Building an Integrated Quoting and Financial System for a Government and Commercial Fiberglass Products Distributor

Alle Designs is a non-asset-based distributor and white-label reseller of custom fiberglass products — including planters, recycling centers, and ancillary furnishings — serving US government installations specified by architects and designers, and commercial clients in the hospitality sector. With approximately 130 core products across categories and relationships with dozens of vendors, the company operates as a trusted procurement partner for large-scale projects, often teaming with major commercial furniture dealers on GSA contracts.

Despite strong sales performance even through economic headwinds, the business had outgrown its 25-year-old accounting system and had no CRM, no marketing infrastructure, and no integrated quoting process. With Revit files on the BIM Object platform coming online in 2026 — positioning Alle Designs as the preferred vendor on architectural drawings before a project even goes to procurement — the owners recognized the need to build proper systems before the growth wave arrived. They engaged Brockbank Consulting to build that foundation starting with Zoho Books, with CRM and marketing automation phased in as the next priority.

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A fiberglass products distributor serving both US government buildings and commercial clients — operating under a GSA contract with approximately 500 products across categories — was running their entire business on AccountEdge, a legacy accounting platform over 25 years old. With no ability to convert quotes to orders in a single click, no order acknowledgement capability, and no integration between their quoting tool and accounting system, the business was held back by manual processes at every stage:

- Quotes were being created in a separate tool (Quoter by ScalePad) with no integration into accounting, requiring manual re-entry of data at every stage
- The current system labeled every document as "invoice" with no ability to change it — causing daily confusion as clients received order acknowledgements that looked like invoices
- Projects ran six to seven months with no ability to do partial or progressive invoicing, forcing workarounds that made financial tracking unreliable
- Vendor purchase orders had to be manually created with no connection to sales orders, and no automated follow-up when vendors didn't respond
- Historical data spanning 25 years in AccountEdge was outdated and messy, making migration impractical without a clean-slate approach
- Marketing consisted of email blasts to an undifferentiated list of 5,000 contacts with no CRM, no segmentation, and no follow-through on leads from architects and designers
- The company had no system to capitalize on their biggest growth opportunity: Revit files on BIM platforms that would make them the preferred vendor on government and commercial CAD drawings

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Brockbank Consulting designed and built an integrated Zoho Books and Zoho CRM system to bring quoting, order management, invoicing, and vendor procurement into one unified platform — with a clean cutover from AccountEdge and a phased approach to CRM and marketing automation.

Key solutions delivered:

- Zoho Books as financial source of truth: Replaced AccountEdge with Zoho Books as the central accounting platform, configured with proper sales order, invoice, and purchase order workflows so every document type is correctly labeled and tracked
- Quoter integration: Configured the existing Quoter by ScalePad integration with Zoho CRM so quotes created in Quoter flow directly into the CRM, and accepted quotes convert to Zoho Books sales orders with one click — eliminating manual re-entry
- Order acknowledgement: Configured properly labeled order acknowledgement templates in Zoho Books so clients no longer receive documents mislabeled as invoices
- Progressive invoicing: Set up Zoho Books to support partial invoicing against sales orders, enabling the 50% deposit structure for new commercial customers and net-30 invoicing for government and existing accounts
- Purchase order automation: Configured sales order to purchase order conversion in Zoho Books, with preferred vendor fields on each item so purchase orders can be automatically routed to the correct supplier — with automated follow-up email cadences for non-responsive vendors
- CRM for lead tracking: Set up Zoho CRM to capture leads from architects, designers, procurement managers, and commercial furniture dealers (Steelcase, etc.), with proper lead source attribution and a deals pipeline structured around the quote-to-order journey
- Historical data migration: Exported AccountEdge data into Zoho Analytics as legacy reference data, allowing the team to search historical records without maintaining a subscription to the old system
- Zoho Learn SOP system: Implemented Brockbank's standardized SOP framework so the team can document and delegate processes as the business grows, with a training video library built alongside every system configuration
- Phase two roadmap: Scoped AI automation to read incoming quote request PDFs and auto-generate draft quotes, and Zoho Marketing Automation to segment the 5,000-contact email list by customer type (GSA vs. commercial vs. designer)

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