NWA Hardware’s story began with Northwest Abrasive and Supply, a family business that started in 1992 selling sandpaper and abrasive products to furniture makers and cabinet shops. Over time, the company expanded into complementary products such as putty, screws, glue, hinges, drawer slides, cabinet hardware, and decorative wood components.
Today, NWA Hardware serves a much broader market, offering products that support cabinet makers, furniture builders, contractors, and homeowners. The company’s online presence helped create a broader identity for the business, allowing Northwest Abrasive to bring its expanded product offering together under the NWA Hardware name.
“We started with sandpaper,” said Ashley Vandiver, President of Northwest Abrasives. “Then we started adding putty, screws, glue, hinges, drawer slides, and hardware. We’ve grown from there.”
As a second-generation leader, Ashley is carrying the business forward by pairing the company’s long-standing customer relationships with modern systems that help the team serve customers faster and more accurately.
The Challenge
As NWA Hardware grew from abrasives into a broader hardware and building-products business, its operational needs became more complex. The team was managing a large product catalog, repeat B2B customers, warehouse activity, order history, deliveries, tax requirements, and accounting workflows.
QuickBooks Enterprise had been useful as a standalone accounting system, but the business needed a more connected operational platform. Orders needed to move between Zoey and Fishbowl. Inventory needed to stay accurate across thousands of SKUs. Tax needed to be handled cleanly through Avalara. And the team needed reporting tools that could help purchasing, sales, and warehouse users answer questions without digging through multiple screens.
The B2B portal is creating an important new customer experience, but it also introduced a new operational challenge. Customers want to see their order history in Zoey, while the internal team often wanted the speed and familiarity of entering orders directly in Fishbowl.
“There are so many times I would rather have the speed of going ahead and having that sales order in Fishbowl,” Ashley said. “We know how to work this system better, and we’ve been in it longer.”
Solution: Fishbowl + Zoey B2B
Zoey gives NWA Hardware a B2B portal where customers can place orders and review their history. That is especially important for repeat buyers who often reorder the same products over time.
For NWA Hardware, the portal is not just an ecommerce site. It is a customer-service tool. When customers can see what they ordered, when they ordered it, and what they paid, they can reorder more easily and the internal team can support them more efficiently.
The next opportunity is improving the flow of information between Fishbowl and Zoey so that orders entered by the NWA Hardware team in Fishbowl can also be reflected in the customer’s Zoey history. That would allow the team to work quickly inside Fishbowl while still preserving a complete customer-facing order history in the portal.
Solution: Fishbowl BI Reporting
NWA Hardware has also started using Fishbowl BI Reports to get more value out of Fishbowl in daily workflows. These reports are helping the team think beyond static reporting and toward operational tools that can speed up purchasing, sales, and fulfillment.
One area of interest is the inventory drilldown BI report. Instead of simply seeing a quantity number, the team wants to understand where inventory is going, what sales orders are using it, what purchase orders are open, and where shortages may exist. That level of visibility is especially useful for purchasing and customer service.
Another area is repeat ordering. Many NWA Hardware customers reorder familiar items, but finding the exact product from order history can take time.
“Our customers are famous for saying, ‘What have I been getting?'” Ashley said. “Sometimes you’re trying to go through 14 pages of history while you have the sales order up.”
With Fishbowl BI Reports, NWA Hardware can turn that type of workflow into a faster, more guided process, helping the team find customer favorites, review order history, and create sales orders more quickly.
The Results
With Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing, QuickBooks Online, Zoey, Avalara, Fishbowl Advanced Mobile, and Fishbowl BI Reports, NWA Hardware is building a more connected and automated operating system for the business. The team now has better tools to:
- Manage inventory accurately across thousands of SKUs
- Support B2B customers through the Zoey portal and self-service order history
- Calculate tax correctly and manage liability reporting through Avalara
- Execute warehouse workflows with Fishbowl Advanced Mobile
- Improve reporting for purchasing, sales, and fulfillment with Fishbowl BI
Fishbowl gives NWA Hardware a central operational platform, while QuickBooks Online handles accounting, Zoey supports the B2B portal, and Avalara helps simplify tax workflows. The impact is especially important during the company’s busiest parts of the day, when orders are being entered, trucks are being loaded, and customers need fast service.
For NWA Hardware, the value of Fishbowl is not just replacing a standalone accounting workflow. It is helping a second-generation business modernize the way it serves customers while preserving the speed, knowledge, and relationships that helped build the company.
“We are extremely busy here in the afternoons. We may enter 30 or more orders in 15 minutes from three different people trying to get trucks loaded.”
