How Blind Designs eliminated duplicate financial data entry and tightened control with Flowgear.
Blind Designs manufactures and distributes window blinds across Southern Africa. The company runs its financials on Sage Pastel and relies on a custom-built line-of-business application for managing quotes, invoices, and production orders. Keeping the two systems aligned manually was becoming increasingly difficult and error-prone.
Two overlapping systems, and staff spending time fixing the gaps
Customer records, invoices, and credit notes existed in both Sage Pastel and the in-house application, with no automated way to keep them consistent. Staff re-entered financial data between systems and performed manual checks to catch discrepancies, slowing down processes and introducing errors. Director Paul O'Brien summed up the position: "We wanted to keep using Pastel but needed to avoid duplication problems with our customized in-house system."
Automated two-way synchronization between Pastel and the LOB system
On a recommendation from the Sage Pastel partner channel, Blind Designs implemented Flowgear. The platform now synchronizes financial data automatically in both directions: customer records, invoices, and credit notes are updated into Sage Pastel, while customer balances and credit limits flow back into the line-of-business application.
Fewer errors, tighter control, and no additional headcount
Automating the synchronization reduced data errors significantly, tightened financial management, and removed the need to hire additional staff for data input and checking. The team can focus on core work rather than reconciliation tasks. O'Brien also noted that the Flowgear support team gave the company confidence in ongoing operations.
- Data errors reduced significantly across customer, invoice, and credit-note records
- Tighter financial management compared to manual processes
- No additional headcount required for data entry or checking
- Staff time redirected from reconciliation to core work
“Using Flowgear we have reduced data errors significantly, and have tighter financial management than we could when we did things manually - and it means we didn't have to hire more staff just to input and check data.”
Expanding beyond finance
With financial data synchronization running reliably, Blind Designs is exploring additional areas of the business where Flowgear can provide similar benefits.
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