ACUMATICA SUMMIT 2013: A very warm feeling...

I am not referring to the weather which did reach about 28 degrees C and we did have a few days that looked like the weather in the picture, but we all left with a very warm feeling of confidence.

The thing about an annual conference is that it is a place where the host presents their plans and strategies. After hearing the presentations and seeing the brilliant slides you then have to ask yourself whether this team will deliver on their promises and whether their understanding of the future trends is accurate.  As you can tell, we left with the answers of “yes” and “yes” which gives us a very warm feeling indeed.

So why do I say this?

I'm going to start with one of the last presentations of the event from a company individual that doesn't normally speak at such a gathering. The major shareholder and one of the founders. In this case it is Mr Serguei Beloussov.  His commitment and desire to see Acumatica grow into a multi-billion dollar  company were impressive particularly when his track record with his other start-ups, Parrallels Inc and Acronis, both providing cloud-based services, are well on their way. What I also found impressive was that it was Mr Beloussov who got into accounting systems because he wanted to change the accounting system he was using for his business in Singapore and thought that he could do a good job of it. He contacted the executives of Solomon in the US and convinced them of his idea and they allowed him to set up a development team in Russia.

The next reason for my confidence was as a result of the presentation by the founder of Solomon which is now owned by Microsoft and called Microsoft dynamics SL. Mr John Howell who seems to have been a mentor to Mr Beloussov who himself confessed that in the beginning when he became a Solomon reseller he had no idea about accounting software or how to sell it. Solomon may not be the prized accounting system in Microsoft's portfolio but it is acknowledged by most that Solomon is very well designed and I understand that Mr Howell has been a main contributor. So we have a senior American with a wealth of ERP experience and a middle-aged Russian IT entrepreneur who have influenced this new ERP system and it seems to be a very good foundation.

At the start of the conference the other key  executives spoke. All very impressive and many had come from senior positions in Microsoft. What was notable right from the start was the variety of accents. First it was Dutch then Russian then Chinese then Danish and eventually American. Although in the US I would not suggest that there is an American accent !  Compared to other Sage and Microsoft annual conferences that I have attended in the past there was not as much hype at this one but more quiet commitment.  It was like watching an interview with the tennis player Novak Djokovic.

It was these indirect observations that struck me the most.

Directly, the system is brilliant. A panel of six of the top business partners in the US were asked about their favourite feature and every one of the responses was unique. The Wiki feature to map processes and workflow, the pricing which is not based on user count, the web services integration, the deep security, the screen and process customisation features and finally ease-of-use.  Version 4.1 was officially released this week and it has the best Excel integration I have seen and a customer portal on the CRM system.

We also heard from a company called Visma who have used Acumatica and branded it for their business which supplies systems and accounting services in Scandinavian countries.  They are a business with close to $1 billion turnover. It is not clear what proportion Acumatica represents but even at 20% it would be huge.  What was very impressive was to see how they had customised the Acumatica screens for their purposes.

In a similar vein a further announcement was made about a deal with a big ERP developer for small businesses. MYOB.  Many people know of MYOB and this deal is to create a web-based ERP system for the larger MYOB businesses of which there are many particularly in Australia.

It is good to have a warm feeling as the summer ends.

So we prepare for the year ahead with a lot of enthusiasm for our future with Acumatica in the UK.

Acumatica Cash Management

This blog is taken from the notes that our senior consultant made during his certification training for Acumatica and focuses on the Financial Management Features.

 

Throughout the training our senior consultant made comparisons to other Mid-Range ERP (MERP) Systems so that we could see where Acumatica really is a step above the rest.

 

“Acumatica has some great features and improvements over what other MERP Systems offer.”

Acumatica Cloud ERP - Cash Management.

Batch Transactions – I’ve seen this in other systems, often hidden away though. Depending on how your bank shows your transactions on your statement, you might want to roll up transactions into one single transaction to make reconciliation easier. Acumatica helps you prepare a deposit slip for example, grouping multiple AR receipts and posting to your bank account with one reference.

Payment Reclassification - When going through the bank statement, you could find random receipts/payments on there. With Acumatica you can enter them into the system against a holding account so they are at least logged. Then once you've investigated them you can reclassify them and assign them to a customer/vendor and Acumatica will create the AR/AP documents for you automatically and move the balance from the holding account to your bank account. Alternatively you can link it to an AR/AP entry if it's already there and you missed it first time round. Compare this to the paper method of highlighting bank statements and then hopefully remembering to investigate it, rather than use it as a psychedelic coaster! By having it in the system it's logged for someone to do something with. I really like this!

Bank Statement Import - File formats supported are OFX and Excel, the latter doesn’t use systemised templates so it needs to be configured each time you import. If you have any other formats, you can use the integration manager to bring these in. Hopefully as the partner base expands, more templates will be developed and it can catch up to other products in the market. That said, once you have your statement imported, it's a really cool tool which I think will lead the market very quickly. It's definitely friendlier than other tools I’ve used. The AutoMatch feature is incredibly configurable and you can create transactions (e.g. bank charges) directly from this screen too.

