On-Time Supply is a wholesale fastener and power tool distributor based in Suffern, New York. Its customers frequently purchase the same products again and again, which means the business depends on speed, accuracy, and repeatable processes—from entering an order to finding the right item in the warehouse.
The company’s previous business system was cloud-based, technically speaking. But using it required logging in through Microsoft Remote Desktop, and accessing it from a phone or tablet was about as convenient as it sounds. The system also limited the integrations and API-driven improvements On-Time Supply wanted to pursue.
That is why the company chose NetSuite, recognizing that the right NetSuite solutions for distribution could connect inventory, orders, fulfillment, financials, and future integrations, all on one foundation. Additionally, the company realized NetSuite for wholesale distributors like themselves made repeatable work easier to manage, rather than giving the warehouse more ways to second-guess a packing slip.
NetSuite promised a more flexible foundation for the company’s next stage of growth. Getting there, however, would take more than flipping the go-live switch.
Live in NetSuite, but not exactly living the dream.
On-Time Supply originally went live with NetSuite in April 2023 after working with another implementation company. The implementation was rough, and several of the problems weren’t minor inconveniences, affecting the company’s ability to perform everyday work.
The issue was not that implementing NetSuite was the problem, but that the initial configuration did not match how the business actually operated. This is why picking the right partner that understands how to ask the right questions and build the system to support your unique business operations is so important. A strong NetSuite implementation partner asks the right questions, understands the intent behind the original design, identifies what’s broken or missing, and shapes the system around the operational realities that make the business work.
The warehouse’s picking and packing slips were one especially urgent example. The Advanced PDF forms had been configured incorrectly by the original implementation team, causing NetSuite to display inaccurate quantities. For example, a warehouse employee might need to pick four tools, only to have the form call for seven…nine…fourteen…(you get the picture).
Our Advanced PDF forms for picking and packing slips were so botched that they wouldn’t work properly. The warehouse didn’t know what items to pick.
Scott Gersten
Vice President / On-Time Supply
As the old saying goes, when a picking slip starts improvising its own quantities, confidence in the system tends to leave the building. (They’ve always said that.)
At the same time, On-Time Supply was still learning how NetSuite accounting handled taxes, reporting, and transaction data. Its accountants and bookkeepers needed information presented in specific ways, but the necessary saved searches and reports didn’t yet exist.
By purchasing NetSuite, the company had purchased a capable ERP. But what it needed next was a partner that could help untangle the initial implementation, understand how the business actually operated, and steadily shape NetSuite into something useful.
About four months after go-live, On-Time Supply found Anchor Group while searching for SuiteCommerce consultants. Scott Gersten, Vice President at On-Time Supply, reached out and began working with Caleb Schmitz, Anchor Group’s Chief Revenue Officer, and project manager Dominick Meyer.
What followed was a long list of targeted improvements by the Anchor Group team: performance fixes, custom forms, warehouse enhancements, saved searches, financial reporting, specialty features, and integrations.
We had a rough go-live. Since then, we’ve made an ungodly amount of improvements—specialty features, performance fixes, form changes, and custom forms.
Scott Gersten
Some improvements came together quickly. Others took a few rounds of testing, troubleshooting, and rethinking. But each fix created a sturdier foundation for the next one—and turned ongoing NetSuite consulting services into a true working partnership rather than a queue of disconnected requests.
The picking and packing slip issue was one of Anchor Group’s first priorities. Dominick and other members of the Anchor Group team repaired the Advanced PDF forms, cleaned up the information they displayed, and made sure warehouse employees received accurate picking instructions.
This was a NetSuite warehouse management problem in the most practical sense. If a form tells someone to pick the wrong quantity, the damage follows the order onto the warehouse floor and into NetSuite order fulfillment.
The team continued improving the forms over time.
We added bins to the picking slip so the warehouse team knows where to fulfill an item from when we aren’t using our WMS.
That detail helped employees see where to find an item even when On-Time Supply was not using a warehouse management system. It was a practical fix, but an important one: the warehouse could finally use NetSuite’s paperwork without playing a small and deeply unhelpful game of “guess the quantity.”
“Dominic fixed them with a couple other guys from [Anchor Group], and he did them instantly,” Scott said. “They fixed them, they cleaned them up, and it’s something that we’d been consistently working on for over a year.”
For On-Time Supply, better NetSuite inventory management began with (finally) having accurate quantities, useful bin information, and fulfillment documents the warehouse could trust.
The accounting work proved more complicated.
It was a tough one, definitely. But in the end, we got it solved. We were able to make the saved searches and reports that provided us the data [our accountants] needed.
