Benefits at a glance
- Invoice automation → thousands of invoices funneled into Business Central automatically.
- Toast integration → sync sales data for real-time visibility between POS and accounting.
- Self Sufficiency → Self sufficient within six months after go live.
Company intro
McMenamins is a family-owned hospitality group based in the Pacific Northwest, known for transforming historic buildings into pubs, breweries, hotels, concert venues, and theaters. With more than 60 unique locations across multiple lines of business, McMenamins turned to Dynamics 365 Business Central to unify operations, streamline reporting, and connect finance with sales across every property.
The pain points
Behind the scenes, McMenamins’ operation is complex. Restaurants, hotels, theaters, and retail products all have to tie back to finance. To keep growing, McMenamins needed a system that could keep every part of the business connected without slowing them down.
Running Microsoft Great Plains on local servers, the company struggled to keep up with the demands of a multi-location, multi-revenue-stream enterprise.
- Reporting was slow — pulling accurate numbers across 60+ properties was a manual, time-consuming process. By the time reports were ready, the business was already into the next month of operations.
- Sales data had to be transferred manually — point-of-sale systems didn’t connect to Great Plains, so staff re-entered transactions into the general ledger by hand, creating delays and opportunities for error.
- Inventory was hard to track — with breweries, pubs, hotels, and retail all in play, visibility into what was on hand or where it was headed was limited. That made it harder to plan purchasing and manage costs.
- Inefficiencies piled up — day-to-day processes relied on workarounds, adding pressure to finance teams and distracting them from higher-value tasks.
Great Plains had supported them for years, but it wasn’t built to handle the scale and complexity of McMenamins’ operations as they grew.
Solution
McMenamins moved from Great Plains to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to gain a system that could handle their scale and complexity. We kept it lean, using standard functionality instead of building heavy customizations.
Business Central became the backbone of operations, with finance, inventory, fixed assets, and inter-location sales all integrated. Data from multiple point-of-sale systems was streamlined directly into Business Central, eliminating double entry.
To reduce manual workloads, we implemented AP automation software (Media Spend Management Suite) to funnel thousands of invoices into Business Central automatically. We also built and deployed a Toast POS integration—now published on Microsoft AppSource—that delivers real-time sales visibility between POS and accounting.
By sticking to what works—90% out-of-the-box Business Central functionality—McMenamins gained a system that was easier to adopt, faster to maintain, and built to scale.
Results
Business Central gave McMenamins the tools to run a complex, multi-location business without the manual work that had slowed them down.
- Invoice automation funneled thousands of invoices directly into Business Central, cutting out manual entry and speeding vendor payments.
- Toast integration synced sales data in real time between POS and accounting, eliminating double entry and giving leadership a clearer picture of daily performance.
- Asset management at scale — thousands of assets tracked across three reporting books without added complexity.
McMenamins also gained a system that was easier to use and simpler to support. Within six months of go-live, their team was running Business Central on their own—no heavy outside support required.
McMenamins outgrew Great Plains—but with the right partner and the right ERP, they gained the tools to keep expanding. Reach out to our team to see how Dynamics 365 can elevate your operations.