Resources for Digital Agencies - spinning up Acumatica locally and testing our connectors

  • 9 February 2024
  • 3 replies
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josh.fischer
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We’ve recently had a lot of Digital Agencies reaching out to us and asking questions about our solution, our eCommerce connectors and requesting more resources to learn the solution. From my perspective, this is terrific! I think Digital Agencies will love what we’ve built, because we’ve considered their ability to learn, deploy and even modify our connector technology to meet the needs of complex customers. 

I’m a big fan of Digital Agencies and Digital Native Brands who have engineers (or simply “tech people”) on staff who like to roll up their sleeves and learn new tech. 

I decided I should assemble a list of resources and share here. 

Few things to know:

  1. Anyone can spin up Acumatica locally.
    1. We are a SaaS application, however we also offer versions of Acumatica that you can spin up locally or on a webserver (AWS or Digital Ocean, for instance). 
  2. We offer a “trial” version of Acumatica
    1. This solution can be downloaded publicly and loaded on your local machine or on a webserver.
    2. It will allow you to enable nearly all Acumatica features (~98% of the features) and you can even sync with Shopify or BigCommerce to test our integrations.
    3. It allows you to have up to 2 concurrent users. 
    4. This version is strictly for testing the solution or building extensions. This is not a version meant for production environments.
  3. We provide “Demo Data”
    1. When you are installing Acumatica locally you can choose to load demo data. This data is configured to include much of what you need to test the system. 
    2. For the commerce connectors, it has nearly everything you need but you’ll have to actually configure the connector (you can learn this in an hour or so… we made it as easy as we could)
  4. If you are familiar with working in an Open Source ecosystem, this will all feel very familiar
    1. In the Drupal, WordPress and/or the (old) Magento ecosystem there is plenty of documentation and tools provided so users could “test” and learn the systems.
    2. Plus, engineers are encouraged to extend those solutions
    3. Acumatica has a similar attitude.
    4. For instance, our “Commerce Connector Framework” (solution we built for constructing our native integrations) is open to engineers to use. Meaning, you can extend/modify our connector solutions or even use our framework to build your own integrations. (more about this will be provided on the community soon)
  5. One warning - ERP is not “easy”.
    1. If this is your first time working with an ERP, be forewarned that it’s not simple. It’s not like learning Klaviyo or Gorgias which you can knockout in an afternoon.
    2. ERPs are inventory-based financial systems in which every module is thoroughly integrated with the other modules. 
    3. That said, Acumatica University offers a lot of (free) resources that can introduce you to the concepts, features, modules and capabilities.
    4. Be patient… if you already know eCommerce and you put the energy into learning ERP it’ll put you in a small circle of “unicorns”. Good luck!!

 

Below are useful links to resources and downloads which will help you get started.

 

  • Implementation Process - One resource that walks you through the entire implementation process:

 

 

 

 

  • Access Pre-Release (Beta) versions - https://community.acumatica.com/pre-release-versions-151
    • We share preview and beta versions of Acumatica on our community
    • Note - you can run multiple instances of Acumatica on one machine, so technically you could have the current version running and you could have a 2nd instance running with the beta version as well.

 

  • Import "Demo Data" - often users will want to load up demo data just so they can "play" with Acumatica and see it's capabilities with real data in place
    • The best way to load demo data into the system is by following one of the education modules and inserting Test Data during the Acumatica installation process
    • When you are setting up your Tenant during installation, there is a column called "Insert Data"
    • Here you can insert data that is either Sales Demo Data or data associated with specific educational modules.
       
  • Enable Features
    • Once you have Acumatica up and running, log in, click in the search bar and search for the term “enable”
    • This will lead you to the “Enable/Disable Features” window
    • Simply click “Modify”
    • Check off the features you want to test (like the Commerce Connectors for instance)
    • Click “Enable”
    • Those features are now ready to use. You may need to click the “More Info” link in the left sidebar menu to find the menu item
    • You can click the “thumbtack” icon on items to “pin” them to the sidebar

 

What did I leave out? Leave me comments if there is information you need that I didn’t share here. Will do my best to provide that info.

- Josh Fischer, Retail-Commerce Edition, Acumatica - linkedin.com/in/joshcfischer/

3 replies

DavidEichner
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Userlevel 7
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If any digital agencies would like some help getting started utilizing the resources listed by Josh, just reach out to myself or others here in the Acumatica community. 

David Eichner, CPA - If I helped you, please *Like* my post/reply. If I provided an answer to your question, please mark it as *Best Answer*.
Yuri Karpenko
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Userlevel 7
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And if you need a Digital Agency to take care of your e-commerce and connect it to Acumatica, reach out to me directly, as that’s what we do at DGX.agency.

Yuri Karpenko | DM me if you need help building e-Commerce for your business or connecting it to Acumatica ERP
benviall
Rank

Hi everyone,

At CyberWorkshop, we've been working closely with agencies and merchants on this challenge, and recently developed InSyncer, a Shopify app that simplifies the Acumatica-Shopify connection process.

We understand the potential hurdles agencies face when learning a new ERP, and InSyncer aims to bridge that gap with a user-friendly setup through a simple Shopify app install. It allows merchants to sync products, customers, orders, and inventory between Acumatica and Shopify, saving them valuable time and resources.

We're already helping several agencies streamline their clients' eCommerce operations with InSyncer, and we believe it could be a valuable resource for this community as well.

If you're interested in learning more about how InSyncer can help your agency offer efficient Acumatica integrations for Shopify clients, you can check out our app here: https://apps.shopify.com/insyncer-for-acumatica

 

 

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