A better, more competitive construction business begins with modern construction and accounting software that provides regular updates. Acumatica Construction Edition—with new improvements from Acumatica 2020 R1—checks both boxes.

What are some ways to remain competitive as a contractor? Staying current with technology is one way. Establishing remote connectivity and ensuring business continuity are other ways to keep your business running smoothly and competitively during the COVID-19 crisis. All three are possible when you implement modern cloud construction software, such as Acumatica Construction Edition, and when you adopt accounting and project management updates provided by Acumatica 2020 R1, Acumatica’s latest cloud ERP release.

Acumatica 2020 R1 and Acumatica Construction Edition

Now generally available, Acumatica 2020 R1 provides improved usability, functionality, and cross-connected workflows. Acumatica Construction Edition, which offers residential and commercial construction management companies a secure, mobile, and single-source cloud solution, has a number of improvements you’ll want to review and utilize.

1. AR Retainage tracking made easier

Automate retainage tracking by configuring projects with stepped retainage percentages, when to decrease the retainage to the next step, and/or when to stop holding retainage. Negotiate a lower overall retainage holdback by capping the maximum retainage held to a percentage of the potential retainage and set a cap.

• Retainage amounts can change as your project reaches completion
• Ability to include change order amounts in the contract total calculation
• Includes stepped retainage threshold and retainage percentages
• Includes an option to cap retainage at a certain percentage of the overall retainage

2. Expanding capabilities with new, native payroll (Currently for US Only – Asia release soon)

Acumatica Payroll enables contractors to eliminate the cost of maintaining an interface to an external payroll system and benefit from time flowing seamlessly across Acumatica financials, job costing, business intelligence, distribution, manufacturing, construction and field service.

• Supports salaried and hourly workers, integrated taxes and tax forms, certified wages, union wages, timecard integration, and flexible payroll periods
• Set up, modify, and report on payroll from anywhere, using any popular web browser
• Access and analyze payroll information with out-of-the-box reporting and inquiry screens

3. Extending project management

Project Managers will benefit from the continued expansion of project management functionality and increased visibility to project data and documentation.

Photo Logs: Photo Logs help users manage progress photos taken by field superintendents, or other employees, and associate those with projects and project tasks.

• Unlimited photos per log
• Ability to download photos to a zip file
• Ability to email photos
• Filter and Search to quickly find photos

Change Orders: Change Orders have been extended to the Acumatica mobile application. Users can easily create, update and delete change orders from anywhere.

• Update summary information, cost budget, revenue budget, and commitments

Submittals: Submittals help reduce calls back to the office and increase accuracies of the data.  Gather, organize, and manage project submittals through our dashboards, and notifications to keep your project on schedule without any surprises.

• Supports a workflow providing the project team with clear, consistent, and easy to access project submittal details
• Ability to monitor reviews and approvals by always knowing the responsible parties and where the “ball in court” resides
• Access submittal activities with automated email capture or appointments, messages, phone calls, work items, and notes

Cost Projection Entry: Allows users to forecast remaining and final costs for a project.  These forecasts can be entered for specific points in time, providing a vision of costs during the project life cycle.

• Forecasts can be compared with the initial budget estimates, helping detect potential problems early in a project
• Users can create multiple revisions, as needed, creating “What-If” scenarios

4. Communications are easy with Outlook

Eliminate multiple processes to update project activities with our simple, easy to use, Outlook Add-In. Now available are several new enhancements making communications even easier for Project Managers.

• Add emails to Project activity
• Add emails to existing RFI or Project Issue activity
• Additional criteria when creating an RFI from email

5. Offering more flexibility with Procore Integration

The enhanced Procore integration makes it easy to configure and schedule the synchronization between Acumatica customers, vendors and Procore companies.

• Bi-directional workflow of information
• Automate updates between applications when convenient by setting a schedule
• Provides Vendor insurance certificates for compliance purposes

6. Impactful reporting

Each release contains reports helping contractors run a smoother business.

A new Project Bonding (Profitability) Report has been added, increasing the information available to share with outside parties, as well as providing internal visibility.  The report will provide Earned Revenue, Billed to Date, Unbilled Contract Amounts, as well as Cost Incurred to Date, Calculated Cost at Completion, Current Period Costs/Billings, as well as prior year Billings and Costs.

Acumatica Construction Edition for a better, more competitive business

The new features and enhancements seen in Acumatica 2020 R1 ensure essential remote connectivity and business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contractors can benefit from the cloud and can learn how by attending this free webinar.

Many of the features have also been at the behest of our customers. Your feedback helps make Acumatica Construction Edition—and all Acumatica modules—even more intuitive and easier to use. You can find further details on our latest release in the Acumatica 2020 R1 Overview and by downloading the Acumatica Summit 2020 Day One and Day Two Keynotes.

“2020 R1 is a significant new product release,” said Acumatica CEO Jon Roskill in a recent press release. “We have to pause sometimes and marvel at the pace of innovation consistently delivered by our product team. Acumatica customers and partners keep clamoring for more and they get it, twice a year, with real quality.”

If you haven’t yet implemented a quality, modern cloud construction and accounting software, then contact our team today. We’ll explain how Acumatica’s cloud-based ERP solution and Acumatica Construction Edition can help you run a better, more competitive business, even in uncertain times.