Acumatica for plumbing businesses: Our review

Acumatica Construction Edition should be on a plumbing contractor’s shortlist in two situations: the company has a true manufacturing operation, or the owner wants CRM, payroll, and accounting on one platform without per-user licensing. It is more difficult to use day to day when a plumbing contractor mainly handles jobs, service work, and job costing. Reporting requires a specialist, the cost structure is not fully built into the system, and the customizations most contractors need require code.

We sat down with Monica Delisle, who implemented Acumatica Construction before joining us and now runs our demos, to assess the product for plumbing and mechanical contractors.

What Acumatica Construction does

Acumatica is a cloud ERP originally developed for distribution and manufacturing companies. Its Construction Edition adds projects, cost codes, and construction billing. The system has three main features to consider. Work begins on a project screen. Companies purchase a consumption tier without paying for each user, which allows estimators, foremen, and service technicians to access the system. Payroll is included in the product and does not come through a partner.

Those features suit some companies. The sections below explain which plumbing contractors may benefit and where other contractors may run into problems.

Which plumbing contractors it fits

First, consider whether your plumbing business handles service, construction, or both. Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing contractors follow similar office processes, so these considerations apply across the trades.

Acumatica is worth a close review if the company has a manufacturing department. This includes precast work, fabrication, or a production line that purchases raw materials and sells finished units. A shop that sometimes assembles a manifold for use on its own jobs is not a manufacturing operation.

Acumatica may also suit an owner who wants CRM, payroll, and accounting from one vendor and would prefer a consumption tier without individual user licenses. Its project-based workflow, covered in the next section, can work well for operations teams that manage their work by project.

Working from the project

The project workflow is Monica’s preferred feature in Acumatica. After opening a project, a user can create its transactions from the same screen.

Accounting teams often organize their work by task, such as entering AP invoices, running payroll, and completing billing. Operations teams tend to organize work by job. In Acumatica, a project manager can open a job, issue a purchase order, record a change, and review committed costs without moving through four modules. Operations teams may find this easier to learn than the workflows in many construction ERPs.

Job costing and the work breakdown structure

Users begin on the project screen, but plumbing controllers also need to examine how the job cost structure works underneath it.

Acumatica arranges work by task. Account groups provide the cost types, while cost codes became a separate layer when the construction package was introduced. These elements do not have parent-child relationships. Before entering a plumbing estimate, the company must translate a structure such as rough-in, top-out, and trim, with labor, material, subs, and equipment below each phase, into Acumatica’s structure.

Controllers can learn a new structure, but project managers must use it every day, so it also has to be clear to them.

Reporting and dashboards

The WIP schedule is one of the reports construction controllers rebuild most often. Because it combines information from receivables, payables, and job cost, it is a good way to evaluate a report writer.

Monica has created the same WIP report in three systems. Acumatica was more difficult to work with than she had expected.

The difficulty comes from the table structure. A WIP report draws on data stored in tables that are hard to join, and the report designer requires the user to know where that data sits. Standard reports are useful until you need to add a column that the vendor did not include. You may then have to hire a consultant or continue the work in Excel, even if moving that work out of spreadsheets was one reason you purchased an ERP.

Dashboards have a related limitation. They are included and present well during a demo, but you should establish who will be able to modify them after go-live.

Unlimited users, with consumption limits

Acumatica does not charge by seat. A company purchases a consumption tier and can give access to any number of people. That can help a plumbing contractor with thirty field technicians who each need job information, and Acumatica gives this feature considerable attention.

Each tier has a set limit. As a company grows, its consumption rises, which may be less predictable to budget than a fixed number of user licenses. Monica worked with customers who reached their limit before going live.

For that reason, Monica recommends understanding the tier limits before you sign.

Before signing, get written answers about the activity included in the tier, how implementation and testing affect consumption, and the next tier. Use those answers to model the first eighteen months of use, not only the first month.

Customization, upgrades, and responsibility for code

Acumatica provides an open API and can be customized around your processes. Before moving ahead, confirm the method used for every proposed customization.

Your company becomes responsible for the code behind each customization. Because the vendor neither writes nor tests that code, platform updates are more likely to cause problems with it. Customers manage their own Acumatica upgrades, which generally requires help from a consultant.

Monica encountered partners that accepted every workflow request, then assigned the work to contract programmers who did not understand the full system. When an update caused problems with the custom code, the customer had to escalate them.

Before buying, separate your required workflows into those the product can configure and those that need code. Use the workflows that need code when estimating ongoing maintenance.

Rules for correcting transactions

Acumatica has firm rules for correcting posted documents. A posted document, including a purchase order, remains in the system and cannot be edited or deleted. The user must create a reversing document to correct it. During Monica’s implementations, the system also would not accept negative numbers, so users needed a separate transaction type for a credit.

Some finance leaders prefer this degree of control. It may be cumbersome in many plumbing offices, where a purchase order can change three times before materials ship. During the demo, have your AP lead correct a posted purchase order and note how many steps are required.

Payroll is included

Acumatica has built-in payroll and handles taxes across multiple localities well. This can help a plumbing contractor with crews that cross city boundaries, because some cities tax all hours worked within their limits even when the business and employee are based elsewhere.

With built-in payroll, your staff runs payroll internally. They are also responsible for W-2s, filings, and deposits, which a payroll service would otherwise manage. Companies that want a service provider to handle those duties may get less value from an embedded payroll engine.

Other systems to consider

We would show Sage Intacct Construction to a plumbing company without a manufacturing operation whose main needs are jobs, service, and current job cost information for project managers. We implement Sage Intacct Construction, which you should consider when weighing our view. Its work breakdown structure follows the way plumbing work is estimated, a controller can learn its report writer in a day, and it uses per-user licenses with tiers documented in advance. Acumatica does have an advantage that Sage Intacct Construction lacks: users can create any transaction from the project screen. Monica readily acknowledges that difference.

How to decide

Take one of your own jobs to the demo. Ask the Acumatica team to complete the following tasks while you watch:

• Enter your job using your cost codes and cost types, then demonstrate how rough-in, top-out, and trim roll up.
• Issue a purchase order and record a change from the project screen.
• Make a correction to a posted purchase order.
• Have your controller build a WIP report at the keyboard, then add another column.
• Identify the activity included in your consumption tier and explain the next tier.
• Describe what happens to customizations during a platform update and identify who performs the upgrade.
• Process payroll for a crew that worked in two tax jurisdictions during the week.

Acumatica should be on the shortlist, and could be the strongest option, when your company has a true manufacturing operation. If the company does not manufacture, use the demo to see how much staff time its workflows will take.