Naknek Barge Lines L.L.C. of Seattle, Washington leases barges, tugs, and
landing crafts to freight operators such as Northland Services, Inc. With
over 30 vessels in its equipment pool, Naknek also handles the repair and
maintenance of vessels and facilities in Seattle and Alaska. Naknek's sister
company Northland Services Marine Transportation manages all the freight
which consists of building and construction materials, heavy equipment and
vehicles, grocery items, and fishing supplies on routes to Alaska and Hawaii.
Naknek is progressive, adept, and efficient with the operation of vessels, and the company needed software to match.
"After our experience with Great Plains, it was a criteria that our new software have a local office we could call for support," said Janet Stebbins, Controller of Naknek. "All the personnel at MASI have been great to work with. I really appreciate having someone to call. With Great Plains when I did reach a person, I was told 'that's how the software is and it can't be changed.' With Navision, I compile my questions and then call MASI. It's either a training issue or they change the software for me, and I don't hear 'that's how it is!'"
"We chose Navision because it's Excel-based and user-friendly. Our Field Superintendents are not accounting people and data entry needed to be easy. A job cost module was also essential to track maintenance and repair of vessels along with voyage costs," Janet explained.
All Naknek employees have found Navision easy to use. Ed Hiersche, General Manager of Naknek, explained that the Purchasing Agents enter purchase orders directly into the system at the time of purchase. "They picked it right up, no lead time. Our philosophy is that data should only be touched one time." The Captains of the vessels enter purchase orders into Excel which are emailed to the corporate office and downloaded into Navision. Prior to this, it was unclear what they had purchased on voyages.
"Navision is flexible," Ed continued. "If a customer calls and wants to know how much money is into a job, we can find that out immediately. The information is accessible and we can find one segment of the project such as pipefitting or the whole vessel repair charge to date. With Great Plains we needed to be 30 days into the project to come up with a figure."
Janet set up each budget item as an account number in Navision; for instance one budget item equals mooring lines. "Now we know how much we spend per vessel on mooring lines," explained Janet. "In the past with Great Plains, we had to guess at our budget and that was a major drawback. Now with Navision we can budget accurately for next year. Each vessel has over 20 categories and as an example, if a vessel is $100,000 over budget, I can figure out where the money went. Also, I can find discrepancies in moments versus the couple days it took with Great Plains."
"The cost of Navision software will pay for itself in a year," said Ed. He has found the reports in Navision extremely useful. "It gives me better access to the numbers without messing up accounting. I can run reports without affecting the general ledger and change numbers to analyze different scenarios. Only the accountants knew what the numbers were with our previous system. Now we have weekly company meetings to discuss budgets. It has taken accounting from historical operations to everyday operations. The system has improved communication between departments and we work much closer together now."
The payroll for Naknek's 70 employees is processed in-house. Navision tracks
their payroll hourly, daily, and a combination of the two depending on the
employee's position. All figures are in the system for tax reporting. While
Naknek didn't purchase the full Navision HR package, the payroll module still
came with enough features to allow them to track training, sailors' licenses,
and eligibility for benefits. Prior to Navision, they tracked all this in
numerous Excel spreadsheets which was very time consuming.
"Navision is also saving me two days with month-end closing," reported Janet. "Repetitive processes are now just a push of a button. For example, labor burden allocation which is how much time a person spends on a job is calculated automatically. When we used Great Plains, I needed a separate Excel worksheet to calculate this."
"We're a relatively small company, but we can grow rapidly as our fleet expands. We can double, triple, and even quadruple our transactions and it wouldn't affect the system," said Ed.
"Navision is a great program for anything you can imagine," added Janet.
Ed concluded, "We have zero buyer's remorse. MASI and the software have lived up to everything!"