Seaport Capital

Acumatica’s flexible pricing structure coupled with its easy-to-use and intuitive user interface and intercompany features sealed the deal for Seaport. Acumatica “is an up-to-date and state-of-the-art system that gives us options,” said Howard Kaufman, CFO. “The intercompany feature allows us to set up the entire group as one and then create funds as branches. We no longer have to make an entry on one company’s books and then manually make it on another company’s books. Instead, entries flow through as directed.”

“Cost was really a hot-button item,” added Stacy Troiano, then Controller at Seaport Capital. “Although our business comes with accounting complexities, we are nonetheless a small firm. We wanted something reasonable that could suit our needs without overwhelming us, and we liked the module aspect of Acumatica, which kept the cost down.”

One competitor, for comparison, wanted to charge Seaport for each of its entities, which would have made the software very expensive.

The Seaport team also was impressed with Acumatica demos, which allowed them to manipulate a demo database and set up intercompany entities.

Acumatica quickly made life easier. “Right out of the gate, the intercompany bookings were tremendous,” Troiano said. “It was just so easy. And running checks through the AP module was very straightforward and very easy to manipulate. I could choose all invoices, pay some, or pay all for one vendor.”

Seaport Capital streamlined its bank reconciliations, quickly updated its chart of accounts and subaccounts, and consolidated reports that previously consisted of 20 pages into two to three pages, Troiano said. “It’s a good, user-friendly product. I was able to easily train our office manager and CFO how to use it.”

With Acumatica, Seaport has shortened the time it takes to perform intercompany postings by five hours every quarter. “I save about a quarter of my time by not having to do manual reconciliations for all the closings,” Troiano said.

Having a cloud-based ERP that can be accessed remotely gave the team peace of mind that if another disaster like Hurricane Sandy hits, they will be prepared. “You don’t know you need disaster recovery until you’ve lived through a disaster,” Troiano said. “Knowing we are backed up completely off-site is really helpful. We can log in from anywhere. If you’re not in the office, you can pull up Acumatica and feel just like you’re sitting at your own desktop.”