Sage is retiring Business vision on December 31 2026.

Britec recently conducted a BusinessVision survey which explored what is working and not working within the BusinessVision eco-system.

One of the key findings was that:

• If BusinessVision can do everything you want out of the box, it’s hard to beat!
• BUT, as soon as BV can not do something you want, challenges begin.

This article explores some of the inventory limitations of BusinessVision, and speaks to where Acumatica (a BV alternative) can really shine. At Britec we love both systems equally, it just comes down to what your business needs and what the ideal product for those needs are!

Inventory Transfers

In BusinessVision inventory transfers can sometimes be frustrating as they can only be done one-at-a-time. There is no way to complete a batch transfer. Depending on the number of transfers you need to do and the frequency you need to do them – this can sometimes be a frustrating limitation.

In Acumatica, inventory adjustments and transfers can be done in a batch, making the process more automated and smooth for varied and regular inventory transfers (or any adjustments you might want to make.

Inventory Matrix (Or Product / Inventory Variants)

In BusinessVision individual items can not have ‘variants’ or ‘matrix options’ so you could not have a the same t-shirt with different sizes and colours as a single product. As online commerce continues to grow, these needs are becoming more and more frequent.

In Acumatica, Inventory Matrix Items allow you to have inventory items with multiple attributes (such as T-Shirts with different materials, sizes, colours, and brands.) Item variants make tracking and managing the relation between these items much easier.

Calculation Rules

In Business Vision you can not have different calculation rules for different item classes. Everything essentially has the same set of rules applied.

Acumatica gives you the ability to create your own calculation rules for item classes. This allows you to control which processes in the system increase or decrease the available quantity for specific classes of inventory.

For example, for Manufactured items you could specify that the system deduct available quantity based on production demand.

Costing Methods

You can only choose an average or a First In First Out when using costing methods. This limits your ability to pick and choose the costing methods you desire.

In Acumatica you can divide things up where you can have mixture of costing options/methods.  This will allow you pick the most appropriate custom price for your products.

Related Items

BusinessVision will not remind when to add highly related invoice items, for cross selling complimentary goods and items.

Acumatica can automatically add certain invoice items like environmental charges and eco fees (if set up do so). Acumatica will show related items for cross selling or substitution for upselling.

Lot Numbering

BusinessVision does not allow lot numbering (without complicated and ugly work arounds).

With Acumatica, lot numbering is out-of-the-box function, giving you more capabilities.

In addition,  BusinessVision has inventory search limitations. While looking up inventory or placing inventory on an order or quote, BV can only search for an inventory item description based on the text that starts the description. For example if the inventory item description is “Acme industrial fitting connector #1001”, BV can only find the item if you search the start of the description and type “Acme industrial”. This often makes it difficult to find items. In Acumatica, you can type any part of the inventory description, such as “1001”, or “fitting connector”, and it will display all items that match those words, then can select the correct part.

Acumatica has advanced warehouse management features available using a hand held device to pick items from bins,  BusinessVision does not have this capability.