Acumatica 2021 R1 (What’s New)

The first of two semi-annual software updates from one of the fastest-growing Cloud ERP companies today, Acumatica 2021 R1 has been released and is now available. Here’s a glimpse some top new features and things to note about this newest version of the popular cloud ERP application .

In this article:

• Usability Enhancements
• Financial Management and Payroll
• Inventory and Distribution Enhancements
• Commerce Integration Updates
• Other Industry Improvements
• Acumatica Technology Developments
• Launch Date and Release Notes

NEW: See what’s new in the Acumatica 2022 R2 Release Notes

Usability Enhancements

Already widely-recognized for ease of use, Acumatica 2021 R1 continues to build on that competitive edge by taking usability up another notch and incorporating feedback from current Acumatica users. With that in mind, here’s what’s new:

• Create CRM contacts automatically with mobile image recognition for business cards
• Enhance side panels with ordering and visibility
• Navigate seamlessly to external URLs from Generic Inquiry (GI) results
• Easily send targeted customer communication through filtered GI results
• Specify User Defined Fields (UDF) default values
• Improvements to AP document creation
• New ability to copy and paste dashboard widgets

Have a look at this short video for a quick demo of the usability enhancements in 2021.

See also: Acumatica Keyboard Shortcuts

Financial Management and Payroll

Several enhancements have been made with a longer-term goal of significantly improving control and automation when it comes to multi-company management and intercompany accounting. A key component is the new Centralized Vendor Management. This new functionality enables you to restrict vendor visibility just to employees that belong to a specific group as well as set restrictions by vendor class or individual vendor.

Similarly, a new Company Groups feature allows you to create unique groupings that provide more granular user restrictions and transactions between companies. For example, you can create groups of companies that share the same customers and vendors.

Also worth mentioning is that Financial Dashboards are now part of the core product meaning a customization project is no longer required to unlock this powerful functionality. Financial dashboards delivered with Acumatica 2021 R1 include:

• Controller focusing on financial management and control
• AR clerk focusing on customer management sales and credit
• AP clerk focusing on vendor management and payments

When it comes to the Acumatica Payroll Module, the user interface (UI) has been enhanced for better consistency and uniformity of screen headers and terminology to improve the customer experience. Plus, Payment Batch Process improvements that make it faster and easier to correct errors on paychecks, modify direct deposit batches after posting, and reprint checks. You can also now import time directly into payroll batches, bypassing the extra step of launching the time module or a separate import routine as required in previous Acumatica versions. Lastly, a hierarchy for Workers’ Compensation provides far better flexibility when tracking works comp source codes by project task, labor items, cost codes, and employee.

Inventory and Distribution Enhancements

A popular new feature introduced in Acumatica inventory in the 2020 R1 release, the Matrix Items functionality benefits from continued development and improvement.  In Acumatica 2021 R1, you can now add spaces to inventory IDs and descriptions, manage images for template items, directly edit the matrix items tab of templates, apply mass updates, and the ability to now add matrix items to your sales quotes and opportunities.

2021 R1 also features enhancements to Drop Ship capabilities. You can now link drop ship sales orders with purchase orders. You can also manage order changes and vendor returns.

Acumatica 2021 R1 Commerce Updates

Building on the Acumatica Shopify Integration that was rolled out with Acumatica 2020 R2, enhancements in 2021 now extend the integration to Shopify POS Pro for customers that accept orders in-person or “brick and mortar” stores.

In addition, to help combat stolen credit card abuse that’s common to eCommerce websites, Acumatica will now import at-risk orders (as determined by Shopify) to your ERP system and immediately flags them and puts the orders on hold. You can later review the orders and decide whether to accept or reject. New settings in Acumatica allow you to enable/disable the import of at-risk orders as well as set the risk import threshold (high or medium risk).

BigCommerce Integration Enhancement

When it comes to the Acumatica integration with BigCommerce, enhancements for the refunds and returns process makes everything faster and more efficient. You can now manage refunds from within either Acumatica or BigCommerce. Refunds are recorded in Acumatica as a unique order type for ease of reporting and processing. This new functionality supports cancelled orders, partial refunds, complete refunds, and refunds without returns.

Other Industry Improvements

In addition to the new features and improvements mentioned above in distribution and commerce, here’s a high-level summary of other noteworthy improvements in manufacturing, construction, and field service:

• Make accurate delivery commitments to customers through APS capable-to-promise capabilities
• Simplify cost tracking by linking AP bills to field service appointments
• Boost customer responsiveness by simplifying field service invoice correction
• Increase usability with Procore integration enhancements
• Benchmark against peers and see how your company is performing with CFMA benchmark

Acumatica Technology Developments

Built on the Cloud xRP Platform, Acumatica’s rock-solid technology continues to strengthen and improve the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities with new features like mobile image recognition for business cards, a visually intuitive KPI Meter on Acumatica dashboards, and the ability to optimize all your application workflows with the sophisticated visual workflow automation engine.

See Also: Acumatica System Requirements