Acumatica delivers a set of cloud-based business software applications with dashboards, reporting tools, integrated document management, centralized security, and customization tools.
$1,000
per year
Microsoft Dynamics SL
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Dynamics SL is one of the ERP products in the Dynamics family.
This product was acquired from Solomon 2000.
The product is typically used by SMBs, particularly in project-based businesses (e.g. construction). It has strong accounting and project management capabilities.
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Pricing
Acumatica
Microsoft Dynamics SL
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Acumatica
Microsoft Dynamics SL
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Pricing is always consumption-based with no five-year lock-ins or termination penalties.
The Acumatica ERP pricing structure allows adding casual users, suppliers, and customers without paying for additional licenses.
The cost is based on the features and resources utilized, not on the number of users who access the system. An Acumatica partner works with users to understand specific requirements, determine the proper resources and modules for the company, and presents a price for the license.
Acumatica is cloud based which is a plus. Implementation was difficult in both. We switched because Dynamics SL was becoming unsupported and we were always running into a lack of licenses.
Acumatica provided the most "yeses" to our wishlist. Acumatica also had the ability to customize to fit our needs whereas a lot of the other options could not. Acumatica was not priced on a "per user" model, which was very important to us, allowing us to have all the field …
I'm so new to it. I mean it has a lot of capabilities. So I'm used to working with Infor products, so I'm used to large ERP systems and I haven't seen anything that makes me question Acumatica. It seems like I can customize anything and have the system to do what I need. So I mean that's one advantage point why we selected Acumatica is because it can be tailored to our business and to what we need and the way we want to do it
For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.
Streamlines our processes and simplifies our systems. Previously, we had to manage two software systems to handle an order and get it out the door with proper shipping documentation. Now, we were able to deploy the shipping document creation inline with the sales order process and streamline our process. This allows us to save about $3K a year just on time savings alone (in creating shipping documentation). This was a nice win for us for this project.
Financial Reporting is simplified and flexible for our needs. We are estimating a time savings of around $14.5K per year in time spent creating reports through manual manipulation. The reporting capabilities are much more flexible and allow for greater visibility than our previous ERP.
Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting
Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing
A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing.
Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel
Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service
Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL.
Manufacturing suite. You have all the time. So for the Manufacturing edition, you're able to have negative issues that are unlimited and are not balanced into a job that needs to be improved. The mobile app itself for warehouse picking and management sets the default item to one. This is not how most warehouses that I've ever worked at operate. Bomb hierarchy and respectful of child elements. These are nitty gritty elements, but these are kind of down-and-dirty items that need to improve. But overall it's pretty good.
Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good.
I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports.
Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer.
We aren’t going to switch at this point! It’s a great system and we are looking forward to realizing the full potential of the system once we can find a VAR who has a bench that can support us.
Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.
Most "things" are intuitive which makes the software nice. A few other "things" make no sense and come from a programmers mind, not a users experience.
I rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.
We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.
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.
Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.
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.
Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!
Well, we decided to go with Acumatica and I believe it was a really good decision. The VAR was a big part of that as well because of their insights and knowledge, but I just felt Acumatica was the right fit for us in size and it had the capabilities we needed, but it also wasn't overkill.
Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.
Definitely positive because we're able to give data to the end users much quicker. Were they able to make more accurate and timely financial decisions and kind of know where they're at, and how much money do I have left to spend for the month? Things like that. And our CFO is able to utilize the data more quickly.
