Nautical Furnishings
Specialty Furniture Manufacturer Outgrows Its Generic Accounting System

Nautical Furnishings Inc. Finds Smooth Sailing with QuickBooks & Customized Programming

Nautical Furnishings Inc. reflects the interests of owner John Connelly, Jr.: a love of the sea and all things antique. Connelly avidly collects nautical memorabilia, including original ship lanterns, ship steering wheels, cargo nets, life rings, diving helmets and hundreds of other items. Founded in 1972, the business consisted of a portable kiosk at several South Florida boat shows.

Today, Nautical Furnishings includes an 10,000-square foot showroom, in-house custom fabrication facilities and a 45,000-square foot warehouse and distribution center with 25 employees. What started as a small kiosk-based antique business has grown into a $5 million concept restaurant interior builder whose clients include Universal Studios, Walt Disney World, Six Flags-Premier Parks, Red Lobster Restaurants and Bass Pro Shops.

Along with outgrowing the kiosk, Nautical Furnishings also outgrew its manual-based accounting system. "When we got tired of trying to fit into generic accounting software, we had a custom program written for us in FoxPro," said Lynn Morris, the company's vice president of administration. Morris wanted a system that would make the firm's template-based invoicing easy. FoxPro allows a company of this size to still use QuickBooks for accounts payable, payroll and general ledger because the volume of accounts receivable and inventory transactions occur in FoxPro with a daily summarized export file to QuickBooks.

QuickBooks Pro

Elizabeth Way and her staff at Abaca.net serve as the liaison between the administrative office and the company's external auditors. Abaca does the quarterly and year-end payroll reports as well as other important management reports. "With her outstanding knowledge of QuickBooks, Elizabeth Way has guided us through three upgrades-not an easy task for a company of our size," said Morris. "Abaca has provided consistent, reliable support for our company since 1995, and I would recommend their services to any business."

Business Profile

Headquarters:
Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Type of Business:
Custom Furniture Manufacturer For National Concept Restaurants

Number of Employees:
25

Annual Revenues:
$5 million


System Profile

Computer System:
IBM

Operating System:
Windows NT & XP

Software Products:
QuickBooks Pro®
Customized Foxpro Invoice & Inventory System