Acumatica vs. FreeAgent

I would love to recommend it to my friends and colleagues. They have a dedicated storage manager along with some really good cloud capabilities, which helps get the work done efficiently and professionally. We have been using it since 2022, and they are great in this segment.

For micro and small business it is a great solution. The new requirements for MTD for landlords could also be met with this software. Groups and more complex businesses could not use the accounts and tax returns features, however they still could use it for bookkeeping and then export the data to other tax and accounts production software.

• We just went live about two weeks ago, so we are here at Acumatica Summit to see everything it's capable of. One of the things it is capable of is the dashboards and the integration with some of these third-party people to ensure we can get the data we need when we need it, so we're looking forward to getting all that live for us.

Incentivized

• Accounting! As you'd expect. Makes it much simpler andmore cost effective. In-coming and out-goings are recorded and assigned to projects and accounts. My accountant can access my books and reconcile so much more easily than trawling through spreadsheets.
• Time billing - time spent on projects/client work is recorded and is ready to be invoiced as required. Saves so much time and prevents inaccuracies.
• Invoicing - again, it should do this well and it does. Non payment reminders are automatic and clients have no excuses for not knowing the status of their account.
• Account dashboard - gives me an instant overview of the health of the business (am I on track to meet my yearly targets) and my accounts.

• There are a few spots where there is a list of data that we need a total for and we have to extract to Excel to get a total. It would be helpful to see a sum right in Acumatica.
• For the first time today I had an interesting glitch - my entire bank reconciliation unchecked the "reconciled" column and needed to be redone for the month. Funky little glitches happen from time to time
• Pivot tables don't seem to update as expected by using filters

Incentivized

• Reporting on financials, time tracking and project status is a little poor. It's adequate for what what we need, but would be great to see more advanced features.
• API is quite closed so cannot integrate with our other project management tools.

Incentivized

I gave this 10 rating because Acumatica ERP is the backbone of the organization, next to the IT Team. We use this software for many different parts of our business. For example our Retail service stations that utilize the inventory, billing, and financials. Our Distribution company that uses it for Field services, CRM, Sales, Accounts and Financial consolidation of all company financials.

Incentivized

We have used Freeagent for many years now and it serves us well for our needs. To change it would mean a lot of work, and this would most likely only happen if the cost became prohibitive to us.

Incentivized

I give it an 8 because it is very intuitive and easy to use for day to day work. I find it more difficult to create general inquiries and financial statements than it seems that it should be. It's not very intuitive in those areas.

It is a great software that does everything we need for small business clients. It allows to keep the books in a cloud from bookkeeping to accounts production and tax returns, all in one software. There are no major drawbacks and I would highly recommend it for most of our clients.

Incentivized

It's always available.

Based in a cloud and never had any issues with down time. I can access from any device

there have been some performance issues

Incentivized

We used Acumatica Support directly for the first year or so. Overall it's pretty good, but sometimes the support staff wasn't educated on the customizations we had, nor was I as the Customer as I couldn't remember which things were customized and which things were out of the box, so when there was an error, there were some misunderstandings.

Incentivized

I have never personally used support

Incentivized

It was on General Inquiries and it's just a complex topic.

Most of the trainers are amazing, but there were a couple who simply read the training guide

Incentivized

I'd say the partner selection is critically important. I think the software is very easy to implement. It's very customizable to your business. Finding a partner that will work with you to understand your business and your needs is the critical piece to make sure that the system goes along with it.

Incentivized

Did not participate

Incentivized

Acumatica's sales process was much better than that of NetSuites. The NetAtWork team spent much more time with us and showed us how Acumatica really could do everything that we needed it to do, with examples using our data.

Incentivized

I have used and tested out many other systems. I was looking at Xero for my accounting system but at the time I chose FreeAgent because of the way it handles the recording of dividends and the inbuilt time recording. The others I trialed were good and many of them cheaper. FreeAgent best suited my requirements at the time.

Incentivized

No, annual invoices are fine. I do like that unlimited users are included.

From my understanding, the P.O. module is not very robust, at least the last time I inquired about it. At the time, it had a one-to-one match, with one invoice for one P.O. and that isn't practical for many businesses. I don't believe it would be an easy system to use for sending out invoices, if we had thousands of retail utility customers. We do a small number of invoices because we sell wholesale power, not retail, so we only Invoice the municipality. Not each utility customer.

They are very responsive and knowledgeable about the product. If the rep doesn't have the ability to solve the issue, they quickly get someone else involved to assist us.

• We were able to work in one system with customizations we needed in inventory and add all our grants in the same system
• Direct mail invoices was moved to an automated PO system saving time and allowing better financial tracking
• The grant module can be cumbersome requiring flip flopping to program partners etc during set up

Incentivized

• Professional and uniform offering providing great confident customer service. My clients love it, whether they use it a little or a lot. It's a great piece of software - while sophisticated, it's straightforward to use.
• Time saving and efficient use of my team's time. Being able to easily share and compare work / tasks.