Coastal Computer Consulting

Why they needed ConnectBooster

While Coastal Computer Consulting was enjoying significant growth, the company was struggling to gain control of its payment processes and accounts receivables. In addition to the typical stumbling blocks like customer apathy and procrastination, receiving checks in the mail was more of a fantasy than a reality, despite the local postal facility being less than a block from their office. Missed and late payments pushed their A/R balances past $20,000 and the management team tried a number of things to fix the problem.

The first step was to address the uncertainties associated with paper invoices and mail delivery using features in their accounting software. “We worked really hard to get our clients to pay online using QuickBooks,” emphasizes Adam Casgar, President at Coastal Computer Consulting. “While our accounting system accepts checks and credit cards, it wasn’t actually able to deliver what we needed: more money in our bank account.”

A major problem with general business applications is they are designed for the masses, not to support the unique needs of each niche market – like IT services organizations. “QuickBooks just has a basic email that reminds clients to pay their invoices,” says Laura Casgar, Vice President of Coastal Computer Consulting. “Those messages rarely worked, so we spent a lot of time tracking payments and sending notices of calling to remind them they were thirty, sixty, or even ninety days past due.” None of those activities significantly improved the company’s outstanding payment balances.

How ConnectBooster impacted their business

Those pain points remained until the 2022 Kaseya IT Connect event, where the team was introduced to ConnectBooster. “There were a lot of things in the platform we didn’t know we needed,” stresses Adam. “Low and behold, we had a bigger collection problem than we realized, and we were able to reduce our AR by $18,000 almost immediately after implementing ConnectBooster.”

Several features drew their attention right away, including autopay and automated messages designed to attract the attention of MSPs. “With ConnectBooster, once an invoice goes out, we no longer have send a reminder ourselves or ask our admin staff to chase down clients for payments,” adds Laura Casgar. “The messages are cleaner with the right verbiage, the past due amount is highlighted in red, and the reminders are more eye catching and best of all, they work!”

The one regret the Coastal Computer Consulting team does have if not implementing ConnectBooster sooner. “I don’t recommend dragging your feet like we did since ripping the ‘band-aid’ of our collections problems made things much better,” says Adam Casgar. “The reality is that implementation is not a heavy lift and if we’d have known it would be this easy to fix our problems, we’d have done it faster.”

With reduced AR and less hours spent managing collections tasks, Coastal Computer Consulting can focus more time and attention on scaling their operations and sales. Those activities contribute more to the bottom-line and improve the company’s long-term business prospects.

Why they would recommend ConnectBooster