Your plane is circling over the airport in a blizzard, unable to land because of heavy snow build-up. Fortunately, the airport has invested in a mammoth runway sweeper from Kodiak Northwest. The sweeper’s huge brooms cut swaths up to 18 feet wide at a time, blasting away 35,000 cubic feet of snow per minute. When you’re finally able to descend, you owe your safe arrival to the big orange machines that cleared you way.

Kodiak Northwest is one of the world’s foremost snow removal equipment firms, manufacturing snow blower, plows, sweepers and blades. Units vary from truck-chassis models to loader-mount self-contained snowblowers. None of Kodiak Northwest’s products come off an assembly line. They’re each custom-made, designed to the buyer’s unique specifications. After more than 30 years in the snow removal business, the company now boasts customers in almost every state (including Hawaii), as well as in countries like Australia, Chile, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden.

THE CHALLENGE

For years, Kodiak Northwest relied on DacEasy®, an easy-to-use accounting package from Best Software that is designed for small businesses. But as the company grew eight-fold in just five years, so did its accounting needs. Volumes increased, and processes became much more complex.

As often happens, Kodiak didn’t realize just how big the company was growing. But over time, they discovered that they had outgrown their trusty, well-loved DacEasy® package. It was time to upgrade to MAS 90.

"Here we were, running a multimillion dollar business with the same tools we used when we started out," says Carol Badger, Kodiak’s office manager. "We’re under a lot of pressure all the time. That’s why I was so relieved to find out that there was a logical fix. And, since I didn’t want to switch products in the first place, it was great news to learn how much we could accomplish just by doing a simple migration."

Carol had her hands full running the administrative department. The last thing she needed was a complicated software project to supervise. She was especially worried about the integrity of data. What would happen when files were transferred from the flat DacEasy database to the modular MAS 90 version? She simply couldn’t afford to lose any financial information.

THE SOLUTION

Carol contacted her Best value-added reseller, who was familiar with manufacturing enterprises. He was also an expert in system conversions. In just one day, all of Kodiak’s data was exported safely from DacEasy, first to Microsoft Excel® files, and then, using Visual Integrator, to MAS 90. The reseller described it as "a piece of cake."

"We were up and running almost instantly after the migration," says Carol. "there was only one tiny glitch with the banking portion of the program, which our vendor fixed in about three minutes. He saved us literally thousands of hours by moving all of the data for us. Now the new system is doing exactly what we wanted, and everyone is quite pleased."

Today all core accounting functions are handled smoothly by MS 90. The software takes care of general ledger, payables, reporting, banking, trial balance and cash disbursement duties. It also tracks parts and supplies, and calculates payroll.

MAS 90 performs invoicing and cuts checks. "Our invoices are so much prettier than they ever were before, with a very nice design on them, and we can have the triple copies that we need too," Carol reports. She likes the convenience of being able to turn out invoices on her laser printer as well, with processing taking place in record time. She is also pleased with the way that wire transfers and other payment transactions are easily accounted for. "The extra features that we have with MAS 90 are allowing us to manage our business much more effectively."

Carol is convinced that the timing was perfect for changing accounting software packages. "Best Software’s DacEasy® product allowed us to grow our business to where we are today. Now, with Best’s help, we have taken our company to the next level with MAS 90."