Acumatica releases expanded automation, reporting tools

Accounting ERP provider Acumatica announced its 2024 R2 launch, with hundreds of new features and capacities, many of which center around automation, integrations and enhanced accuracy. 

"Everything about the 2024 R2 release, including the hundreds of new features, enhancements and upgrades across the platform, focuses on customer value," said Ali Jani, chief product officer at Acumatica. "R2 also contains the core building blocks that will allow us to further accelerate our AI and human design elements over the next few years."

Among many other things, Acumatica ERP 2024 R2 allows administrators to set up the approval of reconciliation statements to fit the organization's internal control and financial audit procedures. With this configuration in place, the appropriate users can approve or reject reconciliation statements. Further, users can now match receipt bank transactions to debit adjustments on the Match to Invoices tab of the Process Bank Transactions form. Further, the system now supports the loading of bank transactions from a file located in a secure file transfer folder, created by the bank and accessed via a bank feed in Acumatica. 

Also, the new system has prepayment invoice functionality. With this functionality, users can create prepayment invoices for the items and services ordered by customers. The system calculates taxes on each prepayment invoice. Once the prepayment invoice is paid, the company can report the taxes in the reporting period in which the prepayment was received. When the prepayment invoice is created, the system calculates the VAT amount and records it to the appropriate tax accounts. 

Further, during credit card processing, the system now transmits Level 3 data. By default, the support of level 3 data is enabled for all Acumatica merchants. When a transaction is captured, the payment gateway verifies the card used to create the payment. As a result, for every payment created with a commercial credit card, their system will send the default line-level data to the card network on behalf of the merchant. The merchant must then send an update with the correct data from the documents where these payments are applied.

The new system also allows for a predefined synchronization schedule for validating card payments, which can be run once a day. In previous versions, to automate data synchronization between Acumatica ERP and an external e-commerce system, an administrative user had to set up automation schedules from scratch for each data entity. 

Acumatica ERP 2024 R2 also introduces the detection of numeric anomalies in generic inquiries. For example, a user can find records whose amounts are too large or too small compared to other listed records, which helps people monitor data values and correct any data entry errors. In addition, anomaly detection can recognize deviations in data based on the system's analysis of abnormal figures in amounts, totals, costs, and other values. 

The new version also sports enhanced integration support. An administrator can now use the new Excel Provider with Data Types type of file provider when exporting data of different formats. A data provider of this type takes into account the data types specified in the Source Fields pane of the Data Providers form, which supports String, DateTime, Int32, Double, Decimal and Boolean data types. Further, an administrator can now use the Recalculate Prices command in integration scenarios on the Import Scenarios or Export Scenarios form. For the recalculation of prices and discounts in an integration scenario, the administrator can specify any of the settings that are available in the Recalculate Prices dialog box. The Action: Recalculate Discounts on Import and Action: Recalculate Prices and Discounts on Import actions are obsolete. However, they are still available in integration scenarios. 

Further, the Acumatica Report Designer has been migrated to .NET Core, meaning that previous versions of the Report Designer will not work with Acumatica ERP 2024 R2. This change impacts how accounting professionals create and edit financial reports.

The new release also brings new enhancements to each of Acumatica's Industry Editions, including:

• Construction Edition: On-demand ProForma invoice creation, substantiated billing, and new processes and functions for the project billing workflow.
• Distribution Edition: The introduction of Sales Order Margin Analysis Anomaly Detection with advanced AI algorithms to detect patterns and anomalies that traditional methods miss.
• Manufacturing Edition: Enhancements in the estimating module, including a new Estimate Worksheet, will enable manufacturers to estimate costs for multiple quantities, improving accuracy.
• Retail Edition: Support for Amazon returns and enhancements to Acumatica's Shopify integration, allowing volume pricing and quantity rules.
• General Business Edition: Direct integration with banks to automate reconciliation and expense management, saving time and reducing errors.
  

"At Acumatica, we're committed to continuous innovation, ensuring our solutions are always a step ahead in the ever-changing technology landscape," said Jani. "From day one, we designed Acumatica to be adaptable and technology agnostic, so our customers always have a modern, powerful platform at their fingertips. With technological advancements embedded in 2024 R2, it's the perfect time for customers to benefit from the latest advancements and future innovations we have in store."