Thanks for bringing this up. Let us review this internally. 

Hi @TimRodman, 

Thank you for this post.

Have you tried to review Document Details tab for details about those operations? You should see that the release operation will generate 2 ERP transactions - one for ARInvoice and another one for GLBatch. So this is expected behavior. 

Please let us know if have any additional questions 
 

Thank you @Aliya and @mrysev. As you pointed out, it’s the GL Batch.

I tested this.  My test system with U100 data generated 4 total transactions.  Build 24.106.00.18

Invoice Release
INRegister
GL Batch
GL Batch

Ah, yes, if a Stock Item is involved, then it gets counted 6 times rather than 2 times. I just created a Part 2 video that covers that scenario.

Since this is a VERY important topic, I just created a dedicated page for it with the 2 videos that I’ve made so far (maybe more to come) and a central independent place for people to leave their comments about their own experiences with ERP Transactions in Acumatica:

AugForums.com/ERPTransactions

Very good work.  I know my previous company was at around 80-90% utilization for Commercial Transactions but always 125%-150% average on ERP Transactions. 

If you get a chance take a look at how automation schedules revolve around the sending of e-mail on the Send and Receive Email screen vs. Email Pending Processing also.  I think you’ll find some interesting things when you look at how many transactions get processed between the two for a schedule that runs say every 30 minutes.  The Email Pending is far less transaction intensive.  

I’ve heard about that too. It’s on my list 

Regarding emails you may want to check following article:
 

Thanks @mrysev. Ya, I’ve seen that scenario and it’s baffling, especially in light of the new Personal Email Account feature in Acumatica 2023 R2 which makes it MUCH easier to bring everyone’s email accounts into Acumatica so they can send emails from Acumatica as if it came from them and not a boring generic system email account. The new Personal Email Account feature is AWESOME, but it will totally burn you if you use it.

As that article points out, you get dinged for each email account, each time the email schedule runs to process email. So, if you have 20 email accounts setup in Acumatica and they process email every 10 minutes (24 hours * 60 minutes per hour / every 10 minutes = 144 executions per day), that’s 20 email accounts * 144 executions per day * 30 average days per months =

86,400 ERP Transactions per month which is INSANE!!!

I’m pretty confident that there will be enough of an uproar that Acumatica will remove email schedule executions from ERP Transactions, but it will be up to people like me to get the uproar to be load enough for Acumatica Leadership to hear it. I’m sure that you good people in support already agree with me on it; it’s the executives that we need to convince and I’m working on it 

This is really the issue with Acumatica trying to charge based on “ERP & Commercial Transactions”. While it sounds nice compared to user licensing, it is also totally unpredictable as a metric that normal people can understand. And because it’s opaque, it is also subject to shenanigans like the ones detailed above. It’s like Microsoft charging based on how many times people are going to click “Save” in Microsoft Word. Does anyone really have time for that kind of thing?

Personally I don’t think it’s unpredictable, it just requires more understanding and I’m currently in that “more understanding” process. Whether it’s something that “normal people” can understand remains to be seen, but I personally think that “normal people” can surprise you with what they’re capable of 

Can someone tell me if exceeding your % of ERP Transactions will slow down your Acumatica system performance?  

Disregard my original question… I found it. License Monitoring Console.  

*****Can someone remind me the screen name where you can see the number of ERP & Commercial Transactions for each month?  

@carcher A higher transaction volume naturally puts more strain on the system and slows things down, but I have been wondering if Acumatica does any type of “throttling” if you’re over on your ERP Transactions to prevent you from being a “noisy neighbor” to other customers who are running on the same hardware in the Acumatica Cloud.

I just updated my Acumatica ERP Transactions page (click here) with some new things that I’ve learned.

@TimRodman we are in a situation right now where Acumatica sent our reseller a notification about ETV overage this spring. We made a few internal process changes to reduce ERP transactions but not quite below our license limit. We are now having to quote moving up from M1 to M2. We are currently licensed at 3000/60000. A typical month for us is 2300 commercial and 70000 ERP.

This licensing model would seem to be a disincentive for Acumatica devs to write efficient code. They get paid the more backend transactions occur.

We made changes to our processes to get below the ERP transaction count.  Things like not holding many of the documents on entry.  However, when we do price updates or stock level updates on thousands of items, think 1 item in potentially 5 warehouses equals minimum of 5 ERP trans, it is near impossible to stay below the allocated levels.  We do these types of updates through import scenarios but it all counts the same.

