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How Redmond Inc. Unified 10 Businesses on Acumatica After Outgrowing QuickBooks

May 2, 2026Alaina Richardson

Managing one business on QuickBooks is hard enough once growth takes off. Now imagine managing 10. When every entity runs on its own version of QuickBooks with its own bolted-on tools, spreadsheets, and paper-based processes, the result is a tangle of disconnected data that no one fully trusts. Reports are outdated before they're finished. Inventory numbers don't match. And growth, the very thing every business wants, becomes the thing the systems can't support.

Redmond Inc., a Utah-based family of companies spanning salt mining, consumer products, fencing, and agriculture, lived that reality across all 10 of its business units. What started as a manageable setup for small operations became a serious liability as the companies scaled to more than $160 million in combined revenue.

In this article, we're highlighting how an Acumatica customer, Redmond Inc., replaced QuickBooks and a patchwork of disconnected systems across 10 businesses with a unified cloud ERP platform, gaining real-time visibility, saving millions in inventory costs, and building the operational foundation for continued growth. This story is shared for educational purposes to help ERP buyers understand what's possible with Acumatica.

Company Overview: Redmond Inc.

The Redmond story starts with salt. When the Bosshardt brothers in Utah discovered their farmland sat on top of large salt deposits, they pivoted from farming to mining. Decades later, in the 1980s, they began selling consumer salt products, the first of which were packaged in Ziploc bags.

Rhett Roberts purchased and expanded the company dramatically in the early 2000s. Today, Redmond Inc. encompasses 10 businesses operating out of Heber City, Utah, and additional locations across the state and in Colorado. The portfolio includes:

  • Redmond Minerals: Agricultural, hunting, and industrial salt products

  • Redmond Life: Consumer beauty and food products like toothpaste, electrolyte mixes, and Real Salt, supplied to brands such as CLIF Bar & Co. and Route 11 Potato Chips

  • Best Vinyl and Valleywide Fence: Vinyl, ornamental, and chain link fencing installation and wholesale

  • Redmond Heritage Farm & Stores: Raw milk, cheese, eggs, and beef and pork products from local farms

With approximately 550 employees and recognizable brands like Real Salt, Re-Lyte, Earthpaste, and Trophy Rock, the combined businesses generate more than $160 million in annual revenue.

The Challenge: 10 Businesses, 10 Versions of QuickBooks, Zero Unified Visibility

Each Redmond company started on QuickBooks, with some later adding siloed third-party or custom-built applications. That worked fine when the businesses were small. Some had as few as four employees when they first adopted the software.

But as the companies grew, the limitations of QuickBooks compounded:

  • QuickBooks couldn't handle inventory, warehouse operations, or project management natively, forcing Redmond to bolt on separate applications for each function

  • Employees at every company spent hours entering, double-checking, and re-entering data into spreadsheets, leading to errors that made the data hard to trust

  • Consolidated reporting across the 10 businesses was nearly impossible because data lived in siloed systems that often didn't match

  • A three-person development team spent months importing and exporting data so a separate three-person reporting team could produce reports that were outdated the moment they were finished

The operational pain went beyond inefficiency. At Redmond Life, employees tracked orders by pinning paper to a large corkboard. That paper-based process had been in place for 30 years. When inventory management couldn't keep pace with demand, the company ran out of materials that took three to six months to replenish, costing an estimated $2 to $3 million in lost sales.

Best Vinyl faced similar inventory challenges, struggling with long-term forecasting that led to material shortfalls and delayed projects. And as transaction volumes increased across the portfolio, QuickBooks slowed and sometimes crashed the on-premises servers entirely.

Evaluating ERP Platforms for a Multi-Entity Operation

Redmond Inc. evaluated Oracle NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics alongside Acumatica. The decision came down to architecture, affordability, and flexibility.

According to Redmond's CTO, Aaron Gabrielson, NetSuite was too expensive and its architecture felt outdated. He noted that most competing solutions had simply moved existing on-premises software into the cloud rather than building for it natively.

Acumatica stood out for several reasons:

  • True cloud-native architecture with well-established APIs

  • An affordable, consumption-based pricing model that didn't charge per user

  • Multi-tenant support that could accommodate 10 distinct businesses with multiple locations

  • A robust ecosystem of third-party integrations

Why Redmond Inc. Chose Acumatica

Redmond Inc. ultimately selected Acumatica Enterprise Distribution Edition, working with Acumatica ERP partner Crestwood Associates for implementation.

