Background

Your kitchen is the heart of your home—where you cook, gather, and make memories. But as much as we love our kitchens, they don’t last
forever. The cabinets are one of the hardest working features in the room. They endure the wear and tear of daily life, storing everything from dishes to snacks and utensils. Knowing when it’s
time to get new cabinets can help ensure your kitchen stays functional and beautiful.

Cabinet Discounters was founded in 1983 by the Mikk Family to help clients do just that. The company began as a family business selling cabinets out of the garage and now over 40 years later it has expanded to include showrooms across Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D.C. Its sister companies, Creative-in-Counters and Brighton Cabinetry, also help clients update kitchens, bathrooms, and other rooms. Creative-in-Counters is one of the largest manufacturers of custom countertops, carrying a large selection of natural and manufactured stone countertop products to help customers choose the look that is right for their home or business. Brighton Cabinetry has been providing custom cabinetry to customers across the Midwest and along the East Coast for nearly three decades.

Cabinet Discounters was a long-time user of Microsoft Dynamics GP, most recently upgrading the system in 2020 with Velosio. They knew it was time to make a change as support for GP would end. They looked no further than their partner Velosio and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as the next step. “Support was running out on GP, and we were enticed with a ‘bridge to the cloud’ offer,” says Mike Barron, CFO and Corporate Controller for Cabinet Discounters. The bridge to the cloud promotion is designed to support Dynamics customers moving from Dynamics on-premises to Dynamics 365 online.

Additionally, Mike would soon retire and wanted to implement the new system prior to his departure. Mike worked with GP for many years and brought experience with an SAP implementation at a previous employer to the table. “Having survived and lived to talk about an SAP implementation, I knew what would be possible with an upgraded ERP system,” says Barron. “There would be many added efficiencies, and we souped it up with some cool features. I’m leaving a Cadillac [BC] behind where we were operating with a Pontiac [GP] before,” laughs Barron.

Implementation and Integrations

Cabinet Discounters and its two additional operating companies, Brighton Cabinetry and Creative-in-Counters, successfully implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC), with help from Velosio’s experienced consultants.

“The biggest benefit of sticking with Velosio for the implementation is that they have consultants who know GP inside and out,” says Barron. “That was very
important to me and that that that paid off because one of our consultants is an IT person, but she has enough accounting knowledge to be dangerous,” continues Barron.

“So, when I referred to the GP SOP 60100 table that we were going to need for data migration, she knew what that meant because she knows tables in GP inside and out. We needed to have that.” – Mike Barron, CFO and Corporate Controller for Cabinet Discounters.

Each company operating within Cabinet Discounters runs separate general ledger accounts and banking; payroll for Cabinet Discounters/Creative-in-Counters and Brighton Cabinetry is processed via ADP Workforcenow, and there are three additional real estate partnerships, which are accounted for by the corporate office. The books are consolidated through GP Management Reporter. Additionally, BC is integrated with Cabinet Discounters’ in-house developed sales order system. “We created the sales order system many years ago in Microsoft Access,” explains Barron. “The sales staff in each of our eight stores can quote jobs and convert the quote into a sales order with associated materials and installation estimates,” continues Barron. Whereas before there was a manual step involved in pulling in data from the sales order system, sales orders are now automatically integrated into BC utilizing Azure Blob Storage. After a sales order is created in BC, purchasing automatically receives an email so that they can start ordering materials, offering quicker customer service for its clients. “The integration with BC eliminated the manual process of running GP Integration Manager, checking the new orders folder, and integrating customer data and sales order information one by one,” says Barron. “That’s all done seamlessly now,” continues Barron.

Another integration is with Cabinet Discounters’ Microsoft Access-based custom delivery application. Additionally, the ADP integration was manually intensive with GP and is now seamlessly integrated into BC. “To run the payroll every two weeks, we would retrieve the payroll journals out of ADP, put the data into an Excel spreadsheet, and then we’d do a manual journal entry in GP,” explains Barron. “Now, with BC, after processing payroll, I transmit the ADP payroll file via SFTP to Azure Blob Storage, and BC job queues run to consume the file and post the gross-to-net journal entry.”

Creative-in-Counters integrated BC with its ActionFlow application – specialized for sales quoting and ordering, invoicing, and managing materials purchasing to design and fabricate quartz, granite, and acrylic countertops. The team was able to post cash receipts in ActionFlow, but it did not have comprehensive accounting features. Velosio built an integration between ActionFlow and BC to eliminate double data entry and reduce manual errors.

Brighton Cabinetry utilizes a shop floor system for cabinet makers called 2020 Insight, which will soon integrate with BC via an API

Cabinet Discounters has had a lot of check fraud when mailing paper checks, so they have also implemented ACH payables payments using out-of-the box BC functionality and have also implemented Positive Pay with BC for check payments. “We have what we believe is a theft ring in the Columbia, MD area where mailed checks are being stolen after pick up by the carrier,” says Barron. “We’ve been able to talk most of our vendors into using electronic checks instead, which is much more secure,” continues Barron.

System Benefits

Cabinet Discounters has many efficiencies as a result of implementing BC. “There are huge time savings because of bank reconciliation alone,” says Barron. “I do the reconciliations for the bank accounts where our merchant credit card payments are deposited, and my boss, the owner, does the operating account reconciliations. I know he will be saving lots of time,” continues Barron. Payroll integration is also a bigtime saver. BC is cloud-based and secure, which is less hassle than managing GP which was on premises.

Additionally, Cabinet Discounters has:

• Replaced time consuming, manual processes with seamless integrations
• Improved customer service with more timely order processing
• Reduced check fraud with electronic ACH processing
• Implemented an improved, modern interface, which is easier to use
• Enabled users to work on multiple companies without concurrent user licensing constraints
• Enabled remote work via the cloud-based application
• Replaced manual spreadsheet preparation and distribution for gross margin reporting with a 24/7 Power BI dashboard
• Set the stage to realize a significant decrease in the time it takes to close the books each month

Future Plans

Cabinet Discounters is still learning ways to better use Power BI reporting to improve visibility in financial operations. “I used to have to take the gross margin data out of GP, export it into an Excel spreadsheet, manipulate it, create pivot tables and email it to all the managers,” describes Barron. “It was at least a two hour project each month,” continues Barron. “Now, Power BI is live with gross margin information 24/7, with the latest numbers. Managers can now drill down by product line, customer type, etc.; any way they want to slice or dice the data. It’s so slick and a major advantage to the business,” concludes Barron.

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