There are two sides to every business: revenue and expenses. The key to a successful business is to ensure that the former exceeds the latter. It sounds simple; but with many, many expenses, things can easily get out of control.

"The financial end of business is as important as the sales end," says Marc Levin, President of Mr. Case. "It's important to know what's going on." With the growth that Mr. Case has experienced since its start-up 23 years ago, it's clear that Levin keeps a focus on both sides of the profit equation.

Levin began Mr. Case (www.mrcase.com), a delivery service of grocery products by the case, in 1984 while completing a degree in neurobiology. After graduating, he decided to pursue the business and continued to expand his company. Now, with three divisions - residential, corporate, and food service - Mr. Case sells everything from beverages to cleaning supplies to paper products. The company carries popular brand names and delivers from one to several hundred cases of items at a time, with most orders completed over the Internet.

Accepting credit cards was a natural for sales, but recently Levin decided to get a ScotiaLine for business^™ Visa^® card to help manage the expense side of his business. "I wanted to simplify operations and cut costs," says Levin. And it did just that: previously, the company had relied heavily on cheques for payment to their suppliers. Not only was this time consuming for Levin and his partner, who were writing and signing up to a dozen cheques per day, but it was also expensive. "Every cheque costs money," adds Levin.

Eliminating the dependency on cheques reduced paperwork and gave the company more control over smaller purchases. The bookkeeper can now see these transactions on one monthly report from Scotiabank. In addition, using the Visa Business card has fostered employee morale by empowering managers to act more independently.

At the moment, Mr. Case has between 5,000 and 6,000 customers. Levin is looking to increase market presence in the Greater Toronto Area by expanding product lines and customer reach. To meet this objective, Levin recently launched Mr. Case's third-generation website, and reports that Internet sales grow every single week. "Last week was our best sales week ever. May '07 was our best month ever. We are very happy with everything right now."