Bank Reconciliation – This is pretty standard. But that’s a good thing! A nice feature is the ability to void out previous reconciliations and do them again - and easily. I’ve not come across this before in other MERP’s I’ve used.

Overall, I’ve been very impressed with v4.0. It’s clear that the developers are listening to their user base and giving them the features they really want rather than what they think they should have. The best part is that it doesn’t end here. I recently attended a reveal of the features due in v4.1 in August. They are amazing. I can’t believe they’ve achieved so much in 6 months. Stay tuned for more on this!

 

Acumatica Accounts Payable

This blog is taken from the notes that our senior consultant made during his certification training for Acumatica and focuses on the Financial Management Features.

 

Throughout the training our senior consultant made comparisons to other Mid-Range ERP (MERP) Systems so that we could see where Acumatica really is a step above the rest.

 

“Acumatica has some great features and improvements over what other MERP Systems offer.”

 

Acumatica Cloud ERP – Accounts Payable

Built-in EFT Export Capabilities – out of the box Acumatica has one basic bank format but thanks to the included integration manager we can configure many more bank file formats really easily, no need for any additional software to be purchased to handle this.

Corporate Credit Card Processing – if you’ve ever experienced the pain of reconciling credit cards issued to staff then this feature is for you! It’s more of a pre-designed walkthrough than a feature of the system but it’s very nicely handled here.

Vendor Refunds – Again, this is another complaint of other MERPs. Why do they have to make it so difficult to receive money back from a supplier? In Acumatica, all you have to do is raise the debit memo and create a payment using the Vendor Refund type. Then you can reconcile it in your bank. Easy!

Payment Lead Times – Royal Mail let you down again by not delivering on time leaving you to explain why you haven’t paid an invoice? Acumatica allows you to create cheques days in advance of the actual document due date allowing you plenty of time to get them posted out to suppliers.

Advanced Vendor Discount Processing – Not sure if paying an invoice in an earlier payment run will give you that discount you agreed? Acumatica allows you to select all invoices that will qualify for the discount if paid in the next few days. I wonder if it also prints out the apology letter to your supplier!

 

Acumatica Accounts Receivable

This blog is taken from the notes that our senior consultant made during his certification training for Acumatica and focuses on the Financial Management Features.

 

Throughout the training our senior consultant made comparisons to other Mid-Range ERP (MERP) Systems so that we could see where Acumatica really is a step above the rest.

 

“Acumatica has some great features and improvements over what other MERP Systems offer.”

 

Acumatica Cloud ERP – Accounts Receivable

Customer Credit Limits – Again, better than other MERPs. You have the traditional credit limit amount setting but Acumatica also has an additional level for a warning or buffer for any transaction that would take the account over this base amount. Acumatica also has a couple of ways of looking at due dates and calculating the limit on an in time balance instead. This works across modules too. Many other MERPs only look at posted AR transactions for this.

Credit Card Processing - This has the potential to be a brilliant module and looks very powerful. It's currently only linked to one provider in the US but if they expand this for other markets the service will be really useful.

Direct Write Off When Paying Customer Invoices - Similar to other MERPs but less clunky. You can just write off an amount when entering the receipt but you don't need to care which GL account it goes to. You can do write offs with that level of control too, but it's nice that for basic transactions you can set defaults and not worry about it! I’ve seen too many instances of write offs being done wrong as basic users get access to choose the GL account (eek!).

Overdue Charges - Acumatica allows you to raise new invoices with specific charges or use a percentage and a minimum charge. And you can build up multiple charges too if the bad debts persist.

Statement Cycles – This is like most other MERPs but the mail out function and general control over whether you send something out is better. Reprinting is nicely handled here as well.

 

Acumatica General Ledger

This blog is taken from the notes that our senior consultant made during his certification training for Acumatica Cloud ERP and focuses on the Financial Management Features.

 

Throughout the training our senior consultant made comparisons to other Mid-Range ERP (MERP) Systems so that we could see where Acumatica really is a step above the rest.

 

“Acumatica has some great features and improvements over what other Cloud ERP Systems can offer.”

Acumatica Cloud ERP - General Ledger

GL Allocations – this is another very flexible feature.  Some other MERPs only allow allocation by percentage. Acumatica Cloud ERP has percentages, weights, period to date balances and year to date balances. So it can look at the destination accounts and balance the allocation based on their relative balances. That's incredible! It even has a section for external rules if you want to configure your own.

Improved Fiscal Period Handling - Acumatica has the ability to close fiscal periods by module that most other MERPs have and it allows posting to previous periods, but then it filters this by allowing you to make some historical periods unavailable for posting to at any time.

Closing Processes - to close your GL at the end of a period you need to close your sub ledgers and post all transactions created for that period. What makes this feature really great is that there is a button right there on the screen that will show you all the open documents for that period that still need to be posted. And as per my notes on the core features, you can just click them and post them from the same screen. No need to go hunting!

 

“Blown away by the functionality”… Acumatica Core System

This blog is taken from the notes that our senior consultant made during his certification training for Acumatica and focuses on the Financial Management Features.

