As we’ve discussed in recent blogs, there are many reasons that cloud ERP delivers for businesses. Unlike legacy applications, where updates were considered annoyances that slowed down business, today’s cloud applications provide updates that are not only robust, they are surprisingly peaceful—no broken integrations, no re-coding customizations, and no additional pressure on the IT department.
But that’s not all. For many vendors, these robust updates happen twice per year, meaning that users are treated to the functionality they request within months, not years. Following our two-part blog covering the updates to NetSuite, we would today like to turn our attention to a solution we love just as much: Acumatica.
What’s New in Acumatica 2019 R2?
Announced at a launch event on September 11 in Waltham Massachusetts and available to customers on September 19, Acumatica 2019 R2 delivers over 100 improvements and new features designed to make users’ jobs easier and the solution more powerful.
Part of Acumatica’s blend of push and pull innovations, most upgrades came as suggestions from customers, partners, and developers that were then vetted and selected through Focus Groups.
Platform and Usability Enhancements
Making a product work better for customers requires more than just new features. Vendors need to work under the hood to keep the product stable, connected, and offer a platform for new innovation as it grows. Paired with the platform enhancements, Acumatica also makes continual usability improvements that allow people to get more from the product in fewer clicks.
Improvements to the Acumatica Platform in 2019 R2
Designed to make life easier for developers and users, platform enhancements deliver the following:
- Pivot Table Dashboard Widget – Pivot tables are tremendous time savers by letting users quickly summarize large amounts of data into useful reports. Now pivot tables can be displayed on Acumatica dashboards using the Pivot Table Widget.
- Worldwide SMS Support allows users to receive mobile text notifications (SMS) of business events without requiring the Acumatica mobile app be installed on the recipient’s device. View demo
- Contract-Based APIs enhancements where developers can retrieve multiple kinds of detail lines in one request
- HubSpot integration provides real-time sync
Usability Enhancements in Acumatica 2019 R2
Usability advances include new mobile enabled user-defined fields, conditional formatting, and advanced workflow engine with global messaging capabilities. Key usability enhancements include the following:
- Predefined User Roles for Financial Users allow quick set up of financial users to access the system functions they need by using predefined roles designed for specific financial positions. This is an exciting new feature that allows you to assign or revoke access rights down to granular specific processes within a module.
- Mobile Devices have user defined field enhancements
- Conditional Formatting for dashboard table widgets provides the option of specifying the style of rows or columns, including the use of formulas
- Simplified Company/ Branch selector increases productivity by selecting a branch in one click
- File Management Enhancement allows sorting and filtering attachments in any table or entity
- Expense report receipts are autogenerated from images.
Financial Management
A company can’t survive if it can’t tell where the money is coming from or where it’s going. This makes financial management such an important consideration for businesses, and Acumatica delivered a wide range of improvements in their latest release.
- Application of Payments to Particular Lines of Accounts Payable Documents – allows users to assign partial payment to an entire AP document or to individual document lines in various proportions. The system also supports tracking retainage by document (if included)
- Approval of AR Invoices, Credit Memos, and Debit Memos – For companies requiring approval for certain AR situations, in addition to AR documents, users can also approve invoices, credit memos, and debit memos. Learn more
- Accrual of the Costs of Non-Stock Items supports posting of revenue and expenses to non-stock items to calculate their approximate net income
- Corporate Credit Card support and reconciliation has been added to the applications
Project Accounting:
Take control of your projects, labor costs, and materials used with Project Accounting. New in 2019 R2, Acumatica delivered the following:
- Budget Control on Document Entry warns users when a document such as an AP bill that exceeds the budget is saved
- Detail Level of the Project Budget options include task, task and item, and task and cost code with ability to update at both the summary and detailed levels
- Two-Tier Change Management supports grouping multiple change requests with markups into a single change order for approval
- Project Budget Forecasts by period allows comparisons of actual project costs and incomes with the forecasted, original, and revised budget amounts for each financial period
Inventory and Order Management
Whether you make or distribute, control over your inventory is important for the success of your business. In their latest release, Acumatica added the following to make warehouse management, shipping, and ordering easier than ever.
- Changing the Vendor in Purchase Orders enables buyers to review item prices from multiple vendors and select the vendor for a purchase order. See how it works
- Enhanced Linking of Direct Sales Order Invoices processes sales order and return lines with external point-of-sales (POS) systems
- Validation of Customer Orders on Sales Orders automatically checks for unique customer order numbers and manages duplicates
- Prepayment enhancements adds one or more prepayment requests to purchase orders, as well as allowing purchase orders to be added to prepayment documents. See how it works
- Warehouse management System (WMS) added advanced picking and bulk processing
- International Shipping Options with “ShipEngine” integration like current UPS/FedEx/Stamps support. View the demo
Field Service:
Keep your dispatchers, technicians, and customers on the same page, manage service orders easier than ever, and do more with your field service business with Acumatica Field Service.
- Service Orders may be automatically defined by user or appointment type, and they can be copied once or on multiple occasions with new dates and times
- Project Accounting integration supports creating service contracts, project schedules and tasks with default cost codes by service order type
- Manual Discounts may be applied to service orders and appointments by amount, percent, or as a discount to stock and non-stock products
- Calendar Enhancements for simplified appointment creation. See it in action
- Mapping Enhancements for locations and routes
Manufacturing:
Acumatica Manufacturing Edition 2019 R2 enhances Engineering Change Control (ECC), streamlining multiple change requests by optionally grouping them for approval process, and displaying them in bill-of-material comparisons. The Bill of Materials (BOM) has advanced visualization tools and reports to improve usability. Material Requirements Planning (MRP) has improved forecasting and exception handling.
- Engineering Change Control (ECC) streamlines multiple change requests by optionally grouping them for approval process, as well as displaying them in bill-of-material comparisons
- Material Requirements Planning (MRP) has improved forecasting and exception handling, as well as regeneration options for non-stock items
- Outside Processing of manufacturing operations by suppliers has better work flow options from scheduling through purchasing
Get to Know Acumatica and MIBAR
Just some of the many improvements made in Acumatica, customers using this software will benefit from these additions as they do twice every year. As a leading provider of Acumatica for clients in New York and beyond, MIBAR has the skills and experience to make this product work for your business. In fact, we’ve been known to save a few implementation “failures” and make the product work when our competitors couldn’t. Get to know more about our work and contact us for a free consultation.
Additional Resources on ERP and Acumatica:
Three Top Criteria Companies Look for in ERP Software
A Look Ahead: Where is Acumatica Heading?
Understanding Value: Two Early Approaches to Evaluate ERP and CRM
