Broady’s are a home-heating appliance specialist who sell a wide range of cookers, woodstoves and fireplaces that are made in New Zealand and imported from around the world. Often the products sourced internationally are imported in parts, with the final product being assembled at the Broady’s warehouse. Broady’s also carry spare parts for all of the models they market, which results in a large number of products and parts to manage.
Having been around since 1885, Broady’s know the home-heating appliance market inside-and-out.
The Problem
When the accounting system Broady’s was using was acquired by another company, and support for the product ceased, John Lintott (Broady’s general manager) found himself on the hunt for a new accounting system.
John admits that at this point in time their processes for taking orders and generating invoices were quite manual. With no inventory management system taking the hassle out of tracking their stock, Broady’s were spending hours poring over spreadsheets, then entering the same data into their accounting package for invoicing.
For a small team, this was cutting into their productivity significantly, taking up valuable time that could be better spent on activities directly impacting their bottom line.
The decision was made to implement Xero, as the ability to access their accounts from anywhere was very appealing. When the need came to add inventory management, John selected Unleashed, as it was “the obvious inventory partner for Xero”.
The Solution
While it may seem like a daunting task to keep track of all the moving components within their business, John says:
Unleashed really brings it all together. Whether it’s ordering product from our suppliers in New Zealand, or overseas, right through to when customers call us for the very first time. We can capture their details, create a quote, then that hopefully transfers through to a sale, and an invoice, and then we can track the progress of that sale and installation right through to completion.John also has high praise for Unleashed’s integration with Xero, saying “Unleashed works in seamlessly with Xero, all the information gets transferred across, and accounts at the end of the day can collect the money from the customer - it’s all very easy”. The Result Broady’s no longer have to spend hours updating spreadsheets, as all the information they need is stored in Unleashed, which sends real-time transaction data to Xero, and means they only need to enter sales and order information once. Because their data is updated in real-time, Broady’s always know whether they have enough stock available to fulfil customer orders, and any stock movements are visible whether they’re logged into Unleashed at the office, or out on the road visiting customers. It’s no surprise then that Unleashed has made Broady’s business easier to manage. In fact, Unleashed has become such an important part of Broady’s business that John says “it’s the first thing we turn on and the last thing we turn off each day”.
