Introduction
Acumatica is a robust cloud ERP system designed for small and mid-sized businesses. It allows teams to manage core business processes effectively and even provides industry-specific software editions.
But when it comes to finance process automation in Acumatica, certain functions still require your teams to perform key AR and AP processes manually. This manual activity doesn’t just consume time and effort; it also increases financial risks. Implementing an AR and AP automation solution that can easily integrate with your ERP is crucial for creating optimized finance functions. Companies often turn to the Acumatica marketplace to find solutions with pre-built connectors for Acumatica that enable seamless integration with your ERP to fully automate the AR and AP workflows and fill the functional gaps.
Imagine taking your AR and AP management to a new level with just one software integration with Acumatica. Now, you might wonder what the need is when your ERP already provides AR & AP management modules.
In this blog, we will explore how the Global PayEX product suite empowers Acumatica customers to enhance their AR and AP management, leading to higher ROI.
Acumatica Explained: What It Offers and What It Doesn’t
AR and AP management with Acumatica
Acumatica’s Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable modules have several basic automation features. However, Acumatica doesn’t provide the robust capabilities of integrated third-party AR/AP automation software.
For Accounts Receivable Management, Acumatica offers:
- Invoice and Statement Delivery: Users can create and deliver invoices and statements. These can also be formatted for distribution in HTML, print, or PDF form.
- Credit Card Processing: Accepts credit card payments using a PCI-compliant system. Users can also view transactions and send notifications such as expiring card alerts.
- Parent-Child Credit Policy: When dealing with branches or franchises, one can configure parent-child relationships for credit management to control it at the parent level.
- Recurring Billing: Contract templates can be created to apply and manage fees, overage, and minimum charges.
- Deferred Revenue Recognition: When deferred revenue codes are used for individual line items, Acumatica recognizes the current part of deferred revenue and applies the appropriate transaction.
- Customer Refund Balance Management: Allows one to track and apply customer refunds to payments, prepayments, and credit memos.
For Accounts Payable Management, Acumatica offers:
- Vendor Prepayments: Prepayment requests can be entered, issued, and applied automatically to invoices as they are received.
- Prepaid Expense Recognition: Assigns a deferred expense schedule by AP line item. Payments are categorized between prepaid accounts and expense accounts.
- Automated Invoice approval: Set up the process to automatically approve payments or follow an approval process to prioritize or delay payment before these documents are processed and paid.
- Acumatica Self-Service Portal: Enables you to view invoices, make payments, and store credit card information.
- Tax support: Automatically calculate withholding and VAT taxes and prepare one or more versions of tax filing reports.
Some Challenges in AR and AP Management with Acumatica
Let’s explore some key areas where Acumatica users can enhance their day-to-day AR and AP management within the Acumatica framework.
- Opportunities for Enhanced Features
In Acumatica, AP and AR processes typically involve a combination of automated and manual tasks.
While Acumatica streamlines many aspects of these processes through automation, several areas could benefit from advanced features to further ease AR and AP management.
For Accounts Receivable:
- There is no user interface for customers to log in, select invoices, offset credit notes and make payments
- Does not support collection and reporting of surcharges
- No ability to natively process cheques, ACH etc.
- Acumatica cannot read buyers’ emails and match the payments to the invoices, including deductions.
- It has no native OCR or ML capabilities to perform partial matches, suggested actions, etc.
For Accounts Payable:
- There is no interface for your suppliers to upload invoices and translate them.
- There is no mechanism to store invoices natively. Invoices must be stored as documents under AP.
- It does not support native comparisons of orders, invoices and receipts if there are no common SKU codes.
- Reporting Functionality
Since Acumatica is not completely automated and data needs to be collected manually from different systems and entered into the system, there is a potential for report discrepancies.
Acumatica uses batch-based entry at the sub-ledger level, which can complicate reporting as it requires additional steps to aggregate data from these batches for analysis.
- Customization Complexity
While Acumatica offers flexibility for customization to meet unique business needs, adding extra customizations for AR and AP management can be intricate due to the platform’s complexity, integration requirements, technical expertise needed, and associated costs.
A more efficient approach might be to explore the Acumatica marketplace for existing solutions that can be easily integrated with the ERP.
- Lack of multi-currency and multi-language support
Acumatica users need to manually perform currency revaluations in the system. While built-in localization and translation tools are available, they are rudimentary, and users must rely on local partners for the necessary functionality. Also, because of its lack of multibook accounting, Acumatica cannot support international businesses that must comply with the U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and the international financial reporting standards (IFRS).
Bridging AR and AP Automation Gaps in Acumatica with Global PayEX
Addressing the limitations within Acumatica ERP, lacking native AR/AP automation, Global PayEX provides transformative solutions that utilize state-of-the-art technology and innovative methodologies for efficient, error-free, and expedited AR and AP processes. Our solutions integrate with Acumatica, making it 5X more powerful.
1. End-to-end automation of AR and AP management:
The Global PayEX product suite automates the entire AR and AP management, from invoice generation and payment processing to reconciliation and reporting. Businesses achieve enhanced operational efficiency by automating these tasks and eliminating human intervention. Here are the key features of Global PayEX’s AR and AP Automation product suite:
Accounts Receivable Automation:
- Real-time e-Invoice delivery
- Multiple payment options
- Intelligent dunning
- Automated collection workflows
- Automated payment reconciliation
- Automated deductions management
Accounts Payable Automation:
- Digitized Purchase Order delivery
- Unified portal for vendor interaction
- Approval workflows specific to your business
- Automated pay-outs
- Automated statement reconciliation
2. Advanced reporting and real-time insights
Global PayEX’s solutions, integrated with Acumatica, ensure you always have access to all relevant AR and AP information at your fingertips. All data is real-time, so you no longer need to rely on outdated information. It also allows you to create customized reports with drill-down options with just a few clicks. The dashboard gives you an overview of your business’s financial performance by keeping track of critical metrics such as DSO, DPO, AR aging data, CEI, etc.
3. Highly customizable features
Global PayEX’s AR and AP automation solutions offer extensive customization, allowing businesses to tailor workflows, templates, and features to their unique needs. For instance, a computer software company can configure custom workflows for invoice generation, automate reminders for overdue payments, and personalize invoice templates to reflect their branding. Together, Global PayEX and Acumatica go above and beyond to understand your current process and requirements, developing a customized workflow that addresses your finance team’s challenges.
4. Multi-currency and multi-language support
International B2B payments often involve many complexities, like currency conversion and compliance with international regulations. Global PayEX’s solutions support 20+ languages across the globe and automate currency conversion for buyers to avoid additional currency conversion charges. It also provides support for B2B cross-border payments.
Future-Proof Your Finance Function with Global PayEX + Acumatica Integration
Small and mid-sized businesses must adapt to current needs and lay the groundwork for sustained financial excellence to thrive in this competitive marketplace. The dynamic integration of Global PayEX solutions with Acumatica creates a robust foundation for streamlined financial processes. Built to complement your existing ERP, Global PayEX is the only Acumatica-certified ISV listed in the Acumatica marketplace with both Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable Solutions on a single software platform. This seamless integration empowers businesses to optimize cash flow management and focus on business growth and expansion.
At Global PayEX, we help Acumatica customers achieve operational efficiency and optimize working capital management with our AI-enabled product suite. Talk to our experts to learn more about our solutions.