Don DeCarlo: An Office Accounting Convert Builds A Company Around Small Businesses

By Lynn Yoffee

After Don DeCarlo, CPA, graduated from West Virginia University, he went to work for a big accounting firm, gathering enough experience to later launch his own company in Pittsburgh,PA. This new business was focused on helping clients implement accounting software.

But when he moved back to West Virginia several years ago, bringing his company dpdynamics Inc. along with him, he signed up for a Microsoft Office Accounting developers' conference. "That's when they were first introducing Small Business Accounting 2006," he says, adding that he became immediately hooked.

"Up until that time, we'd done a lot of work with Great Plains and other systems. We decided to become Microsoft ISV partners. Now, dpdynamics is solely focused on extending the functionality of Office Accounting," he says.

DeCarlo has always had a special place in his heart for small business. "It was exciting to me that there's a Microsoft product for small business that I could customize. Prior to that, there was nothing on the market that I was interested in," he says.

So dpdynamics started writing add-on products for Office Accounting using a toolkit they developed. One of the first was an import utility, because earlier versions of Office Accounting didn't offer an easy way to import transaction data. "We can integrate functionality of the accounting system with Office Outlook with Business Contact Manager or their website or a time management system," he says.

Because Office Accounting is fairly simple and easy to use, it doesn't come with all the complexities and maintenance that a larger package has, DeCarlo says.

DeCarlo has parlayed his knowledge of Office Accounting's usefulness and ease of use into a two-hour presentation that he holds regularly for potential new clients.

"I can help consultants, accountants, and end users to understand the unique value of Office Accounting, and my company's ability to integrate other systems," he says.

Not only has DeCarlo maintained a roster of clients in the Northeast and a new line-up in the West Virginia area, but his company has also branched out internationally, by adding and supporting customers in the U.K.

Two things that make his company unique are his ability to capture customers beyond his immediate geographic area, and the fact that his seven-person staff is comprised mostly of CPAs and accountants. "So we really understand things from a user point of view," he says. "We found it was easier to hire CPAs and teach them programming than the other way around."

dpdynamics' specializes in integrating systems and extending functionality to create more efficient operations for his clients.

"We recently wrote an integration where the customer had multiple Office Accounting databases that needed to be integrated into Dynamics SL or Dynamics GP to do multi-company reporting. So now we're starting to cross the line from small to medium-sized customers," he says.

But his focus has remained on small businesses.

"I like working with all clients, but there are some advantages to working with smaller businesses because I grew up with a family-owned business and I understand the challenges," he says.

"For example, one of our original customers, an IT company, created a sales quoting and invoice system in Microsoft Access,” DeCarlo says. They needed an accounting back end. So they adopted Small Business Accounting 2006. They bought our import tool to allow them to routinely import transactions.”

Prior to that they were keying data into QuickBooks. It took them 20 hours to get all that done each month. “Now with Office Accounting and our utility, they've reduced that to 10 minutes of labor," he explains.

DeCarlo says that becoming a Microsoft partner "is the best decision I ever made. We love it."

"Most of our customers are able to use our standard products for importing data. However, in certain situations, customers need more control over the data integration than the standard products allow. This may include custom data sources or automated routines to bring data into your accounting database. We can make these types of projects affordable for clients by leveraging our experience with the Office Accounting tools," he says.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Microsoft.