Sticks And Stones Gardening Ideas

With Xero under their belts, the accounting side of things was humming. And so was business overall. It didn't take long for the Sticks & Stones brand to become synonymous with premium outdoor lifestyle design, especially after a few spreads in House Magazine and some excellent referrals from award-winning architects. Unsurprisingly, business boomed and so did their needs.

"Our business advisor suggested that we spend time on the things we're good at and invest in a bookkeeper to manage the day to day accounts," says Fiona.

Wanting to only surround themselves with the best, Julia and Fiona discovered Sophie Andrews from Carbon Group through Xero's advisor directory.

"As our bookkeeper, Sophie oversees our day to day accounts. She pays the wages, checks our invoicing, receipts and everything in between. Sophie plays a crucial role in our business. She makes sure everything is above board and she leaves no stone unturned," says Julia.

WFM_S_S (V2).00_01_19_12.Still017

Things were certainly starting to look up in the world of Sticks & Stones, with only a couple of pain points left to address. Next on the agenda was tackling project management and quoting, not necessarily an easy feat as Julia confesses.

"We have quite a complicated business structure and that's reflected in the way that we quote and price, hence we needed an app that met all our needs, including Xero integration."

So the team set to work searching for market-ready software solutions and signing up for trials when possible, but things weren't going swimmingly. "We were well ingrained in Xero and it was working well, but in addition to quoting and pricing complexities, we didn't really know where our money was going, what project it was going to or how much we'd made on each project," says Fiona.

Struggling to find something suitable, things took a happy turn when Sophie suggested they meet with local cloud integrator Clinton Cowin from TradiePad.

TradiePad is a technology training company that specialises in helping small businesses in the construction industry learn how to transition their operations to the cloud. Clinton is also a WorkflowMax implementation partner and recommended the software after assessing the team's needs.

"I connected with the girls and we did a scoping session and went through what the requirements were," he says. "We found that WorkflowMax was absolutely perfect for what they needed. We implemented WorkflowMax for the girls to manage the various construction projects they have running at any given time."

"He sat down with us and spent the time to really understand our business," says Julia.

"Turns out WorkflowMax could be customised into exactly what we needed. We have a complicated setup and what we required was very particular, so Clinton created custom-made templates and it's saved us so much time!"

Using an implementation expert can be a priceless step in the process. When you have someone on board who understands both WorkflowMax and Xero, as well as your own unique business needs, the result is that you truly harness the full power of both products working together.

The integration with Xero was a deciding factor for Sticks & Stones, and that's exactly what WorkflowMax is good at. "It's fantastic!" says Fiona. Now when plotting things into WorkflowMax, all information flows seamlessly through to Xero, eliminating the need for double handling. And because it's so easy to use, we can all speak the same language. "Everybody's on board," says Fiona.