Acumatica Construction Edition: Our review for GCs and specialty contractors

Acumatica Construction Edition belongs on the shortlist when a contractor has a genuine manufacturing operation, or wants CRM, payroll, and accounting on one platform with no per-user license. When construction accounting is the priority, Sage Intacct Construction is usually a better fit because its job cost structure and reporting are better suited to contractors, and its upgrades require less work from the office.

We sat down with Monica Delisle, who implemented Acumatica Construction before she joined us and now runs our demos, to explain the differences that matter when evaluating the two systems.

Platform breadth and construction fit

Acumatica offers a broad set of capabilities. As Brady Curtis points out, a business looking for one platform that includes CRM and payroll may find Acumatica appealing. However, that breadth can be a weakness if the individual workflows do not fit the company well enough.

When Monica implemented it, Acumatica already had embedded payroll, and it handled multi-local taxes well. The trade-off was that it was in-house payroll: her clients’ payroll departments still handled the W-2s and tax filings that a payroll service would manage for them. Sage Intacct Construction uses a connected payroll specialist. The provider we bundle and recommend is Hammr, which covers certified payroll, prevailing wage, and multi-union work.

Workers’ compensation and certified payroll were still being developed in Acumatica when she left. Test those two capabilities in the current product.

Brady Curtis, our ERP advisor, points to another structural difference: Acumatica uses a segmented, hybrid-dimensional chart of accounts, while Sage Intacct Construction uses a true dimensional chart of accounts.

Comparing the number of features will not give you a clear answer. You need to know whether each platform handles construction accounting, job costing, reporting, payroll, and operations the way your company works.

Reporting and the WIP report

Monica’s clearest comparison involves one of the most important reports in construction accounting: the work-in-progress report.

She started with Sage 100 Contractor. Its stock WIP report was built in code and locked, so changing it meant creating a custom report from scratch. Monica already knew the report writer well, but the work was still substantial.

She expected a modern cloud ERP to make report building easier. In her experience, Acumatica did not.

Her experience with Sage Intacct Construction was different. After an eight-hour report-writer class and a few hours of exploring the system, she built a WIP report in about three hours as a new user.

Sage Intacct Construction offers two reporting tools: one designed to be easier for end users and another that is more involved but more powerful. Monica found both simpler than Acumatica’s reporting environment at the time and the legacy report writer she had used.

This affects how much a finance team depends on outside help. A team that can build and change its own reports and dashboards does not need to call a consultant every time management asks a new question.

In your own evaluation, have someone on your team build or change a WIP report in each product.

Job costing and the work breakdown structure

Construction accounting must connect job costs and work in progress to both project-level reporting and the financial statements. A general ledger alone cannot provide that structure. Coding a check to an expense account does not create the job-cost detail a contractor needs.

For Monica, Sage Intacct Construction’s work breakdown structure felt familiar because it reflected the construction systems she had already used.

When Monica implemented Acumatica, the system used account groups to form cost types, and project activity revolved around tasks. Cost codes had been added separately with the construction package, with no parent-child relationships.

She found that the cost-code and cost-type structure did not feel fully integrated with the rest of the system.

Project managers may also notice this because they work in the cost-code structure every day.

In your evaluation, build your own cost-code structure in each product and ask the project managers as well as the accountants whether it makes sense.

Working directly from the project

In Monica’s experience, Acumatica had a useful operational advantage: a user could open a project and work directly from it.

Transactions could be created without leaving the project and navigating through separate modules. This is more important to operations than to accounting. Accounting users often work by task, such as entering AP invoices, running payroll, or completing the close. Operations teams tend to organize their day around projects.

Sage Intacct Construction now provides access to more project information from the project screen, but Monica still sees a specific limitation:

Sage 100 Contractor was also built around a project-centered way of working, which is one reason Monica notices this difference.

This difference is important when you define the scope of each system. Sage Intacct Construction covers the accounting and job-cost side of a project; project management runs through Sage Construction Management, a separate portal that integrates with it. Put an operations user in the demo of each system and count the steps it takes to complete a real project task.

Unlimited users and consumption tiers

Acumatica does not use conventional per-user pricing. It prices around consumption tiers, allowing some customers to provide broad user access without buying a licence for each person.

Some contractors like that. The number of users is unlimited, but the consumption tier still limits use.

Each tier is a hard limit, and the transaction-based model requires careful scoping. Monica saw customers reach those limits earlier than they expected.

One example involved snapshots used to test and deploy implementation work.

Customers selected a tier they expected to be enough and reached the limit before go-live.

Model consumption as carefully as you model user count. Ask which activities count toward the tier, how implementation and testing affect it, how usage is monitored, and what happens when the company reaches the next threshold.

Customisation, posting, and upgrades

Customisation can help when a contractor’s workflows differ from the standard. The risk comes when those changes require code.

In Monica’s Acumatica implementations, any departure from the standard workflow required programmers.

The programmers were contractors who did not know the whole system, so one customisation often required another. When an update was released, the custom code could break and require more paid programming work.

Her clients ran their own upgrades, usually with a consultant, because Acumatica did not push automatic updates.

This applies to any ERP: standard configuration is easier to maintain than custom code.

Posting also needs careful review. Monica found Acumatica extremely structured. Once a record posted, even a purchase order, it had to be reversed; there was no option to delete it.

She was also surprised by how Acumatica treated negative numbers.

Every modern ERP can be customised, so asking whether customisation is possible tells you little. Ask what can be changed without code, who maintains the change, and what happens to it at the next upgrade.

What to test before choosing

Start the demo with the main difference between the products. If your company has a genuine manufacturing department, such as precast, fabrication, or a real production line, Acumatica’s manufacturing capabilities deserve serious consideration. Put that department’s actual workflows and data in the demonstration.

If manufacturing is not a distinct part of the business, give more weight to construction accounting, the WIP report, and the cost-code structure. Inventory alone is not the dividing line because Sage Intacct Construction also has a strong inventory system.

Whatever your initial preference, ask each vendor to perform the same practical tests using your data:

• Build a WIP report or change one your finance team already uses.
• Create a transaction directly from a project.
• Explain what happens when you reach the next consumption tier.
• Show whether a workflow change is standard configuration or custom code.
• Build your real cost-code structure and let both accounting and operations evaluate it.
• Demonstrate how posted records are corrected or reversed.

Finally, ask Acumatica how reporting, posting, and upgrades work today.

Have each system complete the difficult, routine work your company will ask it to handle every day. Use that comparison to make your decision.