Besides being the title of a Stanley Clarke album and song released in 1980, which sounds very much of its time, the phrase “Rocks, Pebbles and Sand” was popularized by Stephen Covey as a method of prioritizing the most important things first. While the metaphor suffers from the artificial constraints of the physical shape of the jar and example rocks, it’s a powerful presentation of how and why to prioritize the most important things.
This isn’t the forum for setting overall life goals, but since our clients range from divisions of Fortune 500 companies with battalions of CPAs, to small operations who have just graduated from QuickBooks and are gaining a firm grasp of GAAP, we’re occasionally contacted for me to do my best impersonation of a CPA on how to get accounting systems on track.
So, in the analogy of “rocks, pebbles, and sand,” here’s a list of the “rocks” in priority order—because these are the focus areas that will give you the ability to then successfully add in the opportunities and operational improvement “pebble” projects to your business to improve profitability and growth, while also lessening the daily incoming “sand” of questions, issues, and fixes that demand your team’s attention. Even if you think you have your system screwed down tight, it’s worth confirming you haven’t missed something!
1) Validate the validation reports: The first step is to be able to see the objective truth of where your business is really at. These are the reports which define that in detail: Accounts Receivable & Accounts Payable Aging, Inventory Onhand quantities with valuation, Bank Reconciliation, Customer & Vendor Prepayments, and Accrued Received Goods.
2) Validate the near-validation reports: Open Sales Orders and Purchase Orders. While these don’t directly impact your financials (yet, at least), this is the info you need to project immediate demand (and ability to meet that demand) of your goods and services so that you have operational control.
3) Validate the Balance Sheet: With the validating reports of Step #1 correct, MAKE the Balance Sheet agree to these detailed reports with a journal entry. Once your Balance Sheet is correct, then the bottom line of your Income Statement is definitely correct—it’s important to know if you’re overall making money, and for tax filing purposes.
4) Rough Focus of the Income Statement: After Step #3, the bottom line is correct, so now classify the GL accounts for “outgoing dollars” as either cost-of-goods (dollars directly related to providing your goods & services) or expenses (valid “outgoing dollars” but can’t be directly attributed to a specific item cost). Once completed, you’ll then be able to see and monitor Gross Margin to ensure that your operational efficiency is consistent even as overall sales volume changes over time.
5) Fine Focus of the Income Statement: If you have multiple product lines or locations or sales territories or… pretty much any way you’d like to subdivide your revenue and COGS, then a chart-of-accounts with additional segments will allow visibility of Gross Margin by category so that you have clear visibility on the financial statements and can manage at a high level.
Above are the “rocks” of your accounting system to ensure you monitor the big picture monthly or quarterly—the structure to then implement the operational enhancements of your operation for improved profitability. As always, we’re standing by in the cornfields to assist on the rocks, pebbles, and sand!
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Microsoft SQL Server 2016 End-of-Life
It’s almost exactly one year until Microsoft’s extended support for SQL Server 2016 ends—see here. That means no more security updates and patches, which is a DANGEROUS place for your accounting and financial data.
This directly impacts AccountMate/SQL V10.1 and prior so, if that’s you, then let’s start planning now to avoid a last-minute scramble—or, worse yet, a security breach which takes down your operation.
Regards,
Kevin E. Stroud
kestrou@nexlan.com
NexLAN, LLC
https://nexlan.com
AccountMate: Offer More Kit Options to Your Customers—Plus Manage Your Kits Easily
Kitting is great when you want to bundle or package multiple items to sell as a single item, without you having to undertake a formal manufacturing process with bills of material, work orders, WIPs, and more.
AccountMate’s Kitting Module is quite powerful and flexible. Kitted items can be prebuilt or built-on-the-fly; standard or customizable; fixed price or not, and more. Plus, kitted components are seamlessly relieved from inventory and can be put back if you later decide to disassemble any kits, which means your inventory levels stay true at all times.
What can kitting do for you?
Two questions for you to ponder:
1. A sales opportunity: Could you be grouping items into a bundle or package that would make life easier for your customers (and for your sales team too)?
- Maybe you could kit complete sets of related products, such as a main product with its accessory components.
