ERP Check: A Self-Assessment for UK Finance Teams

An ERP check is a short, honest look at whether your business system is helping you or quietly costing you time. You do not need a consultant to start one. This guide gives you a self-assessment you can run with your finance team in an afternoon, built on the six areas our own free check scores.

If you would rather have the check done for you, our free ERP Health Check asks where your system is letting you down and sends back a short report on where to focus first.

1. Reporting and month-end

Start with the close. How many days does month-end take, and how much of the reporting is rebuilt in spreadsheets every period? If the board pack depends on exports and copy-and-paste, the system is not doing the job on its own.

Our article on why month-end should not take a week explains where those days usually go.

Key PointKey point: Score each area honestly as healthy, needs work or at risk. The aim is a short list of problems to fix, not a perfect grade.

2. Data and integrations

List every system that touches your accounts: CRM, payroll, e-commerce, banking and spreadsheets. For each one, ask whether data flows in automatically or is keyed in again. Every re-key is a chance for an error and a reason for a reconciliation.

3. Real-time visibility

Can you see cash, stock and margin today, or only after month-end? Decisions made on last month's figures are a common sign that live reporting was never set up properly.

4. Process and automation

Look for steps people do by hand that the system could do: approvals by email, recurring journals typed each month, bank lines matched one by one. If you run Business Central, Microsoft's guide to assigning permissions helps you check who can approve and post what.

Pro TipPro tip: Ask each person in the finance team to name the one task they would most like the system to do for them. The answers make a better list than any software checklist.

5. Key-person risk

How much of your process lives in one person's head? If the one person who knows how the year-end works were away for a month, could someone else close the books? Write the critical steps down as part of the check.

6. Fit for growth

Finally, ask whether the system will cope with where you are heading: more companies, more users, more transactions or new countries. Compliance matters here too. All VAT-registered businesses should now be signed up for Making Tax Digital for VAT, so confirm that your system files returns the way HMRC expects.

Watch OutWatch out: Do not treat a red score as a reason to replace the system straight away. Many problems are setup or training, and fixing them costs far less than a move.

What to do with the results

Rank the problems you found by impact and by effort to fix, and start with the ones that are high impact and quick to solve. If several areas score at risk and the cause is not clear, an independent review is worth having.

Our guides to the signs you have outgrown your ERP and what an ERP health check involves help with that next step. For independent guidance on finance systems, the ICAEW technology resources are a useful reference.