Q: Tell us about your business
In 1944, Paul E. Leimkuehler lost his leg above the knee during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. While recovering from his wounds, he watched while his own prosthesis was fabricated and decided to change careers from engineer to prosthetics. In the early 1950’s, Paul became one of the first Certified Prosthetists in Ohio. In 1959, he decided to expand his business and opened an O&P wholesale distribution company. Using his initials, he called it PEL Supply Company. Today, PEL distributes world-wide and carries over 250,000 products from more than 300 companies. Our mission is simple – to provide the very best service in the industry. We do this by ensuring that every part we sell, every call we get, every question asked gets our full and undivided attention.
Q: What was your budgeting challenge?
As a team of one, for years I relied on traditional spreadsheets to manage my budgeting and forecasting needs. But it came to a point where my profit plan was running up to 40 pages long! For example, payroll is a huge line item to manage. I had various spreadsheets for personnel, overtime hours, headcount, etc. So if a new employee was hired, I had to ensure that additional person was reflected in each individual spreadsheet. If that didn’t happen, the spreadsheets wouldn’t synch up and I was relying on inaccurate data.
Spreadsheets also hindered my ability to view cash flow accurately. With Excel, I could only gain a broad brush view of the cash flow statement and spent an inordinate amount of time culling through the numbers to ensure accuracy – the margin for human error was tremendous. I needed to automate the process to ensure accuracy and efficiency to more strategically manage the financial health of the company.
Q: Why did you choose Budget Maestro?
There were two key features of Budget Maestro that appealed to me. First, the payroll module and second the cash flow statement.
By relying on Budget Maestro, I can customize the program by employee to intuitively calculate the right social security, unemployment, 401(k) matches, etc. to ensure the accuracy of the numbers and eliminates the risk of human error.
Secondly, by automating the cash flow statement calculations I have a more accurate and precise snapshot of our cash as a company. I have a better sense of forecasting when we will be running low on cash, the impact of our fixed expense and can make strategic recommendations to our management team about capital expenditures.
Q: How has Budget Maestro changed your day to day life?
For many years, I spent so much time focused on data entry – trying to get the numbers to work, knowing the amount of human error that went into a spreadsheet based approach to budgeting and forecasting. Today, I am more confident in our numbers and with the click of a button I have a reliable snapshot of our financial health as an organization. Armed with this knowledge, I am in a powerful position to educate key stakeholders on our financials and contribute to the execution of strategic decisions across our business.
Q: Anything else you would like us to know about Centage and Budget Maestro?
The support I have received for the last 7 years has been unmatched. I am grateful to the team at Centage for their ongoing patience, responsiveness and knowledge to assist me through any question or comment and can’t say enough about the value of a comprehensive solution like Budget Maestro to help me more strategically manage the daily financials of our organization.
The post The Candid Customer – An interview with PEL Supply About Budget Maestro appeared first on Centage Blog.
