Acumatica Automation – Do you ever feel like you’re drowning in manual processes that should be easily automated? You’re not alone. During one of our Acumatica user groups, we dove deep into the platform’s built-in automation features – many users didn’t even know these existed!
If you’re like most Acumatica users, you probably know the basics—sending invoices, generating reports, and the usual suspects. But what if I told you there’s a whole automation platform sitting right there in your base package, just waiting to transform how your team works?
The Foundation: Business Events Are Game-Changers
Think of business events as your digital assistant that never sleeps. They’re triggered by changes in your system—like when a shipment gets confirmed, or a purchase order needs approval—and then they spring into action.
The beauty is in the variety of triggers available:
- Screen changes (like confirming a shipment)
- Generic inquiries that aggregate data across transactions
- Approval workflows
- Scheduled events
- User-initiated actions
Acumatica Automation Real-World Examples
1. Customer Shipment Notifications (Because Nobody Likes Playing Phone Tag)
Picture this: A customer calls asking about their order status. Instead of scrambling through screens, imagine if they automatically received tracking information the moment their shipment was confirmed.
We set up a simple business event that fires when a shipment status changes. It pulls tracking numbers, package details, and even attaches certificates of analysis if needed. The customer gets everything they need without anyone lifting a finger.
Pro tip: Use the “for each” functionality in email templates when you have multiple packages. Your customers get one clean email with all their tracking info instead of a dozen separate notifications.
2. Purchase Order Approvals (No More Bottlenecks)
Here’s where things get interesting. Acumatica’s approval engine isn’t just “send it to Bob and hope he checks his email.” You can create sophisticated approval maps with multiple steps and rules.
Want orders over $5,000 to go to department managers, but anything over $25,000 needs the CEO’s sign-off? Easy. Need approval from multiple people simultaneously? The 2024 R1 update makes that possible too.
The real kicker? Mobile app integration. Your approvers get push notifications and can approve right from their phones. No more “I didn’t see the email” excuses.
3. Smart Invoice Reminders (The Gentle Nudge Approach)
Mass emailing overdue notices to every customer? That’s so 2010. The action-triggered business events let your AR team be surgical about follow-ups.
They see a list of overdue invoices, check off the ones that need attention, and send personalized reminders. The system tracks everything back to the original invoice record, so you have a complete audit trail.
Technical Capabilities That Empower Users
Email Templates with Superpowers
Your templates can use merge fields to pull any data from your system—customer names, order details, tracking numbers, custom fields. If it exists in Acumatica, you can include it. Plus, you can automatically attach custom reports, certificates, or other documents.
Generic Inquiries as Data Sources
This is where non-technical users build powerful automation. Create a generic inquiry to find the data you want, then use it as the foundation for your business event. No coding required, no IT dependency.
Task Creation for Follow-ups
New non-stock items requiring review? Customer complaints needing follow-up? Set up business events to automatically create tasks for the right team members with all necessary context included.
2024 R1 Updates Worth Knowing About
If you haven’t upgraded yet, here’s what you’re missing:
- Multiple approvers per rule: No more daisy-chaining approvals
- Better approval history: Rejections stay in the record for audit purposes
- Enhanced approval routing: More flexibility in who approves what
Proven Implementation Best Practices
Before launching company-wide automation, follow these lessons learned from successful implementations:
Start small and test thoroughly. Test with one or two records before unleashing anything across your entire organization. This approach saves significant troubleshooting time later.
Include key fields in generic inquiries. The system needs these fields to track what it’s already processed. Missing them can cause events to fire unreliably or not at all.
Master the Business Event History screen. This is your primary debugging tool. You can see what fired, when it executed, and any errors that occurred.
Monitor the system queue. If events seem sluggish, check here first. A poorly designed business event can create backlogs affecting other system processes.
Beyond Business Events: Automation Schedules
Don’t forget about Acumatica’s scheduling capabilities. Any processing screen can be automated—order processing, cost rollups, inventory updates. Look for the little clock icon and set up schedules that work for your business rhythm.
Mobile-First Automation Strategy
Everything we’ve discussed integrates seamlessly with Acumatica’s mobile app. Approvals, notifications, task management—your team isn’t chained to desks to maintain operational efficiency.
This mobile connectivity is crucial for modern businesses where decision-makers travel, work remotely, or manage multiple locations. Automation that stops working when people leave the office isn’t true automation.
Making It Work for Your Business
The examples we’ve covered are just the beginning. The automation platform adapts to whatever modules you’re using—manufacturing, distribution, project accounting. The principles are the same; the applications are limitless.
Think about your daily frustrations:
- Information that should flow automatically but doesn’t
- Approvals that sit in email limbo
- Follow-ups that depend on someone remembering to do them
- Notifications that go to everyone instead of the right person
Each of these is an automation opportunity waiting to happen.
Getting Started
The best part? This isn’t an expensive add-on module. If you have Acumatica, you have access to these automation features. The question isn’t whether you can afford to implement them—it’s whether you can afford not to.
Start with one simple automation. Maybe it’s customer shipment notifications or purchase order approvals. Get comfortable with the process, then expand from there.
Your future self (and your team) will thank you for taking those manual, repetitive tasks off their plates and letting the system handle what it does best—consistent, reliable automation that never calls in sick or forgets to send that important email.
Ask yourself:
- Are your team members spending hours on tasks that could be automated?
- Do important approvals get stuck in email limbo?
- Are you manually tracking and following up on processes that should flow automatically?
- Could your customers receive better, more timely communication without additional effort from your team?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, Acumatica’s automation features are ready to transform your daily operations.
The companies that embrace automation today will be the ones setting the pace tomorrow. When you work with implementation partners who understand both the technology and how to apply it strategically to your business processes, you get solutions that truly transform operations rather than just digitize existing inefficiencies.
As specialists in Acumatica implementation and optimization, we understand how to configure these automation features to address your specific operational challenges. Ready to make your processes work smarter, not harder? We’d love to show you what’s possible.
