Country Woods Unfinished Furniture

With unfinished furniture, there is a distinct amount of pride in staining the piece yourself. But there's a high degree of risk, too: Will the finish be beautiful, or will it look like an amateur's job? For Marilyn Cavanaugh, owner and president of Country Woods Unfinished Furniture, automating her 18,000-square-foot New Hampshire store was an uncertain endeavor too. But when Synchronics Authorized Dealer P.C. Solutions installed CounterPoint in September 1997, Cavanaugh was well on her way to having showroom-quality business practices. Says Cavanaugh, "We decided to automate because we really had grown, and we needed to be more efficient. It was a scary proposition because none of us was all that computer literate. But now, we've all mastered the system, and no one can imagine going back. Just to have the information at your fingertips: How many do we have? What's the cost? It's just so nice."

One of the largest stores of its kind on the East Coast, Country Woods averages some 125 transactions on a weekend day. In addition to entering tickets, Cavanaugh processes all her receiving through CounterPoint and makes frequent use of the inventory history reports, allowing her to know what additional merchandise she should order.

Cavanaugh recognizes CounterPoint's built-in credit card processing as a primary boost in efficiency. Previously, if clerks would enter an incorrect method of payment, it took a long time to straighten it out. "CounterPoint doesn't let you enter it incorrectly," Cavanaugh says. "It all balances in the end, despite us. The time saved in terms of paperwork the next day is substantial."

CounterPoint's ability to handle layaways and orders is an added bonus, adds Cavanaugh: "We're not a drug store, where you buy something and leave. A store like mine inevitably has a lot of orders and layaways. CounterPoint allows us to track them very easily."

"Most of all, CounterPoint lets us be a lot more efficient," Cavanaugh concludes. With CounterPoint, Cavanaugh is sure to have a beautifully crafted business for many years to come.