Total Clothing

Total Clothing

Direct Peak began working with Total Clothing in April 2017. Total Clothing had been using Sage for over 25 years. They had a remote bookkeeper and old systems which resulted in lots of duplication, no integration and a lot of hard work from the Total Clothing team.

There were lots of bad points with this way of working, for example it led to bad reporting, they couldn’t look at the business or cash flow on an on-going basis and were viewing accounts just once a year which wasn’t good enough for making big business decisions.

Total Clothing get a lot of online orders through the website and these weren’t reconciling. They also wanted to find a way to speed up the reporting so they could plan for the future of the business, without so much guess work. Total Clothing wanted to move forward with the business and use the latest technology, but weren’t sure how.

When Total Clothing Met Direct Peak

Total Clothing aired their concerns with their accountant who recommended they spoke to Karl at Direct Peak. While Total Clothing was afraid of the change to Xero and cloud accounting, Karl was very instrumental in recommending and moving them to Xero.

Karl was very proactive in implementing Xero for the business, working from Total Clothing to make the transition to Xero quick and efficient. It took around 1 week for the date to be exported an imported from the old systems to the new system.

How Has Xero Helped Total Clothing?

Xero has been great for Total Clothing as all employees that need to view the accounts can log-in to the one system and they can see all the information they need instantly. Karl created bespoke reports that are a huge benefit to Total Clothing as it allows them to see gaps and trends in their business, which is very seasonal.

This allows the Total Clothing team to manage the business more effectively and make it more profitable.

The Forecast Benefits to Total Clothing

Another benefit of moving to Xero and working with Direct Peak is that Total Clothing can now get a customised management report on a monthly basis. This includes the information that Total Clothing need to see, not just pages of standard stuff that means the report isn’t read. The report is changed and developed each month in line with KPIs.

The biggest plus of the forecast is that Total Clothing are able to look back year on year, and look forward, to make informed and effective decisions for the business, which wasn’t a possibility previously.

Total Clothing is a very seasonal business with school uniforms and the back to school rush. This means that there can be cash-flow issues within the business to cover these peaks in business. The forecast reports from Direct Peak allow Total Clothing to plan for these shortfalls and also work with the bank if overdrafts or finance is needed.

Why Do Total Clothing Recommend Direct Peak?

Karl of Direct Peak has delivered on everything he has promised and has been a huge help in contributing to the success and profitability of the business. He has made the change from Sage to Xero, a change we were very worried about, easy and effective.

We knew Sage inside and out so a new system was a scary prospect. While the team have learnt how to use Xero overtime, in the beginning Karl was there for us to call and was extremely helpful in answering our questions as and when they arose.

While we knew we wanted to move to a more effective and productive accounting system for the business, we had sat on the fence for a while. Karl gave us the confidence it would be relatively pain free – and it was. We now wish we had only moved over to Xero sooner.