Case story: Lawson’s Finest Liquids

Brewery Maximizes Value of VicinityBrew with a Move from QuickBooks to Business Central

Customer: Lawson’s Finest Liquids

Industry: Craft Beer Brewing

Organization Size: 80 employees

Headquarters: Waitsfield, VT

Former System: QuickBooks

New Solution: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Highlights:

VicinityBrew functionality increased by integrating with cloud ERP
Business data centralized for better reporting and compliance
Streamlined inventory controls while creating batches

About Lawson’s Finest Liquids

Lawson’s Finest Liquids crafts and delivers the finest and freshest beer possible to delight their fans and cultivate healthy, vibrant communities.

Starting in 2008 as a 1-barrel brewhouse alongside the Lawsons’ home, their delightful brews garnered local and regional attention, bringing a steady increase in sales. In 2011 they grew to a 7-barrel operation, and in 2018 they opened their new brewery, taproom, and retail store in Waitsfield, VT, and expanded to 50 employees.

The Challenge

With success and growth come organizational challenges. In 2018, while using QuickBooks, they implemented VicinityBrew. This industry-specific system helped them organize and standardize their inventory and accounting processes and improve reporting for regulatory compliance.

While the integration functioned well and helped them move forward, they felt the limitations of QuickBooks and the need to move to something more suitable for long-term growth. Fiona Gray, Accounting Manager at Lawson’s Finest Liquids, notes: “QuickBooks is great for the basics, such as P&Ls and period-over-period analytics. But if we wanted to get into anything more detailed, it had to be done manually.”

The Solution

Lawson’s evaluated several batch processing ERP solutions before deciding on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. “The integration with VicinityBrew was one of our big driving factors to choose Business Central. The functionality that is specific to our processes and the way we brew had already proven to be a key to our growth,” Fiona said.

As a cloud-first system, it is easy to integrate other systems with Business Central. VicinityBrew is now able to share more data with Business Central because of its superior flexibility. Additionally, the ERP consultants who implemented it for Lawson’s were able to integrate their preferred AP solution. “We process our payables through Bill.com. Those invoices are then automatically created in Business Central, which obviously saves a lot of time and data entry on my end,” Fiona mentioned.

The Benefits – Dynamics 365 Business Central

What has improved for Lawson’s since moving from QuickBooks to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Better internal controls. Fiona explains: “QuickBooks is designed for smaller companies. It allows users to change data after the fact, which isn’t great from an accounting standpoint. For me, as the accounting manager, just being able to have internal controls over all of the data entry and a complete transaction history in my accounting system gives me great piece of mind.”

Centralized data. Fiona elaborates: “QuickBooks wasn’t able to track much of the critical functionality we needed. Inventory, sales invoices, credit memos, bill backs, and other functions were managed in VicinityBrew, and only basic transactional data was available in QuickBooks for reporting purposes. With Business Central, we’ve streamlined operations. Inventory now lives in Business Central, and sales invoices are created and sent from there as well – it’s all centralized.”

Streamlined inventory management between locations. Lawson’s has two brewing locations close to each other, and there are frequent material movements between them. This created unique challenges when accounting for those movements in VicinityBrew and QuickBooks. “In the middle of entering a brew we would have to close out, go back, do an inventory transfer, and then return to the brew to start it up again,” lamented Fiona.

“That process could repeat several times during a single brew if other ingredients had to be transferred, taking an extra 15 to 45 minutes each time. Now, with the Business Central integration, we can select inventory from different locations, which was not a feature allowed with the QuickBooks integrations; allowing us to save time when entering our brews.”

The Benefits – VicinityBrew

The team at Vicinity Software speaks the same language as brewers. VicinityBrew is designed to conform to the processes of individual brewers and is implemented by technicians that formerly worked at a brewery. It includes Quality Control reporting, MRP to schedule production by tank or by brew, and much more. It’s been refined over many years of development and is scalable to grow along with your business. How has it benefited Lawson’s Finest Liquids?

Flexibility With Batch Variability. VicinityBrew is designed to give brewers the freedom to work with the variables in each batch. “We can add our ingredients and our recipes and apply them as they were originally written. If there is any variance between the original recipe and what we’re doing now, we can adjust it. If we want to experiment with the batch in any way, we can. We can change the recipe based on what we are actually doing in the brewhouse: increasing the hops in our dry hop, substituting or adjusting the amount of another ingredient in any part of the process, etc. We don’t have to start from scratch with a brand-new recipe. We can simply make an adjustment to the batch we’re working on.”

