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THE CUSTOMER
Gentent is a manufacturer of innovative safety canopies designed to protect portable generators from extreme weather conditions such as rain, snow, and high winds. Founded by Mark Carpenter, the company was built on a patented design that enables generators to operate safely outdoors during severe weather events.
Gentent sells its products through a diverse mix of channels, including Amazon, its direct-to-consumer website, independent dealers, and major retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s. As demand for its products grew, so did the complexity of managing orders, fulfillment, and financial data across these channels.
THE PROBLEM
As Gentent expanded across multiple sales channels, especially Lowes and Home Depot, their back-office operations became increasingly difficult to manage. Orders were coming in from Amazon, their website, dealers, and large retail partners—each with different formats, fee structures, and reporting requirements.
All of this data needed to be accurately recorded in QuickBooks, but the process was largely manual. The team was forced to enter orders by hand, reconcile shipping and marketplace fees separately, and double-check transactions to ensure accuracy.
This created several challenges:
- Manual data entry slowed down operations and consumed valuable time. Management was busy fixing orders, instead of running the business.
- Inconsistent data across channels made reconciliation difficult. Home Depot and Lowe's required custom field mappings that our of the box integrations failed to handle.
- Shipping fees were hard to track accurately. Fees changed depending on the wholesaler.
- Financial visibility was limited, making it harder to scale confidently
As order volume increased, this approach became unsustainable. Gentent needed a way to automate their workflows and ensure their financial data stayed accurate without constant manual effort.
THE SOLUTION
Gentent implemented Connex Ecommerce to automate and streamline their multi-channel operations.
With Connex, they were able to:
- Automatically sync orders from all sales channels into QuickBooks
- Consolidate and reconcile shipping and marketplace fees
- Eliminate manual data entry and duplicate work
- Create a consistent, reliable workflow across all channels
“I like that I don’t need to double and triple-check my books,” Mark said. Now that he has an automated solution for his book-keeping, Mark and his staff have been able to focus on higher-level problems such as taking care of customers and keeping enough inventory in stock. “To reconcile all the fees, I needed both the individual orders and the summary order, and Connex is the tool that has been able to do that for us.”
THE RESULTS
With Connex in place, Gentent transformed its back-office operations and positioned the business for continued growth.
- Significant reduction in manual data entry
- Improved accuracy in financial reporting
- Better visibility into orders, fees, and overall performance
- More time to focus on customers, inventory, and scaling the business
As Mark Carpenter put it:
“Now that we have automated solutions for our bookkeeping, Mark and his staff have been able to focus on higher-level problem tasks, like taking care of customers and keeping enough inventory in stock.”
