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Published on the 13/05/2010 | Written by MYOB

AT A GLANCE

Chapman Grove Wines

INDUSTRY

Viticulture

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

Integrating stock control as part of the sales invoice process
Customised reporting around wine equalisation tax (WET)
Component costing of product.

SOLUTION

MYOB Exo

THE BENEFITS

Can quickly and easily access any data on the business needed to
Visibility on stock control and costs
Can see profit or loss figures at any time, in any period, based on real-time costs

FOR MORE INFORMATION

MYOB//
E: biggerbusiness@myob.com
NZ: 0800 696 239
AU: 1300 555 110
https://www.myob.com/

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Four-year-old Chapman Grove Wines looked for an affordable, highly functional accounting system from the start to support its growth. It found it in MYOB’s EXO…

Founded in 2005, Chapman Grove Wines is a rapidly growing, privately owned company in the Margaret River region of Western Australia.

Although a relative newcomer to the market, the winery has twice been awarded five stars by James Halliday in his Australian Wine Companion – most recently in the 2010 edition. It has also been rated in his ‘Best of the Best’ list of Margaret River Wineries, Australian Cabernet Producers and Australian Chardonnay Producers.

It may be a young company, but Chapman Grove Wines is by no means a fledgling operation. It has significant export markets, contract sales staff in Western Australia and Victoria, distributors in Queensland and NSW – and wine stored in five warehouses across Australia.

However, the task of tracking sales and stock levels across all four states falls to just one person – managing director Ron Fraser. And that’s a job that depends on visibility.

Right functionality
Fraser knew from the outset that the company needed a reliable and robust accounting and stock-keeping system. So, he immediately set about looking at various options.

“As we saw it,” says Fraser, “the main contenders were Quickbooks, which we’d been using in our other businesses, and Premier.”

The only trouble was both had their limitations.

Neither featured integrated stock control or customised reporting, which was something Chapman Grove Wines saw as critical to its future growth.

The alternative was to have a system custom-built from scratch. But for a start-up, the cost was prohibitive. So, Fraser continued his search until, finally, he stumbled across Exo.

“Straight away, Exo seemed to have the functionality we needed for a price that was far more realistic for a start up business like ours,” he says.

“And, in the short time it took the guys at Horizon Business Systems to give us a demo we were convinced it was the system for us,” says Fraser.

Text-book installation
Chapman Grove Wines was one of the first businesses to sign up to Exo in Western Australia – and, as such, one of Horizon’s first implementations.

Horizon’s Michael Pendred and Julian Lange made the long journey south, from Leederville, Perth, to configure the system to the winery’s specific needs. And, despite some challenges, Fraser says the implementation and subsequent development were very easy.

Chapman Grove Wines had a number of specific requirements, including:

integrating stock control as part of the sales invoice process
customised reporting around wine equalisation tax (WET)
component costing of product.

“Horizon met all our requirements,” says Fraser.

“They’re always prompt and helpful. Any niggling problems, we only have to put in a call to Michael or Julian or one of their team and they’re normally able to fix things over the phone – or remotely.”

Built-in confidence
Within a day or two of installation, Fraser says he had a basic understanding of how to use Exo – thanks in part to Horizon’s expert guidance. It took a few more weeks to feel fully confident.

“Exo operates differently to Premier or Quickbooks, so you need a different mindset when in-putting data,” he says.

“The system keeps an audit trail of everything you input, so it can be a bit daunting at first – not wanting to make a mistake. But, once you understand how to ‘undo’ your entries, your confidence grows.”

Tweaking
“The great thing with Exo,” says Fraser, “is that it’s customisable, which means that if you get a few weeks down the line and think something might work better a different way, you can tweak it”.

Indeed, since going live Chapman Grove Wines has identified a number of opportunities for improvement – and tasked Horizon with helping tighten up the system accordingly.

One such opportunity was the development of a report to calculate and track Wine Equalisation Tax applicable to all sales. Exo calculates the WET on every invoice and reports monthly for the purpose of BAS reporting.

Better visibility
Fraser says there are a number of obvious advantages with Exo – compared with the company’s old set-up.

“From time to time, the Australian Taxation Office requests additional information from us in support of our business activity statements. Not only do they take confidence from the fact that we use Exo,” he says, “but the instant visibility Exo gives us through its various reports means we can quickly and easily access any data on the business we need to.”

Visibility on stock control and costs is another big plus.

Because Exo has fully integrated stock control, Fraser can see how much stock is in any of the five warehouses at any point in time – something he says he could never have done with Quickbooks or Premier, without additional entry.

“We can also determine the exact cost of a bottle of wine, using component costing. And creating bill of material builds for each type and vintage of wine we produce gives us great confidence on profit margin performance,” he adds.

“We can see profit or loss figures at any time, in any period, based on real-time costs, which means we never have to rely on historical data, or manually enter costs. They filter through the system automatically. Not only that, but, because cost-codes are searchable, data is instantly retrievable.”

Looking to the future
Going from a start-up to a business with warehousing and sales operations in multiple states in just four years, Chapman Grove Wines is a real success story.

“And we don’t want to stop now,” says Fraser. “We want to keep growing.”

“Exo gives us the ability to keep doing this, letting us scale things up to match the growth in our business.

So as we get bigger, we’ll start to use even more of the functionality available to us, particularly in the areas of customised reporting and staff management.”

“For now though, Exo helps us make well-informed decisions and that intelligence is the key to ongoing success,” says Fraser.