The Challenge
Alfresco Homes is a leading supplier of outdoor furnishings and manages complex factory vendor relationships and global shipping requirements. The operational side of the business was running well, but underneath it, accounting processes in had quietly become a serious liability.
A misconfigured prepayment invoice setup, inherited from the original implementation, was sending payments to the wrong accounts. The workaround was a round of write-offs at year end that buried real costs and made profitability harder to read than it should have been. Purchase return workflows were compounding the problem, inflating adjusted costs and accumulating in GL accounts where they had no business being, creating both avoidable expenses and growing inaccuracies in the books.
Layered on top of all of this was a reporting environment that was slow, manual, and unreliable. Without a dependable way to track performance or surface financial red flags early, the Alfresco team was making decisions with incomplete information. As the business grew, the gap between what the numbers showed and what was actually happening only widened.
“We had to write off over $100,000 last year alone. Since Tigunia showed us the right way, it’s going in and out of the account cleanly, and we haven’t had a single issue.”Donna Spieth, Senior Staff Accountant, Alfresco Homes
The Solution
Alfresco Homes needed more than a quick fix. They needed a Microsoft partner who understood Business Central deeply enough to step in, untangle what had gone wrong, and build something reliable in its place. And they found that with Tigunia.
Rather than simply patching the existing setup, Tigunia worked directly alongside the internal accounting team in what became a true Business Central rescue. The prepayment invoice structure was rebuilt from the ground up, ensuring deposits and balances were tracked correctly and that matching debits and credits were posted to the correct GL accounts every time. Beyond fixing the immediate problem, Tigunia made a point of bringing the internal team along through the process, so they understood the logic and could own it going forward.
On the purchase returns side, Tigunia introduced automation that eliminated the adjusted cost buildup that had been distorting GL statements and creating unnecessary expenses. With that resolved, the books finally reflected what was actually happening in the business. Tigunia also brought in to replace the slow, manual reporting environment with something faster, more accurate, and genuinely useful across departments. Together, these changes transformed daily accounting from a source of ongoing uncertainty into a repeatable, trustworthy operation that now saves Alfresco from six-figure write-offs every year.
The Result
The impact of Tigunia's work was felt quickly. By correcting the GL configuration, restructuring prepayment invoices, and automating purchase return workflows, Alfresco Homes eliminated more than $100,000 in write-offs in the first year alone. The long-term ROI from the corrected accounting processes is projected to exceed $500,000. Freight charge errors that had previously slipped through unnoticed are now being caught and resolved through improved training and workflow reinforcement, protecting both margins and customer relationships.
With cleaner processes, less manual work, and reporting they can actually trust, the Alfresco team has shifted its attention from untangling accounting problems to running and growing the business. With the numbers finally reflecting reality, the Alfresco team can make decisions with confidence, and that is where real growth begins.
“Once we were shown how to do the prepayment process properly, everything just clicked. Now it’s clean, accurate, and we’re not writing off money anymore.”Donna Spieth, Senior Staff Accountant , Alfresco Homes