The Breaking Point
Texas Collision Centers opened its first location in December 2020. Growth accelerated, with the company opening a new store roughly every ten weeks.
That pace quickly exposed the limits of its financial processes. Closing the books, pulling data into spreadsheets, and distributing reports were all manual and disconnected. This approach couldn’t scale as the business expanded.
“By 2023, we had six or seven locations open, with many more under construction. It was clear that the historical process we used for the first couple of years just wasn’t going to work.”
Closing the books was only part of the process. Once financials were sent out, the accounting team spent days responding to follow-up questions from store managers trying to understand their numbers.
“Within 72 hours of sending out the P&Ls, the emails would start coming in asking questions.”
As the business grew, this approach became a bottleneck. Finance needed a way to scale reporting, while making performance easier to understand across the business, without adding more work after close.
Datarails: Designed for the Way Teams Work
Mike selected Datarails in 2023 to support both scale and usability. The goal wasn’t just to automate reporting, but to make financial data easier to work with across the business.
The team started by rebuilding their existing reports inside Datarails, keeping the structure familiar while removing manual steps. The real shift came as they began building dashboards tailored to how store managers and operators actually consume information.
Different people absorb information in different ways. For some, a spreadsheet full of numbers is just overwhelming. Dashboards make it much easier to see and understand what’s actually going on.
Mike DevendorfCFO
Instead of working through dense spreadsheets, users could see performance visually and interact with the data in a way that made sense to them.
Monthly P&L reviews shifted from static walkthroughs to working sessions, where finance and operations could explore performance together. Managers no longer had to rely on pre-prepared explanations or follow-up analysis. If a number raised a question, they could immediately drill down, filter, and investigate the underlying drivers in real time, instead of following up afterward.
We’re able to do the full analysis in real time. If we want to look at trends or drill into a specific account, we can do that instantly.
Faster Close, Fewer Questions
The biggest change showed up at month-end. Previously, closing the books was followed by separate efforts to prepare and validate reports. Now, reporting is built into the process itself.
“I simply open the accounting period and notify our users that their financials are ready.”
Removing that extra step also eliminated a major source of follow-up work. Instead of relying on finance, store managers can explore their own data and understand what’s driving performance.
Store managers can drill down into every account and fully understand every dollar that gets charged to their store.
That level of visibility stands out, even to experienced hires. One store manager who joined from a large national operator immediately noticed how much more access he had to the numbers. At his previous company, despite its scale and large finance team, he hadn’t had anything like it.
With direct access to their data, store managers come into conversations already understanding their performance, which leads to more efficient finance and better decision-making across the business.
A Dedicated Resource: Datarails Premium Success
As the business continued to grow, reporting needs expanded to include new dashboards and executive-level views.
Premium Success has been so handy. It’s like having another team member, especially when it comes to preparing reports and pulling analysis together.
Mike works directly with the Datarails team to build and refine reports, from a dedicated utilities dashboard to new executive-level reporting and rollups. Instead of managing every change himself, he can rely on dedicated support to move projects forward more efficiently.
That Premium Success support has taken that pressure away.
This has allowed the team to continue expanding and improving their reporting capabilities, ensuring that new dashboards and reports keep pace with the company’s growth, without slowing down day-to-day operations or adding headcount.
What’s Next
With a scalable reporting foundation in place, Texas Collision Centers is now extending Datarails beyond store-level performance into executive reporting and company-wide insights.
As the business continues to grow, the finance team can support expansion without adding complexity, ensuring that the same level of visibility, consistency, and control is maintained for every new location.
