Acumatica vs. Microsoft Dynamics AX (discontinued)

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.

It integrates fully with the other Microsoft software we use daily, and this coordination speeds up our work and gives us the agility to run easily. For example, in a purchase inquiry, the customer, after submitting a request, identifies the teams that should work on the project, and if they need further review by other people, they are added to the process, and everything is managed seamlessly rather than the sales process. Get the result as fast as possible.

Incentivized

• 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

• Microsoft Dynamics AX's scalability to meet our regional office needs provide flexibility to the team's requirements.
• Combined with Citrix Xenapp, the application offers seamless access for users on high latency unreliable network connection to the application.
• Application maintenance and updates are easy which makes it possible for us to manage remotely considering the servers are located in a remote Asia site.

Incentivized

• 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

• MRP can be slow to adapt to changes in actual production or supply chain transactions.
• Setting up number sequences seems a trivial matter, but these numbers ID transactions once they are in the ledger and are key--easy to miss this point in the implementation process.
• Bank rec being easily automated and able to quickly plug into a bank back end to get data is not the best.
• Payment processing can be 'clunky' based on checks, ACH, Wires...as some of these items are not triggered out of the box in AX, bur are easily added --talking ACH and Wires specifically.

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

Microsoft Dynamics continues to evolve by bringing more functionality to the customer. Also there are several independent software providers that offer a wide range of solutions for vertical markets.

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.

Overall the product does what we need it to do in order for us to function as a company. While there are some concerns over ongoing costs, the belief is, once we have it fully acclimated to our business the cost should settle into alignment with our original expectations. The new features that are consistently being added do add value to the product as they are usually customer request directed.

Incentivized

It's always available.

Some integration and high volume ramping challenges, particularly with BizTalk and SQL Server, but getting sorted out. Outages over time appeared to be more dependent on integration complexity than AX MES.

there have been some performance issues

Incentivized

Some integration and high volume ramping challenges, particularly with BizTalk and SQL Server, but getting sorted out. Outages over time appeared to be more dependent on integration complexity than AX MES.

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

We use a 3rd-party Microsoft Partner for the system. They are responsive and very knowledgeable. While costs have been mentioned several times in this review they are very aware of costs and have developers who are more economical they use to help offset the level of work required to meet our changes and fix our issues.

Incentivized

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

It took a lot of work, but Microsoft ultimately did a good job with in-person training, including being onsite in multiple global locations for extended periods.

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

Incentivized

Our solution deviated from a number of key out-of-the-box standards that were included in Online training. We just used that for introduction to the general functionality.

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

Some rough spots, but ultimately worked out. The contract didn't appear to be structured to support the level of overlapping facility deployments required to meet timeline commitments. Merging cultures on the program was also challenging. Overall, not an easy implementation by any stretch. Everyone did the best they could.

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 was not part of the decision making process to select Microsoft Dynamics AX, however, I do know that an exhaustive search was done and many options were considered alongside Microsoft Dynamics AX and I feel that the right decision was made in choosing this solution.

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

• With the robust built-in reporting we were able to drop an external reporting platform that costed about $40,000.
• API integrations have saved manual entry and reduced having to hire 2-3 people to manage data.
• Several administrators and developers are required for this which costs about 200-300 thousand in employee costs.

Incentivized