost-prohibitive, such as direct deposit and  full-featured job costing, I'm now able to use with Peachtree."

Advanced Features for Small Companies
One of the key capabilities for Wallo is Peachtree Direct Deposit, which allows her to complete payroll twice a month, with payments deposited directly into the employees' checking accounts. For Abernathy & Timberlake Investment Group, more than one of its entities has payroll, and Peachtree enables Wallo to initiate the payments quickly and easily, replacing the company's previous timeconsuming paper-based check process.

"Direct deposit was previously not a viable option for a small company - based on pricing from the banks, you would not even consider it if you had less than 50 employees," says Wallo. "Peachtree has delivered this key service to small businesses and makesexecuting payroll a breeze. We also appreciate that we can now produce quarterly tax reports and annual tax reports internally. Doing W2s and 1099s is so easy, we don't have to pay an outside service."

Also important to Wallo is the powerful job costing in Peachtree, which delivers the information she needs to effectively manage her company's construction projects. Through Peachtree, Wallo is able to establish a budget and then manage each aspect of the job accordingly.

"The Peachtree job costing feature is far better than any of its competitors," says Wallo. "I'm able to track and manage the projects right within Peachtree, which is a huge timesaver."

Network Helps Share the Duties
Another valuable feature for Wallo is support for networked users with Peachtree. With a number of staff involved in the bookkeeping activities, the ability to use Peachtree over a network helps the company prevent redundancies in activities. Payables, checks and other items can be entered directly into Peachtree by support staff, freeing up Wallo to focus on the higher-level tasks of managing the company's finances.

"The network capability of Peachtree has been extremely helpful," says Wallo. "We found this added functionality to be quite inexpensive, and in return we have much more flexibility in how we handle our workload."

With so many companies to manage, the ability to manipulate and share data in a variety of ways is critical. Wallo uses the export to Microsoft® Excel® feature to transfer financial statements to a universal format, allowing her to share financial data by e-mail with the company's partners, banks and lenders.

"The ability to export to Excel has made my life a lot easier," explains Wallo. "I can manipulate the data in Excel, for example, adjusting formatting for a bank that wants to see things a certain way. It makes it easy to share our financial information whenever it's required - I can even e-mail the entire set of books to our CPA for tax returns. This feature makes it effortless to share the information, since everyone has Excel, and in a decentralized company like ours, this is  a must."

Having used Peachtree for nine years at the company, Wallo can attest to the consistent improvements to the product and its superiority over other software. Though she has considered other software packages over the years, none have offered the advanced feature set and insight she's come to rely on from Peachtree.

"I always try to upgrade to the latest version of Peachtree as soon as it's available, since there are always innovations to the features that I find useful," says Wallo. "I've been using the product so long I just couldn't put a dollar amount on the time I save - but I know it's quite significant. I have nothing but positive things to say about Peachtree and the benefits I've received as a result of using this product."