ANNOUNCEMENT: A4J Gets BenchWorks

Press Release! Or, just a story from behind the scenes of the acquisition of BenchWorks Inventory:

The creator of BenchWorks, Robert Bryant, graduated from MIT with a Bachelors in Physics and Computer Science, and a Masters in Engineering, Computer Science. He interned for Microsoft and Google. Robby worked as a Software Engineer for Google. Can we just sit here with that for a moment? Because he didn’t. He went on to be a Senior Engineer at Cardpool.com, another site with many algorithms.

Only then did Robby develop BenchWorks for a need his wife of Kendra Renee Jewelry and her business mastermind group identified:  affordable, easy, full-featured inventory tracking software. Now, he is a Principle Software Engineer at NerdWallet.com, a site we refer to often for the best Credit Cards and Savings Accounts.

From Robby:

Well, it’s quite a day in BenchWorks Land!  I am incredibly excited to announce that we have sold the BenchWorks project to Mariel Diaz of Accounting for Jewelers!

Wait, you what?!

Don’t worry, nothing is changing for any of you except that now someone will actually respond to your emails.  🙂  Operations will continue as normal and Mariel is 100{f4f1c227a9297829d6c2f0b223ad0188fddc4ac1a871d87b426e6cec743bfd5b} committed to BenchWorks’ existing and future customers.

But, but, why?….

Because ultimately, you all deserve proper support as customers, and BenchWorks deserves to be something.  Kendra and I deeply believe in its potential to help thousands of more artists, but we aren’t in a place where we can make that dream a reality.  Mariel is 🙂

Well, now who is this Mariel lady anyways…..

First off, Mariel is freaking awesome.  She runs Accounting for Jewelers (a business that several of you are already intimately familiar with;) that is devoted to making artist and maker accounting a success. The same way that BenchWorks is devoted to make inventory, account, and order management a success.  She’s super smart, way more on the ball than I am, and has big plans for BW’s future.

And with that, I’d like to give her the stage to introduce herself!

From Mariel:

See, our transition is just that fluid. Robby managed the migration to me with the same love, sequential thinking and attention to detail used when he built BenchWorks.

Accounting for Jewelers is the new proud parent of BenchWorks. We are thrilled!

It is my goal for BenchWorks to remain a central component to your company for reliable inventory management.

You are very important to BenchWorks, and that means you are very important to me.

I founded Accounting for Jewelers after growing up in the jewelry industry, as a result of having been raised by both a jeweler and a bookkeeper for the family jewelry business.

As I traveled and worked as a Gemologist and Bench Jeweler, I continued to see the need for better services provided to small jewelry business owners. I returned to school for my Accounting degree and worked in Corporate Accounting before starting Accounting for Jewelers in 2013.

My purpose and mission in life is to help jewelry business owners succeed with increased understanding and oversight in real time, so there is less stress and more joy.

Accounting for Jewelers and BenchWorks are my vehicles to achieve this with you.

My greatest cheerleader has been my husband, Frank. He ironically implemented Arms Inventory Management for my dad’s jewelry stores 13 years ago. Frank has worked in sales and the medical industry for software integrations and now joins Accounting for Jewelers to lead this new division.

While we are veterans to the facets of the jewelry industry and inventory management, we will be learning the program to provide you responsive and helpful guidance.

We will be working on improving, and eventually integrating BenchWorks with Xero Accounting for all-in-one programming. Our goal is to get you streamlined invoicing and automatic Asset to COGS adjustments. We want to cease duplicate entry between Xero accounting and BenchWorks inventory.

just like that, Accounting for Jewelers now poweRS Getbenchworks.com

Thank you very much for your support!