The Challenge
Manual Processing at High Volume
By around 2010, Jeffrey Stein Sales was on a steep growth trajectory as its reach expanded and it supplied more and more stores. But many core processes were still manual. Customers placed orders by hand and faxed them through, and the team then captured orders, invoices, credit notes, and supplier documents manually. At Jeffrey Stein Sales’s volume, this meant managing around 10,000 to 15,000 line items, making invoicing and document processing slow, labor-intensive, and prone to mistakes. The admin workload also pulled time away from sales and growth. Clint du Plessis joined the business in 2004 and remembers how operational knowledge was often learned on the job. Over time, the team realized they needed to automate key workflows to keep scaling efficiently.
High-volume admin created bottlenecks
“We were capturing everything manually, for a company that had over 30,000–40,000 lines, checking all those lines becomes a very cumbersome task. The manpower required is exorbitant,” said Clint du Plessis, Systems Manager.
Automated feeds and workflows
“We used to have customers who used to write out orders by hand and then fax them to us. Nowadays, they just log on to our website, then Flowgear will grab that on the back end and feed our accounting system, which is populated automatically,” said Clint.
The Solution
Website Ordering Integrated With the Accounting System
Jeffrey Stein Sales adopted Flowgear in 2011, making them one of Flowgear’s longest-standing customers. The decision was, as Clint describes it, “born out of necessity” as the company looked for practical ways to remove manual work, reduce errors, and free up time for higher-value activity. Over that time, one of the most impactful integrations has been connecting Jeffrey Stein Sales’s website ordering system to its accounting system. Instead of orders arriving via fax and being re-keyed by hand, customers now log onto the website, place orders directly, and Flowgear retrieves the order data in the background and populates the accounting system automatically.
The Results
Faster Processing, Fewer Errors, More Focus on Sales
Automating the website-to-accounting flow delivered immediate and sustained efficiency gains. The move removed a major manual capture step, helping the team process high volumes more reliably and reduce the risk of costly mistakes that can happen when product codes and quantities are captured manually. Jeffrey Stein Sales estimates the change has saved thousands of hours over the course of the relationship, freeing the business to channel energy into sales and growth rather than repetitive admin.
The time saved is immeasurable
“It’s just literally the time saved since we’ve been doing business together. It’s immeasurable, the number of hours that we’ve saved has been huge,” said Clint.
Scaling automation
With core workflows live, the team can scale product updates and order processing while maintaining accurate data across channels.
Looking Ahead
Supporting New Storefronts and Future Needs
Jeffrey Stein Sales continues to expand its online footprint, including additional websites and a newer storefront focused on new brands. While integration priorities typically get reviewed after peak season, the approach remains consistent: when a new operational need appears, automation is used to keep the business efficient as it grows.
Flowgear, Africa’s cloud-based integration platform provider, lets Jeffrey Stein Sales provide retail customers with rapid, up-to-date information on pricing and availability, and process orders quickly in Sage Evolution.
Leading toys and hobby products supplier Jeffrey Stein Sales was looking for a solution to provide better and faster information on stock pricing and availability to its customers, especially South Africa’s major online retailers. In a highly competitive market getting up-to-date information to customers is critical. The company turned to the Flowgear integration platform to enable it to serve its customers with accurate information more quickly.
Jeffrey Stein Sales are a Sage Evolution customer, and when they were looking for a solution, Sage recommended they investigate Flowgear. According to systems manager, Clint du Plessis, their challenges were:
- providing inventory data to their online retailer customers in real time, and to regular retail customers via their website,
- capturing supplier invoices, which can have many line items,
- processing customer purchase orders.
