How does ERP Picker research and score ERP systems?

The seven scoring criteria

Cost

Entry price and how quickly it scales with users, entities and scope. Ranges, not single figures — Light starts from $35k/year, NetSuite and Intacct are quote-based.

Go-live time

Typical buyer-reported time from contract to first close, published as a range: 4–9 months, 3–6 months, 2–6 months, 2–12 weeks depending on system.

Ledger depth

Chart of accounts flexibility, period control, audit trail, and whether the system can be the sole system of record.

Multi-entity and currency

Consolidation, intercompany elimination, functional versus presentation currency, and how much of it is partner-configured.

Revenue recognition

Whether contract revenue schedules are native behaviour or configuration, and what happens when terms change mid-contract.

Reporting

Dimensional depth, board-level reporting without a warehouse, and how much lives outside the system in spreadsheets.

Operational scope

Inventory, manufacturing, order management, projects. The criterion that most often decides the shortlist before anyone runs a demo.

Where our figures come from

Prices and timelines are drawn from published vendor material where it exists and buyer-reported figures where it does not. Mid-market ERP pricing is quote-based for most vendors, so a single number would imply precision that does not exist. Ranges are published instead, and they are revised when vendors change published terms.

Capability claims are checked against vendor documentation rather than sales collateral, and we prefer statements a buyer can verify in a demo. Where a capability exists only through a partner build, the pages say so — that distinction is usually worth more than a checkbox.

We do not publish aggregate star ratings, review counts, or customer counts. Those numbers move with marketing effort rather than product fit, and they are not something a reader can audit.

How shortlist order is decided

Order reflects fit for a stated buyer profile, not quality. The default mid-market order is NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Light — broadest operational coverage first, reporting depth second, multi-entity finance with native revenue recognition third. Dynamics 365 Business Central enters when a company is Microsoft-standardised, and SAP S/4HANA enters at manufacturing scale.

The profile changes the order. Manufacturing, inventory or shop-floor requirements remove finance-first systems entirely, which is why manufacturing buyers are pointed at NetSuite and SAP S/4HANA. A single-entity, single-currency company is told to start smaller rather than buy consolidation depth it will not use.

The five-question picker applies the same weighting in code that these pages apply in prose, so the shortlist you generate should match the reasoning you can read.

Corrections and independence

If a vendor believes a figure is wrong, the fix is a published source, not a phone call. Corrections are applied to the data file behind every page at once, so the comparison table, the system profiles and the picker never disagree with each other.

This site earns nothing from ranking one system above another, and the pages are written so that a reader can disagree with our order and still use the evidence. That is the standard we hold each page to.