Acumatica Cloud ERP Foundation: Suites and Modules (Workspaces)
- Overview
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The Acumatica Cloud ERP Foundation consists of suites such as Finance suite, Distribution suite and CRM suite. Each suite consists of modules which are listed below under features and benefits. Since 2017 modules are called workspaces. All these modules automate the administration of the major business functions of a business. They all store their data in the one same database so that a data change in one module is reflected in any other module. This is called consistency. In addition processes such as invoicing ca n be automated. A process can include approval steps via workflow management. A lot of other features are included which makes the Acumatica ERP Foundation very powerful. The modules and the database can easily be customized by non-IT people, which is a unique feature for Acumatica, and which enables your company to tailor the Acumatica Cloud ERP to your business needs. User roles and dashboards for each user role enables a specific user role to focus on its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), its due process tasks (eg. Customer shipments), and its workflow status. The videos below will highlight some of these features. There is a short video (10 mins) and a long video (50 mins).​
Short overview video (10 mins, 2018). This video shows you the following:
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User roles and corresponding workspaces and dashboards
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Universal search that is very powerful
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Creating a Sales Order (SO) for a customer
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Looking at past sales to that customer
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Add items
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Shop for best shipping rates from UPS, USPS and Fedex
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Email/print SO
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Notification if SO status = Backorder
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Create a shipment
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Create a pick list with barcodes to be scanned by pickers
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Print shipping label
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Create invoice
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See GL transactions posted automatically
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Reports and Generic Inquiries already available to see SOs, shipments, invoices and payments
About the same content is demonstrated in another youtube video but at a slower pace. This video (50 mins, 2018) clearly illustrates the easy and intuitive navigation from opportunity to Sales Order, shipment, invoice and Generic Inquiry, without jumping workspaces and screens.
Long overview video (50 mins, 2018). You can start at minute 2.
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Suites:
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Applications
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Features included and common to all suites and applications​
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Finance Suite
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The finance suite contains the folllowing modules/workspaces:
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General Ledger (GL)
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Cash Management or Banking
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Accounts Receivable
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Accounts Payable
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Video (5mins, Dec 2017)
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Suite
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The CRM suite contains the following modules/workspaces:
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Sales Management
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Marketing Management
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Service Management
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Video (5 mins, Dec 2017)
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Distribution Suite
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The distribution suite contains the following modules/workspaces:
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Order Management for companies which just carry non-stock items. No stock items. It consists of :
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Sales Order (SO) management
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Purchase Order (PO) management
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Advanced Inventory Management for companies that carry both non-stock and stock items. Of course Order Management is required for it to function. Advanced Inventory management covers basically inventory tracking, replenishment, subitems and multiple warehouses.
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Video (5:30 mins, Nov 2017)
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Project Accounting Application
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The project accounting application contains the following features:
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Project cost tracking
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Advanced billing
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Time and expense management
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Video (32 mins, Dec 2017)
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Contract Management Application
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The contract management application has the following features:
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Creating a service contract, and applying cases/tickets to it
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For a case, applying spent time and expenses
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Running the contract bill
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Video: creating a service contract, and applying cases to it. (5 mins, March 2017)
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Fixed Asset Management Application
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The fixed asset management application has the following main features:
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Create fixed assets based on fixed asset templates to set the depreciation schedule
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Add components or changes to fixed asset
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Apply the depreciation automatically at the end of the fiscal year, and see it's tax implications
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When selling the fixed asset, all bookings for depreciation and sales revenue are basically done automatically
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Video
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Deferred Revenue Application
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The deferred revenue application has the following features:
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When a deposit is made for a project that has not been started yet, this deposit is not booked as revenue but as a liability
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When work starts on the project, and maybe 25% is completed, 25% of that deposit is booked as recognized revenue
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This application automatically recognizes that revenue. Powerful revenue recognition templates can be set up at the line item level.
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Video (5 mins, May 2017)
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InterCompany Transaction Management Application
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The Intercompany transaction management application has the following features
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When a company has several branches/subsidiaries using the same currency and fiscal year, expenses paid by eg. the headquarters can be automatically assigned to other branches while avoiding double booking, and while keeping the bookings in balance.
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Company wide reports eg. Profit and Loss will not show these intercompany transactions
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Video (3.5 mins)
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The Monitoring and Automation Management Application
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The monitoring and automation management application has the following features:
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Transactions can be scheduled to automatically occur on a certain time or at a certain event (eg. a certain transaction. stock limit) occurs
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Workflow management enables eg the approval of purchase requisitions, POs, vendor payments to be done before they can be done.
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Reporting, processes (sending invoices that are eg. 90 days overdue to the customers) can be scheduled to trigger automatically
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Business events can trigger certain actions and notifications
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Video (3mins, March 2017) demonstrates how support cases are automatically assigned to tech support people based on assignment maps.
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Customer Portal
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The customer portal has the following main features:
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Contains a product catalog from which your end customer can place purchase orders, and pay for them online
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Paid and outstanding invoices
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Closed and open support cases
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Video
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Exchange Integration
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The Exchange Integration has the following main features:
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Synchronizes contacts, email and calendars of your Microsoft Exchange server or MS Office 365 Exchange Online with your contacts, email and calendars in Acumatica ERP Foundation. For instance when you send an email to your customer in MS Outlook that connects to your MS Exchange server on premise or MS Office 365 Exchange Online, that email will also appear as send in Acumatica CRM Customer contact activity.
