Acumatica 26 R1 went public on March 20, 2026. For operators running on Shopify, BigCommerce, or Amazon this is so much more than a simple maintenance release. Several long-standing pain points are finally getting solved. Here’s a breakdown of what’s available now, what’s on deck for 26 R2, and what you should be thinking about before go-live.
Every six months or so, the Acumatica product team drops a release and the update notes get forwarded around. Most teams skim it and move on. That’s a mistake — because some releases make real operational differences, and 26 R1 is one of them for anyone running retail or commerce workloads.
During Acumatica Summit, we attended Acumatica’s Retail Edition: Ask the Experts Connector Forum at Summit and sat in the room with the actual product managers, QA leads, technical PMs, and senior implementation consultants who built this release. This post reflects what we heard directly from that team and what it means for users like you.
Here’s what you need to know.
Shipping March 20, 2026
26 R1: Five Features Worth Your Attention
The commerce team was transparent about what drove each of these: customer community votes, direct interviews, and documented friction points from live implementations. These aren’t features built to make the changelog look impressive. Each one addresses something real operators have been working around.
BigCommerce B2B Edition — Native Connector, Finally Done Right
A native BigCommerce B2B connector has existed before, but the product team acknowledged outright that the previous version wasn’t good enough. Customer feedback was clear, so they brought development in-house and rebuilt it. What’s here now supports true B2B buying flows — account-specific pricing, buyer roles, and self-serve ordering — while Acumatica remains the system of record for financials and fulfillment. If you’ve been duct-taping a B2B buying experience together, this changes the equation. Reach out to our team for a live demo.
Acumatica Payments for Shopify & BigCommerce
Embedded payment processing is now supported natively in both connectors. For BigCommerce specifically, this capability actually shipped in 25 R1 and R2 — meaning you don’t have to wait for the 26 R1 upgrade. This eliminates third-party payment middleware, reduces transaction fees through card-present discounts, and keeps payment data inside Acumatica where it belongs.
Shopify Marketplace Taxes — Social Commerce Handled
Your customers are buying through TikTok Shop, Snapchat, and Pinterest. Orders coming through these social commerce channels, routed through Shopify, now have proper tax handling in Acumatica. This is one of those features that sounds small until you’re reconciling three months of social channel orders and wondering where the tax discrepancy came from.
Bidirectional Quote & Draft Order Sync
Quote syncing between Shopify and Acumatica launched in 25 R2, but it only went one direction. In 26 R1 it’s now fully bidirectional — quotes and draft orders stay in sync across both systems. For B2B teams managing complex sales cycles, this removes a critical manual reconciliation step from the quoting workflow.
Amazon Profitability Dashboards — Phase One
For operators selling on Amazon, the new profitability dashboards let you see the numbers that actually determine whether a channel is working: your top-performing products, sales volume by day, Amazon fees, and refund impact — all in one place. The product team called this Phase 1 deliberately. More is coming. But if you’ve been building Amazon profitability analysis in spreadsheets, this is a meaningful starting point.
“We’ve been trying to reconcile for the past three years. We’re using two accountants and we couldn’t find even one discrepancy.”
— A customer at the Acumatica Summit forum, on why they hadn’t asked for Shopify payout reconciliation soonerThat story — told by the product team themselves — captures something important about how Acumatica is built. Features get prioritized based on real community feedback. Over 40 community votes pushed Shopify payout reconciliation into the active roadmap. That community-driven model is one of the reasons the platform keeps closing gaps that competitors leave open.
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On Deck for 26 R2
The Roadmap: What’s Coming Next
The product team shared a detailed look at what’s actively in development for 26 R2. These aren’t vague promises — they’re features with defined scope that the team is building right now. Here’s the list, with plain-language context on why each one matters.
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Shopify Payout Reconciliation — via the Connector
Currently, reconciling Shopify payouts requires manually pulling data into Acumatica’s banking module outside of the connector workflow. In 26 R2, the connector handles it. This is one of the most-requested features in the entire commerce community and eliminates what is, for many operators, a painful weekly accounting ritual.
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Online Exchanges (Shopify)
POS exchanges are already supported. In 26 R2, exchange processing extends to online orders. For retailers managing returns and exchanges across both in-store and digital channels, this completes the omnichannel loop.
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BigCommerce Multi-Storefront Support
Growing businesses operating multiple BigCommerce storefronts — by brand, by market, or by channel — will be able to manage them from a single Acumatica instance. This has been a limiting factor for multi-brand operators and is finally getting addressed.