- Maybe you could create custom kits for one customer, that includes all the items your customer will then sell to their customer as a unit.
- Maybe you’ve added new product lines recently, and you now have new items to consider for new kits.
2. An operational efficiency opportunity: Are you currently tracking kit components manually, and inadvertently running out of inventory of some components, or pulling your hair out when it comes to accurately calculating kit costs, margins, and pricing?
- Ensure accurate, automatic inventory adjustments with the Kitting Module, as component items are moved into or out of kits, the same way they move when they’re transferred to different warehouses. That means you won’t be surprised by shortages of items that are included in kits. Plus you can run reports that include component inventory visibility.
- Ensure that your desired margins and profitability are on target, thanks to accurate cost tracking in the Kitting Module. The module can handle rolled up, discounted, premium, and custom bundled prices—while also making sales commission calculations on those easy.
Learn more about kitting possibilities:
➤ Get ideas for a variety of applications for kits here: Flexible Kitting: Manage Your Kits and Their Components Accurately—with Automatic Inventory Adjustments | NexLAN.
➤ Check out the AccountMate Kitting brochure that outlines the module’s capabilities.
➤ Reach out to NexLAN and hit us with your questions about accommodating your kitting wish list and requirements.
AccountMate Payroll Module Training—September 15-19
Registration is open for this annual offering of deep-dive product training for the Payroll Module.
It’s a hands-on interactive online class, held conveniently at your computer, for 3-4 hours per day Monday through Friday the week of Sept. 15, 2025.
This is a great way to master all-things-payroll in AccountMate! You’ll come away knowing all the options available for handling the many payroll details in your company.
Attend one or more sessions. It’s $1,900 for the full class, or $525 per session, per person.
Sessions:
- Monday – Introduction and Payroll Module Setup, and Master Records Setup Part 1
- Tuesday – Master Records Setup Part 2
- Wednesday – Payroll Process
- Thursday – Other Payroll Transactions and Reports
- Friday – Tax Forms, GL Integration, Tax Year Closing, and Payroll Tax Subscription
Course Overview | Course Outline | Course Schedule
Registration closes September 8.
To register, contact NexLAN.
Acumatica 2025 R1: Roundup of Customer Payment Enhancements
The Acumatica 2025 R1 release includes a number of new features and enhancements for processing customer payments.
1. Record prepayments from sales order payment links
In previous versions of Acumatica, all payments received from payment links sent to customers, whether they were on sales orders or invoices, were recorded as standard payments. However, for payments on sales orders, it is preferable to record those payments as prepayments and credit the prepayment liability account rather than the AR payment asset account. Starting in the 2025 R1 release, you can now set payments received from sales order payment links to create prepayment records.
2. Increase credit card charge amounts after pre-authorization
Previously, if a credit card payment had already been pre-authorized, you could only process a final charge up to the dollar amount pre-authorized. If the final charge was more than the original pre-authorization, you would need to void the original pre-authorization and do a second one at the higher amount. Due to credit card processing times, this sometimes meant you were reserving excess funds until the first authorization charge was released, and could face potential card limit issues while the first authorization was still reserving the funds. Now, you can increase the initial authorization amount without needing to complete a second authorization charge or battle double holds on customer credit cards.
3. Print or email payment receipts automatically
Before Acumatica’s latest release, after a customer’s payment had been processed, you could not issue a payment receipt for your customer. In 2025 R1 you can now use simple checkboxes to set up your system to automatically print or email payment receipts when a customer’s payment is recorded and released.
4. Add finance charges for refunds
Previously when you processed a customer refund, you could not add finance charges to the refund on the Charges tab. Starting in the 2025 R1 release, you can now add those finance charges to customer refunds.
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To see a highlight of other features added in the 2025 R1 Acumatica release, visit the webpage Introducing Acumatica Cloud ERP: 2025 R1.
Try out this feature when your system upgrades to 2025 R1. Most clients’ systems will update within a few months of the March 20 release date, though if you’re itching to start using the new 2025 R1 features, we can get your update started early! Got questions? Shoot us an email.
Acumatica: What Are “REST APIs” and Why Are They Valuable?
Numerous APIs are built into your Acumatica system. They are what connects your system to external software.