 

Throughout the training our senior consultant made comparisons to other Mid-Range ERP (MERP) Systems so that we could see where Acumatica really is a step above the rest.

 

“Acumatica has some great features and improvements over what other MERP Systems offer.”

 

Acumatica Cloud ERP - Core System

The Scheduler allows you to schedule processes anywhere in the system! It’s very flexible and very cool! The most common use for this is with Recurring Transactions. In the GL you can create a base journal entry and set it up to post however often it is needed. This is extended further in AR and AP where you can create a base invoice and setup a regular schedule e.g. monthly that will repeat these invoices as required. This is useful for customer subscriptions or vendor utility bills. Other MERPs often have a recurring charges function but this is much more flexible and as it runs automatically, you don’t have to remember to press the button when the official button presser is on holiday!

Integrated UI - A common complaint in MERP systems is that you have to go here to do that and go there to do this and to follow up, go over there to do something else. In Acumatica, a lot of these screens are linked together. If you look at the process of creating recurring transactions in other MERPs, you might have to create a batch, create a schedule, run the schedule, find the batch, open it, edit it and go back and post it from the batches screen. Phew! In Acumatica, you can do most of this from one screen! Edit the source document, view and edit the resulting document and even release and post the resulting document right there!

Report Drill Downs – following on from the above, if you run a transactions report and want to see the source document, the report has a hyperlink, click it and it opens the source transaction. No need to go on the document hunt!

Emailing is definitely where other MERPs fall short. In Acumatica it's really tidy. There’s no need for complex Outlook integration plugins or click yes security prompts for every email you’re sending out in a batch of 500! Everything is handled through a centralised SMTP configuration which can be tweaked by user or by group.

James Morgan Reviews Cashflow in Acumatica and other mid sized ERP systems

When you start a business or project the next 12 months you normally create two forecasts;  a profit and loss statement and a cashflow statement.  They are different as the cashflow statement looks at when the money comes in and goes out.  It also includes things that are not on the P&L like loan repayments etc.  It's very important to have as cash is the life blood of a company.  The proper term is a cashflow forecast.

At the end of every year a company has to prepare financial accounts,  this is made up of a balance sheet and profit and loss.  For larger companies it includes a cashflow statement.  All of these reports are historical, they report on the past year.  They answer the questions; how did we do in the year?  (P&L), what is the financial position of the company? (BS) and what happend in the bank accounts? (Cashflow).

Many of the Mid-Range ERP (MERP) products have a cashflow report; there are none that I know of that are forecasts.  This is difficult to do in most systems becase the payment and receipt information is not stored anywhere.  It's also highly changeable.  You have to predict when customers will really pay you, when you will pay suppliers, you have to build in futue VAT payments and ther irregular transactions.  Thats why most of the time its done on a spreadsheet.

However a cashflow forecast is one of the most crucial foreacsts of a business and particularly a short term one.  You know what happens if you go over your limit on your bank account, the bank quickly react, do that too often and they will wthdraw the account. 

The Acumatica forecast is a big step in that direction.  It does keep cashflow information and allows you to change the expected dates of transactions.  It also allows you to add payments and receitps that you expect but are not driven off the historc accounts, like a future payment.

I still think that there is a need for a quick and clever 3 month cashflow forecast tool that sucks the data from the system as well as another database of items that are not on the system and provides the user with the ability to change expeced dates and work out who they can pay and when. At the moment ours is done on a Smartsheet but there is no integration with the accounts so we have to enter all the information manually.

Andy Pickup's Favourite Acumatica Feature of the Day!

Today I'm going through Cash Management.

1) Batch transactions - take multiple AR receipts and group them into one desposit slip. Makes reconciliation much easier. In Sage 300 (Accpac), Cashbook has this feature. This wasn't available in the standard banking module for ages but then it came in either 6.0 or 6.1.

2) Payment Reclassification - When going through the bank statement, you can find random receipts/payments in there. You can enter them into the system so they are logged. They post to a holding account. Then when you've investigated them, you can reclassify them and assign them to a customer/vendor and it creates the AR/AP documents for you automatically and moves the balance from the holding account to your bank account. Or you can link to an AR/AP entry if it's already there and you missed it. This essentially saves the paper method of highlighting bank statements and then hopefully remembering to investigate it. By having it in the system it's logged for someone to do something with it. Very neat!

3) Bank Statement Import. File formats supported are OFX and Excel, the latter not using templates and needing to be configured each time. For anything else you have to use integration services and do it yourself. That's a bit poor. Hopefully as the partner base expands people will develop the templates for this and it can catch up to RecXpress. That said, once you have your statement imported, it's a really cool tool. It's definitely friendlier than RecXpress. The AutoMatch is configurable which is one up on RecXpress. You can create transactions directly from this screen too e.g. bank charges.

4) Bank Reconsiliation. Pretty standard. Can do everything Cashbook and Bank Services can. Nice feature is the ability to void out previous reconciliations and do them again. And easily. I can't remember if Bank Services has this feature or not. Cashbook definitely doesn't.

That concludes the advanced financial modules.