Baja Tile

An Activant Professional Services Success Story

Features

Activant Application Consultant Helps Distributor Balance Inventory and Save $40,000

For years, Don Rapp fought a battle common to those in the distribution industry. "We didn't know how to allocate costs to balance inventory," says the vice president of Baja Tile, a California-based, $7 million distributor.

As a result, payable discrepancies from a two-year period amounted to almost $100,000. "Because we didn't know what else to do with it, we threw extra money from all of the discrepancies into a miscellaneous account that just kept building up."

Challenge:

Help an Ontario, CA-based tile distributor balance inventory

Solution:

Activant Professional Services: Application Consulting

Benefits:

$40,000 tax savings
Better understanding of solution's accounting module

Rapp knew he had to balance his inventory and pinpoint the accounting issues - or face heavy taxes on fictional profits. He called in an Activant application consultant to help.

Application consultants, experts in the distribution industry and Activant solutions, offer time-and money-saving advice about everything from streamlining basic business processes to maximizing ROI from technology investments. "We knew we had to get some help, and we figured that an Activant consultant would know our business better than anyone else," Rapp relates. "We were right."

Money Back into Our Pockets

The application consultant first taught Baja Tile's accountant how to integrate his processes into the company's Activant solution. "Our accountant was exporting financial information into his own computer and generating reports that way. It proved to be a huge problem," Rapp says.

After working with the accountant, the consultant taught Baja Tile staff how to allocate variable costs like duties, ocean and inland freight charges, and broker fees into an item's cost. It added up quickly: Settling two years' worth of discrepancies amounted to just under $100,000 - a sum almost equal to the money in the extra account.

Rapp estimates that working with the Activant application consultant helped him save about $40,000 in taxes in one year alone. "We're not paying taxes on income we never earned," Rapp says. "I don't even want to think about how much we paid that we really shouldn't have."

Rapp would recommend an engagement with an Activant consultant to anyone looking for a little help with business: "It certainly can only help," he says. "Getting that inventory balanced and our books up to date really, truly put money back into our pockets."

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