They’re geek-level developer tools; not something that users will learn to set up. Yet they are one of the “sizzle features” that make Acumatica’s API-first platform such a good system (see the seventh 7ility, Extensibility). So what do you need to know about REST APIs?
1. TL;DR (Summary)
REST APIs are the behind-the-scenes integration pathways that connect your Acumatica system to add-on software, so that the two systems can communicate and share data.
They’re what make it possible for your Acumatica system to be your single source of truth, with always-current data.
These connectors enable flexible enhancements for your Acumatica system, with stability and security—allowing everything to remain modern, modular, and nimble under the hood. That makes it simpler and cheaper for you to benefit from new features, new apps, and speedy performance.
2. More details
Let’s start with API. “Application Programming Interface.” As the name indicates, an API connects apps so that they can communicate and share data.
For example, if you use one of the 200+ add-ons available for Acumatica—perhaps an integration to external shipping carrier software to get shipping options, pricing, shipping labels, and tracking for the items you ship from your sales orders—then your Acumatica system is connected to that third-party shipping integration add-on with an API so that relevant data about your packages can be exchanged back and forth.
APIs are what let your system plug into other systems and vice-versa, to do work for you and to keep both apps current. Because Acumatica is a very modern system, that means you, and NexLAN, rarely or never have to build any APIs. Numerous APIs are built in to Acumatica, and employed by companies that make third-party add-ons for Acumatica.
(If you’re familiar with Acumatica’s General Inquiries, think of GIs as the way to access data within the system, while APIs give access to external apps and data.)
In contrast, a system without a wide range of pre-built APIs can leave you with needing custom APIs to connect to other software. Maybe your sales team gets Salesforce and wants to integrate its customer data and sales order data with your accounting system. If there weren’t pre-built Salesforce connectors for Acumatica (there are), well, custom APIs cost time and money to have built and regularly upgraded by folks like NexLAN, because APIs connect to hundreds of data tables in your system that are inter-dependent in highly complex ways.
And there’s a data corruption risk with APIs custom-built by your IT who’s not as up-to-date on the system’s data and functionality. In fact, with Acumatica, you and NexLAN cannot even access those data tables like we can with other systems. Pre-built APIs and third-party developers who make Acumatica addons take care of that integration, turning gnarly “customizations” into much simpler “configurations.”
Note: APIs are also the way that AI apps like agents and large language models connect to Acumatica. As with add-ons like shipping integration apps, an external AI is far easier to enhance and update in the rapidly evolving field of AI, with less effort than it would take to update Acumatica itself if everything had to reside inside Acumatica. Thus, technology evolution is much easier to embrace over time. Acumatica calls this part of how it “future proofs” your system.
3. REST APIs are commonly used with web services. For example, you run Acumatica Cloud ERP on the web on your computer and phone, and that shipping integration software mentioned above is also web-based. The two are integrated across the web.
REST APIs follow REST (“representational state transfer…”) integration rules or protocols when sharing data and communicating.
REST APIs are widely used today, considered to be essential and one of the best—due to their relative ease of use, reliable performance, and scalability for software that runs on the web and on mobile devices.
4. Why APIs are a big deal
Most companies don’t have “internet-accessible REST APIs” on their requirements list when they’re looking for an ERP system, but that’s changing.
It turns out that newer ERP systems like Acumatica that were built to prioritize APIs in order to offer a more open system, deliver benefits that other systems cannot match:
- Faster, less-costly implementation times with less customization
- Faster, more reliable system performance for users
- Better new features more frequently, with more extensibility
- Lower maintenance costs
- Longer productive life of the system
So, give yourself a gold star for choosing Acumatica, and know that an array of APIs are working hard for you behind the scenes every day.
AccountMate Tech Note: Reports to Generate for Non-Customer Receipt Transactions
Situations arise where you need to record receipts from companies or entities that do not exist in your customer records. AccountMate provides you with a method to record these transactions and generate the necessary reports.
Article #1168: Reports to Generate for Non-Customer Receipt Transactions discusses the reports you can generate for non-customer receipts.
Also refer to Article #1088: Understanding the Non-Customer Receipts Feature for the discussion on the procedures for recording non-customer receipts and the resulting journal entries.
