Company : KOL Foods, Inc
Website : www.kolfoods.com
History : KOL Foods formed in 2007 with a groundbreaking effort to produce the first kosher, organically raised, local, grass-fed meat. Founder and CEO, Devora Kimelman-Block, established a three-pronged partnership with a synagogue in Washington, DC, a slaughterhouse and a local farmer to produce the meat. Scores of kosher consumers, who until then could only buy kosher meat raised in confinement, were eager for this product. In just its second offering, the company generated sales for more than 2400 pounds of beef though a single email. Jews from 14 different area synagogues, ranging from Reform to Conservative to Orthodox, purchased this meat.
Today KOL Foods ships to the entire continental United States and produces the only domestic, 100% grass-fed, kosher beef and the only organic-fed, pastured, kosher chicken and duck in the United States. Each and every day, they strive to be the most transparent kosher meat company on the planet. That way, customers don’t have to choose between eating according to their values and keeping kosher.
Business Challenge : KOL Foods quickly outgrew QuickBooks Premier as they added scores of new clients, products to their custom-designed website and as word-of-mouth spread.
In addition, her current bookkeeper used QuickBooks Premier, so Ms. Kimelman-Block had no real-time access to payables to predict cash flow and manage her vendor payments. Data files were transferred from the bookkeeper, to Ms. Kimelman-Block and then to the CPA and back. Cash flow management was not available. Vendor payments were completed with hand-written checks, and then sent to the bookkeeping service for entry.
Most importantly, there was no integration between their custom designed website order system and QuickBooks, so Ms. Kimelman-Block had to rely on insufficient and untimely data to make decisions about inventory to meet her clients’ needs. Her prior bookkeeping service hand-entered every order from the website into QuickBooks. With orders as high as 50,000 items in a single month, her current bookkeeping procedures left her books six months in arrears.
She reached out to Turn Key Office LLC for help.
Solution : Based on the growth of her business, we converted her data to QuickBooks Enterprise on our back office server and setup Intuit Bill Pay.
We provided a dedicated payables email box for her vendors so that our back office team could post all of her payables and attach the backup for each vendor bill. Ms. Kimelman-Block retained sole control of when, whether and how much each vendor was paid with a clear view of available and committed cash on hand. As an added benefit, she could continue to manage her payables even while travel requirements took her away from home.
Most importantly, we devised a workflow and a tool using off-the-shelf software where weekly sales orders and merchant sales are imported seamlessly into QuickBooks. The data that used to take months to hand-enter is now completed in the span of a few hours from start to finish. Ms. Kimelman-Block has full real-time access to her books, the CPA also has access, and she has full control of all payables.
Conclusion : The critical reports she needs to manage her business effectively are available within a day or two of closing the month. The procedures are accurate, consistent and timely. Ms. Kimelman-Block can turn her attention back to serving her customers and growing her business.