At first, the team believed On-Time Supply’s NetSuite sales tax reporting needs could be addressed with a relatively small reporting project—perhaps six hours of work. But once Anchor Group, On-Time Supply, and the company’s accounting partners got into the details, it became clear that the requirements went much deeper, ultimately requiring closer to 30 hours of consulting time.
Scott doesn’t pretend it was an easy part of the project (it wasn't the original expectation after all), but the team stayed with it. Anchor Group created the NetSuite report customization and built the NetSuite saved searches that On-Time Supply needed to give its accountants accurate, usable data. Those reports, in turn, made NetSuite financial management wildly more practical because the accounting team could access information in the structure that it actually needed.
“I feel like it’s a great team effort, which is awesome,” Scott said, adding:
work gets done way more efficiently when you're working with people that you're able to communicate clearly with and be open and honest.
That experience became an important part of the partnership. NetSuite optimization does not always move in a perfectly straight line; a seemingly simple request can reveal complicated accounting rules, data structures, or process decisions underneath it.
The difference is having a team that communicates clearly when the scope changes, hyper-responsive to client needs, and keeps working until the result holds up in the real world.
Once the foundational issues were under control, On-Time Supply and Anchor Group could finally focus more energy on making everyday work faster.
In wholesale distribution, customers often reorder the same fasteners, tools, and supplies. Previously, entering those orders meant looking up and typing individual item numbers again. Anchor Group created a sales-history NetSuite saved search directly on the sales order, allowing employees to find items a customer had purchased before, enter the new quantity, and add them to the order.
It’s one of the most helpful things Anchor Group has created for us. I can go to the customer’s sales history, find the item, enter the quantity, add it to the order, and I’m done.
It’s also a good example of NetSuite order management when it’s grounded in the way employees realistically work. The improvement not only removed repetitive steps from a repetitive task, but it made each NetSuite sales order easier to build. These are often the improvements people notice (and feel) the most.
On-Time Supply’s NetSuite environment is substantially better today, but the lesser mentioned (and decidedly less glamorous) reality of recovery projects is the work that goes into fixing the underlying issues. Scott is candid about the work it took to get there.
Sometimes things don’t work on the first try. But after three or four rounds of fixing them, they work the way you want them to—and that’s an awesome feeling.
“Failure is success in progress,” as the saying goes. Scott and Dominic embraced that mindset, treating each round of trial and error not as a setback, but as another problem they could solve together.
That openness goes both ways. The best client-partner relationships occur when both sides are willing to invest the time and openness to collaboration, establish trust, and work together.
I feel very heard. Everyone I work with at Anchor Group listens to my opinion, but they’ll also tell me when they think there’s a better way to do something.
For Scott, the relationship has never felt like a simple exchange of requests, hours, and invoices. The way the team gets to the answer matters just as much as the answer itself.
It’s a great team effort, which is awesome because work gets done way more efficiently when you’re working with people you’re able to communicate clearly with and be open and honest. It’s not just transactional. It's not, ‘hey, I need this done and I'm going to pay you to do it.’ It's the way you get there that makes the difference.
And when it comes to Dominic, Scott has a particularly fitting review:
It’s a silly pun…but Dom is my anchor. I would go to battle with that man. If he can’t do something, he figures it out and gets it done.
(We love puns.)
Over time, the work expanded from urgent repairs into thoughtful NetSuite customizations. This is also a good example of NetSuite customization done responsibly:
Ongoing NetSuite customization services and NetSuite customization support also gave On-Time Supply room to keep improving instead of treating go-live as the finish line.
That stronger foundation also made future NetSuite automation more realistic, where the team could begin thinking beyond today’s fixes and toward a longer-term NetSuite integration roadmap, including the NetSuite integrations that were not practical on the company’s former system—or during the earliest days of its implementation.
The system is now turning into what we wanted to see. We’re seeing the benefits of all the work, and it’s allowing us to take the next steps with integrations and other improvements.
Just as importantly, On-Time Supply now has a stronger foundation for whatever it wants to improve next.
For On-Time Supply, the promise of NetSuite for distribution is no longer theoretical. In fact, its NetSuite wholesale distribution environment now supports more reliable warehouse work, better accounting information, and faster repeat-order entry, which is exactly what NetSuite for wholesale distribution should do: give the business a stable operational foundation and make the next improvement possible.
On-Time supply’s NetSuite story is not a tale of one miraculous customization that fixed everything overnight. Better yet, it’s a candid, honest recovery story about building through practical improvements, honest conversations, occasional stubborn problems, and a team willing to keep at it until the system works the way the business needs it to.
And while that may not be the neatest storybook version of a technology transformation...it's usually the realest one.
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