Knight’s Companies, originally founded in 1969 as Knight’s Septic Tank, has grown over the years to now include: Knight’s Redi-Mix, Knight’s Precast, Knight’s Trucking, Knight’s Block and Knight’s Septic Tank. The Knight’s Companies goal is to set the standard in manufacturing and delivery of quality products and services for the construction industry.
Business Growth Leads to the Crumbling of Knight’s Accounting Foundation
As the company grew and added new lines of businesses, the company accounting grew cumbersome. Knight’s Companies had been using Quickbooks which literally couldn’t handle the volume of transactions, data and reporting needs. According to CFO, A. Lynn Fee, “We had to do something quickly as the system simply couldn’t keep up with our needs.”
While working for another company, Lynn had used MAS 90 (Sage 100). It had been an older version of the software, but she felt like Sage 100 would be a good fit for Knight’s Companies. Lynn stated, “While at my old company, we weren’t getting the support we needed from our software reseller who was located out of state. As a result, we were doing all of our own support, upgrades and installations in house which meant that the system wasn’t getting upgraded. We found a local reseller, Accounting Sytstems, Inc. (ASI), to bring us up to speed. I had been so impressed with the team at ASI that we brought them in to help with the new system at Knight’s Companies”.
ASI’s Company Consolidation Addition, along with Sage 100, Stabilizes Accounting Structure
She started a conversation with the ASI team about the next steps for Knight’s Companies’ accounting system. ASI concurred that Sage 100 was a great fit for their needs and was engaged to update and provide support for their ailing systems. Brian Kelly at ASI stated, “Knight’s Companies wanted to make sure they always had the support they needed, when they needed it after their new Sage 100 System was installed, so they also signed up for our Ultimate Support Plan.”
ASI installed a new server and the latest version of Sage 100, and converted the old data into the new system. According to Lynn, “The transition was virtually seamless, and the team at ASI made it so easy for us. The training and support was exceptional, and we were up and running with barely a hiccup in our workday. This switch could have caused a serious disruption to accounting that we just couldn’t afford, but the team at ASI made sure that didn’t happen.”
Knight’s Companies next challenge was appeasing their bank with a clean, consolidated balance sheet. This resulted in a complex export of each company into spreadsheets, and a manual consolidation process that took Lynn and her team too much time and resulted in a loss of accuracy. Coincidentally, ASI had developed an Addition for Sage 100 to consolidate companies within Sage 100. The Company Consolidation addition allowed Knight’s Companies to quickly merge GL accounts among the selected companies and streamline their balance sheet process. Lynn proclaimed that, “Having the Company Consolidation addition not only saves us significant time and frustration, but the accuracy alone is worth the investment. With 13 different companies and the bank asking for different monthly reports, I can’t imagine working without Company Consolidation now.”
Knight’s Company Now on Solid Ground
Brian Kelly at ASI states, “Company Consolidation turned out to be a great solution for Knight’s Company. After just the first month Lynn raved about how much it streamlined and simplified the reporting process.” Brian continued, “Company Consolidation is the only Sage 100 solution capable of merging two or more separate companies into one consolidated company for the purpose of running standard reports or creating a new consolidated live company for production. Users of this Addition have reinforced just how valuable and convenient it truly is.”
After more than five years of relying on ASI to support their now Sage 100 system, Lynn raves, “The ASI team members are all great people to work with. Their Ultimate Support Plan is everything they promised. They respond quickly and always have the utmost patience, calm and understanding in helping us when we need it. They truly understand accounting, and their Company Consolidation Addition proves it. They really know what they are doing, and I couldn’t recommend them highly enough”!
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