AccountMate Tech Note: Monitoring Non-Stock Inventory
In AccountMate, the term “non-stock inventory items” is used for items without maintenance records but transactions involving them need to be recorded. A non-stock inventory item cannot be a lot-controlled item or a kit item, but a non-stock item can be one of the kit item components.
Article #1075: Monitoring of Non-Stock Inventory discusses how AccountMate handles non-stock inventory items and how you can keep track of these items.
Acumatica Technical Tips
How Do I Create a Business Account from an Opportunity?
Q: How can I create a business account from a sales opportunity?
A: In the Opportunities screen that has the opportunity that needs a Business Account, in the top toolbar click the More button (ellipsis) then click Create Account. In the Create Account pop-up, enter the information for the Business Account for the opportunity and click Create. After you have created the Business Account, you can then use the Business Account to create a customer by clicking Extend To Customer.
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How Do I Create a Payroll Batch from Timecards?
Q: How do I create a payroll batch from the Timecards that employees entered?
A: To create a payroll batch from employee timecard entries, perform the following:
- On the Payroll Batch click Add Employees.
- On the Add Employees pop-up, check the box for Time Activities.
- After the TimeCard information has loaded for the employees in the Pay Group you are entering the batch for, click Add & Close to add the records to the Payroll Batch.
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Can I See the Previous Pages I Visited?
Q: Can I see what records or screens I was previously on? I clicked off an opportunity I was working on, but didn’t write down the opportunity number to easily go back to it.
A: Yes you can, click the clock icon next to the universal search bar and the Recently Viewed side bar will open showing you your recently viewed records and screens.
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Can I Change the the Background Colors of My Multiple Companies?
Q: We have multiple companies. Can we configure the system so that each company has a different background color? We have employees working across our multiple companies and this would be a great way for them to know at a glance what company they were working in.
A: Yes you can:
- On the Companies screen, for the company you want to change the background color on, go to the Visual Appearance tab.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page to the Theme section and check the box for Override Colors for the Selected Company.
- Enter the hex code for the background colour you wish to change the system to, or if you do not know the hex code, you can click on the Primary Color box and select a color from the pop-up window.
- Click Save at the top of the screen.
AccountMate Technical Tips
How Do I Email Pay Stubs to My Employees?
Versions: AM12.2 for SQL and Express (and higher versions)
Module: PR
Q: How can I e-mail pay stubs to employees?
A: To e-mail pay stubs to your employees, perform the following:
1. Make sure that a valid email address is entered in Employee Maintenance for each employee.
2. Mark the Generate Pay Stub for Emailing checkbox in the PR Module Setup ► Printing tab. Only checks printed after this checkbox is marked are available for e-mailing. Note: The Generate Pay Stub for Emailing option is available starting in AM12.2 for SQL and Express.
3. Print the checks using the Print Payroll Check function. It is at this point that pay stubs are generated for emailing.
4. Send the email using the E-mail Pay Stub function in Reports. You may view the AccountMate Online Help for more information about the function (access the function; then, press F1).
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Why Do I Get the No Records Found Message When Generating a Pick List?
Versions: AM11 for SQL and Express (and higher versions)
Module: SO
Q: Why do I get the “No records found…” message when attempting to generate the Pick List for a sales order?
A: You can generate the Pick List only when the sales order has unshipped quantities and is not on credit hold or on-hold (i.e., the On-hold checkbox in the Create Sales Order ► Information tab is not marked) status.
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Why is Grand Total on the Bin Quantity Listing Report Disabled?
Versions: AM11 for SQL and Express (and higher versions)
Module: IC
Q: Why is the Grand Total option in the Bin Quantity Listing report disabled?
A: The Grand Total option is disabled because the Subtotal option already provides the information. When the Subtotal option is selected, the only sorting option available is by Item #. This option provides the total on-hand quantity per item, which is the grand total for each item.
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Why Can’t I Use a Terms Pay Code to Apply Payment?
Versions: AM11 for SQL and Express (and higher versions)
Module: AR
Q: Why can’t I use a Terms pay code type in Apply Payment?
A: The Apply Payment pay code represents the legal tender that the customer uses to pay your company; thus, this can only be a Check, Cash, Credit Card, or ACH pay code type.
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