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Channel Management (Shopify)
Today, the “Export to External System” checkbox on stock items is a blunt instrument — it’s on or off for everything. In 26 R2, channel-level visibility controls are coming: choose which products go to your online store, your POS, your social commerce channels, or any combination. A direct response to real friction heard in the room at Summit.
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ERP Order Modifications for Shopify Orders
Shopify’s migration from REST API to GraphQL opens up capabilities that previously weren’t possible. One of the first benefits: the ability to modify orders in Acumatica that originated from Shopify — something that had meaningful limitations under the REST architecture.
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AI-Powered Sync Error Resolution
Sync history in the commerce connector is functional but not exactly friendly — especially when errors stack up. The team is building AI capabilities into that workflow so the system can surface likely causes, suggest fixes, and — for recurring patterns — take corrective action based on what it’s learned from your past behavior. Less digging through logs. Faster resolution.
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AI-Assisted Entity Mapping
Building entity mappings between your eCommerce platform and Acumatica currently requires knowledge of Excel-style formula syntax. The roadmap replaces that with natural language input — describe what you want to map in plain English, and AI generates the formula. A meaningful usability improvement for implementations and ongoing management alike.
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Intelligent Advisor for Commerce
This is the one to watch. The team described a proof-of-concept in active development: an AI-powered advisor that takes your sales data, revenue history, and business profile, benchmarks it against companies of similar size, and tells you where you are — and where you should be in 12 months. Think of it as an on-demand data scientist embedded in your ERP. Phase one is in progress.
Implementation Perspective
What This Actually Means for Your Business
Release notes are only useful if you can translate them into decisions. Here’s how we’d frame the 26 R1 / R2 picture depending on where you sit in the organization:
If you’re a COO or VP of Operations: The biggest near-term win is the BigCommerce B2B connector for wholesale operations and the Shopify payout reconciliation coming in R2. Both reduce manual labor and the reconciliation overhead that silently consumes your team’s time. The AI-powered sync error resolution in R2 also means fewer escalations when something breaks on the connector.
If you’re a CFO or Controller: Acumatica Payments integration across both Shopify and BigCommerce eliminates third-party payment middleware — one fewer integration layer, one fewer vendor contract, and cleaner transaction data in your books. The Amazon profitability dashboards start giving you channel-level P&L visibility that most operators piece together manually today.
If you’re in IT or Systems: The GraphQL migration for Shopify is architecturally significant — it expands what the connector can do over time, not just in R2. The AI entity mapping and sync history improvements reduce your maintenance overhead on live implementations. Channel management means fewer customization workarounds for item visibility rules.
If you’re evaluating Acumatica right now: The release cadence itself is worth paying attention to. Two releases per year, community-vote-driven prioritization, and a team that acknowledges openly when a previous version wasn’t good enough — that’s a product organization that listens. In our experience implementing Acumatica for mid-market retailers and eCommerce businesses, that philosophy compounds over time.
Ready to See What 26 R1 Looks Like in Your Environment?
Bennett/Porter has been implementing Acumatica for retail, eCommerce, and distribution businesses for years. We know how these features land in real implementations — not just how they read in a changelog. If you’re evaluating an upgrade, planning a new implementation, or just trying to figure out whether a specific 26 R1 feature solves the problem you’ve been working around, let’s talk.
Sources & References
- Acumatica Summit 2026 — Retail Edition: Ask the Experts Connector Forum. Direct transcription. Product Manager: Stacy Jurczak; Technical PM: Karthik Gajendran; Senior Implementation Consultant: Terry Sharp; QA Manager: Swagata; Senior Business Analyst: Vishal; Pre-Sales: Mo. January 2026.
- Acumatica Retail Edition Applications Brief (BRRET20250724). Acumatica, 2025. Retrieved from Bennett/Porter partner asset library.
- Acumatica + BigCommerce B2B Alliance Brief (AllianceBigCommerceB2BCobranded1P20260124). Acumatica, 2026.
- Acumatica + Shopify Solution Brief. Acumatica, 2025. acumatica.com
- Acumatica Artificial Intelligence eBook. Acumatica, 2025. Retrieved from Bennett/Porter partner asset library.
- Acumatica Retail Edition Messaging and Positioning. Acumatica, 2024. Internal partner document.
- Acumatica Visual Brand Identity Guidelines. Acumatica, 2024. Internal partner document.
- Shopify Commerce Statistics. IDC MarketScape: Worldwide B2C Digital Commerce Platforms for Midmarket Growth 2024.