Designed with brewers in mind. Fiona describes the benefits: “Brewing beer is not just inserting your materials and taking out the finished product. The fact that VicinityBrew can parse out all the different steps is very beneficial for us – it helps us see the progress of each batch.” She adds: “Tracking that inventory, as an accountant, is very important to me. What I particularly like about VicinityBrew is the detailed reporting, along with lot tracking for regulatory compliance.”

First-class customer service. Speaking about the Vicinity team Fiona said, “They were very helpful during the implementation. At other companies I have done ERP system migrations for, our vendor support tickets sometimes got ‘lost’. When I reach out to Vicinity, they walk me through everything needed to solve my problem on an individual basis, never making me feel like I got a stock reply from a handbook, and always within 24 hours.”

Room to grow. “We know we are not going to outgrow VicinityBrew anytime soon because they handle companies much larger than ours. Knowing we won’t need to change systems is very comforting to me,” Fiona remarked.

Looking to the Future

With their new brewery and taproom, Lawson’s Finest Liquids continues to innovate with a greater variety of beers, as well as other beverages and foods sold on-site. VicinityBrew will be at the heart of their operations for years to come.

Some brewers worry about a software implementation becoming overly complex by adding multiple vendors. But Lawson’s sees it differently. Fiona says: “If you are a small but expanding brewery and you are outgrowing your old systems, VicinityBrew and Business Central are a great combination.”

Fiona concludes with the recommendation: “I think the team at Vicinity is fantastic. Super responsive, super helpful, and super willing to invest their time to help us work out our challenges or to make improvements in our system. Plus, they are all really fun to work with.”

“QuickBooks is great for the basics, such as P&Ls and period-over-period analytics. But if we wanted to get into anything more detailed, it had to be done manually.”

“The integration with VicinityBrew was one of our big driving factors to choose Business Central. The functionality that is specific to our processes and the way we brew had already proven to be a key to our growth,”

“We process our payables through Bill.com. Those invoices are then automatically created in Business Central, which obviously saves a lot of time and data entry on my end,”

“QuickBooks is designed for smaller companies. It allows users to change data after the fact, which isn’t great from an accounting standpoint. For me, as the accounting manager, just being able to have internal controls over all of the data entry and a complete transaction history in my accounting system gives me great piece of mind.”

“QuickBooks wasn’t able to track much of the critical functionality we needed. Inventory, sales invoices, credit memos, bill backs, and other functions were managed in VicinityBrew, and only basic transactional data was available in QuickBooks for reporting purposes. With Business Central, we’ve streamlined operations. Inventory now lives in Business Central, and sales invoices are created and sent from there as well – it’s all centralized.”

“In the middle of entering a brew we would have to close out, go back, do an inventory transfer, and then return to the brew to start it up again,” lamented Fiona. “That process could repeat several times during a single brew if other ingredients had to be transferred, taking an extra 15 to 45 minutes each time. Now, with the Business Central integration, we can select inventory from different locations, which was not a feature allowed with the QuickBooks integrations; allowing us to save time when entering our brews.”

“We can add our ingredients and our recipes and apply them as they were originally written. If there is any variance between the original recipe and what we’re doing now, we can adjust it. If we want to experiment with the batch in any way, we can. We can change the recipe based on what we are actually doing in the brewhouse: increasing the hops in our dry hop, substituting or adjusting the amount of another ingredient in any part of the process, etc. We don’t have to start from scratch with a brand-new recipe. We can simply make an adjustment to the batch we’re working on.”

“Brewing beer is not just inserting your materials and taking out the finished product. The fact that VicinityBrew can parse out all the different steps is very beneficial for us – it helps us see the progress of each batch.” She adds: “Tracking that inventory, as an accountant, is very important to me. What I particularly like about VicinityBrew is the detailed reporting, along with lot tracking for regulatory compliance.”

“They were very helpful during the implementation. At other companies I have done ERP system migrations for, our vendor support tickets sometimes got ‘lost’. When I reach out to Vicinity, they walk me through everything needed to solve my problem on an individual basis, never making me feel like I got a stock reply from a handbook, and always within 24 hours.”