Acumatica offers a user-friendly software that’s a favorite among companies seeking a flexible cloud-based accounting system. Many companies say their employees find it easy to learn, which shortens ramp-up time. Others rave about Acumatica’s additional packages that can be added to the base product for an integrated accounting and business software suite that offers support for multiple departments.
Although it’s hard to improve upon a good thing, Acumatica surely has with this list of changes coming in late 2017. Each of these changes reflects a response to user demand and enhances an already good product to make it great.
Finance and Accounting
This is the area in which Acumatica has made some of the most significant changes and improvements. The following areas have been enhanced:
- Approval of Outgoing Cash Transactions in Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable—now support the process of purchasing goods or services from one vendor and paying for those goods or services to a different vendor.
- Multiple branches that represent legal entities, and use the same tenant in Acumatica ERP, can configure their own tax periods and close the periods independently of one another.
- The new Authorize.Net API plug-in provides PCI DSS–compliant integration with Authorize.Net, and sensitive credit card information is not stored in the Acumatica ERP database.
- Processing statements.
Field Service
Most of the changes in this area involve the Field Services Equipment Module, a popular feature for Acumatica users. Changes include:
- Ability to track components and warranties, including how warranties are calculated for equipment entities and components and on a service order if a service was provided for a particular component of a piece of target equipment.
- Specifying a default Salesperson for Service Orders of a Particular subset of Services.
- Ability to Control Invoice Generation from Service Orders by Billing Cycle.
- Ability to Clone an Appointment Multiple Times.
- Add a map of the Customer Location on Forms.
CRM
The Customer Relationship Management modules are undergoing several improvements. Acumatica ERP now gives users the ability to associate various documents with campaigns. It also supports bi-directional real-time synchronization of data between Acumatica ERP and Salesforce CRM.
Additional enhancements include:
- Marketing lists and campaigns have been improved for user efficiency regarding marketing tracking and analyzing. This includes List Building improvements where campaign members can be created from any generic inquiry forms that work with contact records.
- Marketing “statuses” (Selected, Processed, or Responded) have been changed to “stages” (prospect through deploy).
- For Lead Tracking, if a lead opportunity has been created as a result of marketing activities related to a campaign, a user can associate this lead or opportunity with the campaign. Users can now create activities associated with campaigns or with campaign members.
Distribution
Changes in this area include:
- Item Class Hierarchy
- Specifying Default Item Classes
- Configuring Availability Calculation Rules
- Configuring Warehouse-Specific Prices
- Uploading Prices by Alternate IDs
- Specifying a Price Adjustment Multiplier
- Specifying Cross-Reference Units of Measure
- Calculating Discounts in Different Units of Measure
Project Accounting
As with the Distribution Suite, the Project Accounting Suite has more than several changes. These include the following:
- Simplified budget structure and reporting
- Proforma invoices
- Project-Specific Invoice Format
- Support progress billing on fixed amount and time & material contracts enhanced project rates
- Tracking project comments through purchasing, sales, or external systems
Real-Time GPS Location and More
There are some great changes coming in the technology behind Acumatica! Some things to look for in our rollout in the latter half of 2017 include near real-time GPS location framework in mobile, API improvements (REST and Swagger API) along with improved performance control, external applications can track the data changes by processing push notifications sent by Acumatica ERP, and Localization of Acumatica Self-Service Portal in multiple languages.
Improved Business Insights
Acumatica’s new user interface offers enhanced business insights and an easier dashboard. The new user interface replaces suites and modules with workspaces. A workspace includes forms and reports combined with the functional area using:
- The navigation pane with workspaces
- Links to forms
- Tiles (links with additional parameters to forms)
- The assigned Administrator can configure navigation in the new user interface; he or she can pin and unpin workspaces on the navigation pane, add and remove links to forms and reports in a workspace, and manage tiles in a workspace.
- Every user of the system can personalize the user interface through adding forms to Favorites and configuring Quick Menu items.
- Along with the new UI, users can look forward to role-specific Dashboards, Reporting (Generic Inquiries) improvements, Real-Time Data Exchange with external applications, and Visual Resource Scheduling Integration with Smartsheet.
Ready for Acumatica? Talk to Accounting Systems Incorporated
Accounting Systems Incorporated (ASI) provides ERP, accounting, and other software and systems to help your company grow. We focus on helping small to mid-sized companies improve operational efficiencies through the power of software and technology. Software such as Acumatica ERP can provide the business intelligence you need to grow your company. For more information, visit our website, or call us at 803-252-6154.