According to the Acumatica-published case study, the rollout was completed methodically in stages. Crestwood helped implement the first five businesses across three projects, each completed on time and under budget. Redmond's internal team then completed the final two implementations in-house, bringing Redmond Heritage Farm & Stores onto the platform and ending the company's dependency on QuickBooks for good.

The deployment included Acumatica's core distribution and financial modules along with integrated solutions such as Shopify, ShipStation, NetStock, Power BI, SPS Commerce for EDI, HubSpot, Klaviyo, and several other third-party applications connected through Acumatica's open API.

The Results: Five Benefits of Unifying 10 Businesses on a Single ERP Platform

After migrating all 10 businesses from QuickBooks to Acumatica, Redmond Inc. saw improvements across the entire portfolio. These five outcomes highlight how a unified platform transformed operations and fueled growth.

1. Real-Time Visibility Across All 10 Businesses

With Acumatica in place, every Redmond business unit gained end-to-end data visibility for the first time. Managers now have current information on accounts payable, accounts receivable, capital projects, inventory, forecasting, orders, and production schedules.

Under the old system, consolidated reporting was nearly impossible. Data lived in silos, and a six-person team spent months producing reports that were already stale. With Acumatica and integrated Power BI reporting, leadership can see the status of any business unit in real time.

2. Millions Saved Through Better Inventory Management

Inventory was one of Redmond's most expensive pain points under QuickBooks. The inability to track stock accurately led to material shortages, production delays, and millions in lost revenue.

With Acumatica's inventory management capabilities, Best Vinyl now knows exactly what to order and when, which has saved the company millions in reduced inventory costs. Redmond Life has also deployed Acumatica's inventory functionality to get back on track with production and order fulfillment, ensuring the kind of shortage that once cost $2 to $3 million doesn't happen again.

3. Paper Processes Replaced With Digital Workflows

For decades, several Redmond businesses relied on paper to manage critical operations. At Redmond Minerals, employees walked to an office where a large corkboard displayed truck orders and scheduled pick-ups. At Redmond Life, order tracking followed a similar paper-based approach.

Acumatica's open API made it possible to connect third-party applications like Data Docks directly to the ERP platform, replacing corkboards and paper with automated, real-time digital workflows. Employees no longer walk to a board to check on orders. They see the information automatically in the connected system.

4. A 90 Percent Reduction in Development Time

Redmond's internal development team had previously spent enormous amounts of time building workarounds and maintaining custom solutions to bridge the gaps between disconnected systems.

With Acumatica's open API and developer-friendly framework, what used to take 40 hours to build now takes four. The team has created custom applications, including a lot-tracing solution, and manages integrations with confidence. Redmond's ERP Business Manager also praised Acumatica's low-code and no-code capabilities, noting that the ERP platform's flexibility simply isn't found at other ERP companies.

5. A Scalable Foundation for Acquisition-Driven Growth

With all 10 businesses running on Acumatica, Redmond is now positioned to grow through acquisition without the systems headaches that once would have slowed them down. The company recently acquired Western Clay and Minerals, a 100-year-old bentonite clay mining operation in Aurora, Utah, and transitioned it onto Acumatica with ease.

The consumption-based pricing model also supports this growth strategy. New employees and new entities can be added without triggering per-user licensing fees, which removes a common barrier for companies that grow through acquisition.

Why This Story Matters for ERP Buyers

Redmond Inc.'s experience illustrates a challenge that many multi-entity businesses face: QuickBooks works when you're small, but it becomes a liability as you scale.

This Acumatica customer story shows what happens when a growing company finally consolidates onto a single platform. Inventory shortages that once cost millions became preventable. Paper processes that had been in place for 30 years were replaced in months. A six-person team that spent all its time producing stale reports was freed to focus on work that moves the business forward. And when the next acquisition came along, bringing it onto the platform was straightforward.

For multi-entity businesses balancing organic growth, acquisitions, and operational complexity, the right ERP platform doesn't just solve today's problems. It removes the ceiling on what comes next.

Disclaimer: Redmond Inc. is an Acumatica customer that implemented the platform with a different Acumatica ERP partner. This story is shared for educational purposes and does not reflect a Stellar One member engagement.