Acumatica has released its latest software update, and it includes a new point-of-sale tool, advanced expense management, and a new, deep integration with Shopify.
Also new for the 2020 R2 release is automatic creation of accounts payable documents from vendor bills, driven by artificial intelligence embedded in the software. R2 offers self-joining tables and automatic previews to simplify preparation of data that can be visualized on dashboards, analyzed in pivot tables, and used for real-time notifications.
“Digital transformation has become a requirement,” said Jon Roskill, CEO of Acumatica (pictured), in a statement. “With so many businesses operating from remote locations and home offices now, it’s more important than ever to have a single source of business truth that is accessible to anyone, anytime, from anywhere, which can also integrate easily with mission-critical applications such as Shopify or new requirements such as videoconferencing or group chat.”
Key new features
Acumatica POS enables management of over-the-counter retail sales for all retail locations, allowing clients to manage a complete omni-channel experience inside Acumatica.
Electronic bank and credit card transaction feeds allow business or accountant users to download bank transactions and automatically reconcile bank accounts.
Acumatica Advanced Expense Management automates expense receipt creation from bank feeds including rule-based assignment of financial accounts. Users can capture receipt information at time of purchase or send reminders to employees who need to record receipts using the mobile phone. Some of these functions are AI-driven.
For the financials edition, Acumatica has added capabilities for boosting cross-company sales by enabling related companies to buy and sell from each other; to manage customer visibility with centralized account management; and to manage monthly tasks with bank reconciliation improvements
Response to COVID-19
On top of dealing with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as all companies had to this year, Acumatica was also in its first post-acquisition year, having being bought by EQT mid-1019. Acumatica has been operating as usual, with freedom and ownership over its existing trajectory. But the pandemic did inform the way the company responded and adjusted this year.
New for Acumatica 2020 R2 is a deep integration with Shopify, which has been added to the platform’s Commerce Edition. The company has also improved shipment tracking, refund processing, and buyer notifications. As accountants see swathes of retail clients being forced to rethink their business models due to the pandemic, the importance of robust B2C technology has become clearer.
Roskill explained to Accounting Today that a large percentage of Acumatica customers had to move their businesses online very quickly due to the pandemic.
“When they do that, they need good images on a website, the ability to track inventory across multiple platforms, and so on,” he said. “We’ve had the Shopify connector for some time, but we now have released our own that we built that is native to Acumatica. And the Acumatica POS solution is the last piece of this idea of omnichannel.”
Acumatica has also updated its manufacturing and distribution, field service, and construction editions.
