Acumatica vs. Constellation HomeBuilder Systems

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.

NEWSTAR and its ecosystem are well-suited for any
homebuilder looking to manage end-to-end operations with software they can rely
on. It is a powerful tool supported by many modern integrations to benefit the
entire homebuilding business. It would be less applicable for businesses like trades or commercial builders

• 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

• BuildTopia excels at contract management. Every part of the contract process is able to be managed electronically from initial signing to closing, and can even handle more special cases like contingencies.
• BuildTopia manages all of our construction efforts well. All of our floorplans are pre-build in the system, so all we have to do is go in an build out the construction schedule from a pre-made template, and make any alterations from there.
• The selections process is always a headache, but BuildTopia makes it pretty painless. Everything is loaded right in to the system while making selections with the client, and more detailed things, like non-standard options, are easy to load in and process.

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

• Requests for platform enhancements, while easy to submit and get approved, are slow to be turned around...often a year or more passes before they're implemented.
• BuiltTopia, while good for sales and construction, is missing one large thing...a CRM component. The system allows you to manage clients and prospects, but options for email marketing and other CRM-related efforts are lacking.

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

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.

The implementations for Constellation’s products are
very well-organized and help make the learning curve as simple as can be.
NEWSTAR is an incredibly powerful platform and the integrations we are using
are modern and easy to adopt.

It's always available.

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

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

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

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

• Overall, our company has saved money by being able to shut down all the various platforms we were using for different departments and transition to just BuildTopia.
• Company efforts are more efficient, with all pertinent information being in one place and able to be viewed by everyone as needed.
• Efforts of the sales team are better able to be managed and reviewed from afar whereas we only had physical paper trails before.

Incentivized