Overview:

Serious home bakers are the best customers of cookietins.com. The Internet-based business sells cookie tins of all shapes, sizes, and colors, plus accessories like liners and padding. The company has a wholesale division selling to corporate customers including major food manufacturers. For the company's entire 18-year history it has relied on the Peachtree by Sage family of products.

 
Peachtree by Sage Quantum
Peachtree Payment Solutions

Serious home bakers are the best customers of cookietins.com. The Internet-based business sells cookie tins of all shapes, sizes, and colors, plus accessories like liners and padding. The company has a wholesale division selling to corporate customers including major food manufacturers. For the company's entire 18-year history it has relied on the Peachtree by Sage family of products.

Gerald Radack, president of cookietins.com, has used Peachtree by Sage in various positions for years and implemented it at cookietins.com when the company was started. When Peachtree by Sage Quantum was launched, the company upgraded to this most powerful edition of the product to take advantage of its performance and support for more users. "I'm an accountant, so I like Peachtree Quantum for its strong financial controls," says Radack. "And as a business owner, I like the broad flexibility and feature set that Peachtree Quantum offers."

Effectively Manage Inventory
One of the most critical tasks cookietins.com faces is effectively managing its inventory. The retail division is highly seasonal, and as Radack notes, "If we don't have an item in stock when they want to order it, we lose the sale."

Peachtree Quantum includes tools that cookietins.com uses to successfully balance its inventory levels, ensuring adequate supply without overstocking. The company uses several standard reports, along with a few Radack has customized using Crystal Reports for Peachtree, which comes with Peachtree Quantum, to provide the detailed information needed to make accurate purchasing decisions. "We look at what's already on purchase orders, what sales orders we have outstanding, how many are currently on hand, and how many of the item we sold last year to help us during the purchasing process," Radack explains. "It's so useful to have the history that Peachtree Quantum maintains for us; it allows us to identify seasonal trends and phase out products that aren't selling well."

Streamline Shipping
Barcode technology is used extensively in the operation at cookietins.com. The sales order number and customer number are encoded on the copy of the sales order that goes to the cookietins.com warehouse. The warehouse staff scans the barcode, transmitting the information to an integrated UPS manifesting system which pulls the shipping address and other information from Peachtree Quantum. As the package is shipped, the manifesting software sends the actual shipping cost and tracking number back to Peachtree Quantum. "Using barcodes not only saves us data entry time, it improves accuracy," says Radack. "It has virtually eliminated routine errors in our shipping cycle."

During the invoicing cycle, staff scans the barcode with the customer number and sales order number into the Peachtree Quantum invoicing screen to generate an invoice. "Many of our customers have similar names-and we have a lot of customers-so scanning the number is faster than trying to search for the right customer number and makes the process much more accurate," says Radack. Those invoices are then delivered electronically to the customer as an e-mail attachment.

Streamline Credit Card Processing
Because many of its customers pay with a credit card, cookietins.com utilizes Peachtree Payment Solutions, a credit card authorization service fully integrated with Peachtree Quantum. "With literally the touch of a button, we can authorize a sale," Radack explains. "The software validates the transaction and creates a deposit entry within Peachtree Quantum. No more late nights spent balancing credit card transactions."

Boost Efficiency
When suppliers raise prices, it usually means that cookietins.com also must raise its prices. With more than 1,500 products and eight price levels, updating the company's price list could be a time-consuming task, but Peachtree Quantum has helped streamline the process. "I export our item pricing to Excel where I can easily mark up the prices by an amount or percentage and then I import the data back into Peachtree Quantum," Radack says.

The Accounts Payable process is quick and easy too, Radack says. "I just click on the vendor invoices I want to pay and Peachtree Quantum puts them in the queue for the disbursement schedule that I define."

Deliver Exceptional Service
The company takes pride in the superior customer service it provides to its customers, and Peachtree Quantum supports the company's commitment. "Our customer service staff has all the information they need when they're taking an order. We know immediately if we're out of stock of an item and when we might be getting more in," Radack says. "That information leads to better service."

Make Better Business Decisions
As president, Radack appreciates the strong financial reporting capabilities of Peachtree Quantum. "I frequently monitor how we're doing against our budgets in various categories and how current activity compares to past history. Peachtree Quantum reports make it easy to get that information," he says.

"What I like most about Peachtree Quantum is that it has a user-friendly interface, yet behind the scenes it's a full-fledged accounting and distribution package," Radack concludes. "In other words, it would satisfy any accountant, yet it doesn't require an accounting degree to use it."

If you'd like to learn more about Peachtree by Sage Quantum or another Peachtree product, please visit www.peachtree.com or call 877-495-9904 to speak with a new product specialist today.