I really hope that Acumatica isn’t going down the road of Net Suite, we didn’t like their model during our search and like @TimRodman mentioned in one of his videos on the AUGForum it seems like a lot of people leave Net Suite, I think after getting crazy price increases.  I hope Acumatica is working to have customers for life, not just counting “New” customers.  Having said this, I full understand it needs to be a two-way partnership and we need to pay for what we use.  It just seems like the ERP transaction count is a little low for the license levels based on Commercial transactions and doesn’t take into account enough of the back-office functions.

Interesting post.  As a prospective customer. I’ve been reviewing our current ERP system transaction counts and the Acumatica licensing guide to determine the best version and tier.  The 2024 licensing guide indicates that transaction tier pricing is based on CTV (commercial transaction volume) whereas the ETV (ERP transaction volume) is more of a guide for performance and scaling.  What am I missing?

@bbohn they enforce both limits, CTV and ETV. We were out of compliance on ETV for almost a year before they started raising the issue, so it wasn’t like they were going to cut us off. In my opinion, the ratio of ETV to CTV seems too low based on how many backend transactions are generated for various tasks. We have both the distribution and manufacturing modules, and our ETV:CTV ratio is about 30:1.

It gets EXTREEMLY unpredictable if you are using service management. We have some service companies that do less than 1,000 commercial transactions a month, but can generate MILLIONS of ERP transactions, and we have others (exactly the same industry) who remain only 200% to 300% over their licensed ERP transaction levels (which we just consider normal). No one has ever been able to explain why this happens or articulate how to control or forecast for it.

Since it is so unpredictable, we don’t even bring it up in discovery. Some times appointments will generate bizarre numbers of ERP transactions, other times identical appointments won’t. One month a client will have massive ERP transactions, and the next month they won’t. We maintain our own robust cloud environment, so performance is not an issue, but the constant warning is annoying for clients, and I wish there was a way to suppress that.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I just spoke with my VAR who indicated that the ERP transaction count limit with respect to pricing was eliminated in April 2024, which is why I couldn’t find it in the current licensing guide.

Hey @doldham96, I hear ya on the whole disincentive for Acumatica devs to write efficient code thing. Personally though, I’m not that concerned about it because, moving forward, that’s just something that you need to test for and it’s pretty easy to test because you just have to check the ERP Transactions count after doing each transaction.

To me, the bigger challenge right now is awareness. I’m totally fine with Acumatica making money on their product, but I just want to make sure that I understand the rules of the game.

I hope so too. For me, Zach Nelson joining the Acumatica Board a few months ago is bad news:
https://www.acumatica.com/corporate-newsroom/press-releases/erp-industry-leaders-zach-nelson-and-nancy-harris-join-acumatica-board-of-directors

But time will tell...

Yes, that’s correct @bbohn. This is really more of an issue for people who have been on Acumatica for years because their existing contract legally restricts the number of ERP Transactions. The new agreement is a bit of a “correction” on the part of Acumatica.

However, my understanding at this point is that, even though ERP Transactions are no longer part of the legal agreement, you won’t be able to complain to Acumatica about slowness in your SaaS environment if you are over on ERP Transactions. Which makes sense. I’m just making the point that ERP Transactions still have “teeth” under the new agreement.

Oh wow, that is indeed unpredictable. Personally, I totally get that Acumatica is cracking down on ERP Transactions because of “noisy neighbors” in the Acumatica Cloud. In my opinion, the main solution for those “noisy neighbors” is to look at hosting Acumatica somewhere outside the Acumatica Cloud so they can fine-tune their hardware resources better without having to pay a ton more money to Acumatica.

The weird thing though is that Acumatica changed their pricing a couple of years ago to make self-hosted customers pay exactly the same amount as customer who are hosted in the Acumatica Cloud. There was an official explanation for why they did it, but personally I don’t think it made any sense. Regardless, it’s strange that self-hosted customers have to pay the same amount, even though they are taking care of the hardware costs.

So, I think we should start campaigning for things to go back to where they were a couple of years ago where self-hosted customers pay less than customers who are hosted in the Acumatica Cloud. I think that would solve the problem because then you could look at self-hosting or hosting with a 3rd party if you find that you have a high ratio of ERP Transactions to Commercial Transactions.

Hmmmm so intercompany transactions and foreign currency transactions will incur more ERP transactions ? What about those from coming from API calls?