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Note that all contacts, emails, calendars and to dos in MS Exchange Online will be also available in your mobile applications such as Contacts, Phone, Text Message, Email, Calendar, MS To Dos, and Microsoft Teams once your MS Account id has been added to Accounts in your smartphone.
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At the same time the social media applications such as Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Twitter and Linkedin will import those contacts if you allow this. You can then easily connect to those contacts via these social media applications.
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MS Teams is one of the greatest collaboration and communication tools. From MS Teams you can invite any contact to chat, video call or web conference where you can share your desktop screen or your web cam.
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Video
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Order Management for companies which carry only non-stock items. No stock items
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The order management application has the following main features:
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Create and manage sales orders for eg. services, fulfill the service, invoice them and get paid
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Create and manage purchase order for services.
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Click here to learn more.​
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Features that are common across suites and applications
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Business intelligence
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Business intelligence consists of ​dashboards, generic inquiries (GI) and reporting
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Dashboards
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Dashboards can consist of e.g. a list of ​new leads of this month, top five customers , activities due this week, top 10 opportunities, etc. Such a dashboard would be a sales person's dashboard. All the lists or charts in as dashboard are called widgets. You can easily create widgets yourself as will be seen below under Generic Inquiries.
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You yourself can create a dashboard for your role eg. Accounting,
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You yourself can create a dashboard just for yourself. Such a dashboard can focus on only items that are important to you.
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Video ( mins)
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Generic Inquiries
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Generic Inquiries in Acumatica offer a way to extract the specific data you need and present it to reporting functions for analysis. But they are not just for reports – they can be used in dashboards, made available to BI tools, and offer drill down capabilities for even more detailed analysis. The Generic Inquiry writer is a reporting tool that can access any data in Acumatica—including data stored in customized fields—and publish it, export to Excel, or format it for OData. The OData formatting option exposes the data in the Open Data Format supported by business intelligence tools like Microsoft Power BI.
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Reporting
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Acumatica Cloud ERP offers two powerful yet simple to use reporting tools:
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The Analytical Reporting Management (ARM) tool that lets you grab any General Ledger account and subaccount data, and display that GL data in columns and rows. The existing reports such as Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance, AR and AP report were build using the ARM tool. You can copy those existing reports and modify them.
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The Report Designer tool lets you grab all Acumatica Cloud ERP data, such as Customers, Sales Orders (SO), Vendors, Purchase Orders (PO), Inventory data, project data, etc. The CRM suite, Distribution suite and other applications have already plenty of reports build with the Report Designer too. You can copy them, and modify them. Or you can create new ones.
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Video on Generic Inquiries and Reporting ( 45 mins)
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MIcrosoft PowerBI
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Microsoft PowerBI is a cloud/online graphic reporting tool that can store external data such as Acumatica data, and display it online in many formats such as tables, charts, maps, etc. The advantage of this tool is that it is in the cloud, and that people can have access to this data without needing access to the Acumatica ERP. Also this data in MS PowerBI can be manipulated, and joined by data from other external resources such as other applications and databases.
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In Acumatica, the Generic Inquiry writer can be used to retrieve any data in Acumatica—including data stored in customized fields—and publish it, export to Excel, or format it for OData. The OData formatting option exposes the data in the Open Data Format supported by business intelligence tools like Microsoft Power BI.
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Security
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Normally you divide access to company data by department or by role. Examples of roles are CEO, Controller, Accounting, Sales VP, Sales manager, Sales rep, Marketing, Inventory manager, etc. Each role can access only data that is needed by that role to do its functions. Access can further be specified as read only, write (change or update), delete. Besides limited data access, access can also limited to certain transactions, reports, dashboards, etc. Acumatica enables you to set up all the needed restrictions that you will ever need.
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Restricted access can be done to the level of a field name.
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Video ( mins)
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Auditing
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Auditing can be done to the level of a field name, which is the ultimate auditing.
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Localization
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Having the Acumatica User Interface (screens/forms, reports, dashboards, etc.) appear in another language requires localization tools.
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Today Acumatica Cloud ERP has already a version in French, Spanish and German.
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For other languages, you can use the Acumatica ERP localization tools which consists basically of the following items:
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Specific language translation dictionaries
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Date and number settings
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Note that the localization tools will help you to create a new language version but, that a full localization will need more detailed work. However this can be done at a reasonable cost by Acumatica partners. ​
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Video (6 mins)
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Importing data into Acumatica. Exporting data from Acumatica
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Importing data from a file outside Acumatica in to Acumatica, or exporting data from Acumatica to a file outside Acumatica is very useful. When you implement the Acumatica ERP you will want to import data of your old application into Acumatica. This is also called migration.
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When you want data of Acumatica into eg. an Excel scheet, you will export data from Acumatica into an outside file such as Excel for further calculations.
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The Acumatica features called Import Scenarios and Export Scenarios enable you to import/export all master data (prospects, business accounts, contacts, vendors, items, employees, etc, and transaction data (AP bills, AP payments, quick checks, vendor prices, AR invoices, AR Payments, contracts, cash sales, etc). Basically you look at a particular form or screen, and you can import into all the fields of that form/screen from an outside file. You can also export all data that is in the fields of a certain form/screen.
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Click here to learn more.