Business Central, Acumatica or NetSuite
for a 50 to 250 person Alberta company

Which one is best?

None of them, in general. Each is used by thousands of mid-sized companies, and each has customers who love it and customers who regret it. The difference is rarely the software. It is whether the system fits how your company makes money, and whether the partner who sets it up understands that.

So the useful question is not which is best. It is which one handles your hardest job, at a cost you can see three years out, with a partner you trust to answer the phone after go-live.

How is each one priced?

This is the biggest structural difference between the three, and it matters more than any headline number.

• Business Central is priced per named user. Microsoft publishes Canadian prices on its own site. Full users are on Essentials or Premium, and people who mostly look things up and approve can be on a cheaper Team Members licence.
• Acumatica is not priced by user seat. Acumatica says its price is based mainly on the applications you license, plus your expected transaction volume and resource needs. It does not publish a price.
• NetSuite is an annual licence with three parts: a core platform, the optional modules you add, and the number of users. NetSuite also lists a one-time implementation fee. It does not publish a price.

The table further down this page sets the three side by side, with the source for each line.

What does the licence actually cost?

Only Microsoft publishes a number, so here is a worked example using its published Canadian prices. Premium includes manufacturing and costs CAD $149.20 per user per month, paid yearly. Team Members costs CAD $10.90.

A manufacturer with 20 people who work in the system all day and 40 who only look things up or approve:

• 20 Premium users at $149.20 is $2,984 a month
• 40 Team Members at $10.90 is $436 a month
• Total $3,420 a month, or $41,040 a year, before tax

Put all 60 on Premium and it is $8,952 a month, or $107,424 a year. Same company, same software, a $66,384 difference, decided entirely by who needs which licence.

That is licence only. Implementation, data migration, training, add-ons and support come on top, for all three systems. For Acumatica and NetSuite, get the same three-year number in writing from the partner before you compare anything.

Which pricing model suits a company like ours?

Count your people by how they actually use the system, not by headcount.

1. Daily users. Estimating, purchasing, scheduling, accounting. They need full access under any model.
2. Occasional users. Supervisors who approve, managers who check a report, sales who look up an order.
3. Field and shop floor. People who might record time, receipts or progress if it took them under a minute.

If most of your people are in the first group, the per-user models are straightforward to price. If you have a large second and third group, the pricing model starts to matter a lot. Under Business Central, check exactly what Team Members can and cannot do before you count anyone in it. Under Acumatica, you do not pay per seat, but Acumatica says resource levels scale as users and transactions grow, so ask exactly how that is measured and priced. Under NetSuite, ask how each type of user is licensed.

What about manufacturing and construction?

• Manufacturing. Business Central includes manufacturing in its Premium plan, not in Essentials. Acumatica has a Manufacturing edition. NetSuite offers manufacturing through modules, so what you get depends on which ones you license.
• Construction. Acumatica has a Construction and Professional Services edition. Business Central has project accounting built in, but no construction plan from Microsoft. Construction functions such as progress billing and retainage usually come from apps built by partners. For NetSuite, ask the partner which construction functions are standard and which are added.

In all three cases, test the system on your hardest job, not your easiest. Make-to-order, engineer-to-order and progress-billed contract work stress a system in different places, and a demo built on a simple example will not show you where.

Who will actually support us?

The partner, more than the software company. You buy Business Central through a Microsoft partner and Acumatica through an Acumatica partner. NetSuite sells directly and through partners. Either way, the people who configure the system and answer the phone afterward decide most of how this goes.

Ask every partner the same four things:

1. Who exactly will be on our project, and will they stay on it?
2. How many companies like ours, in our industry and at our size, have you implemented?
3. Who answers the phone after go-live, and how quickly?
4. Can we speak to two of those customers without you on the call?

What should we ask every vendor before we sign?

• Where will our data be stored, and does it stay in Canada?
• How is Canadian payroll handled? In the product, or through a separate application, and what does that cost?
• How are GST and, if you sell outside Alberta, provincial sales taxes handled?
• What is in the implementation quote and what is not? Data migration, integrations, training and reports are the usual gaps.
• Which of the tools we keep will it connect to? Estimating, field, payroll, banking. Ask how, and who maintains the connection.
• How much can the price go up at renewal? Get the answer in the contract.
• How do we get our data out if we ever leave?

Can we skip all this and just pick the one our accountant uses?

You can, and it might work. But the system your accountant knows best is built around the accounting, and in a company your size most of the cost of a bad fit shows up in operations: quoting, scheduling, purchasing, the job itself. Settle how a job moves from quote to invoice first, then let that decide. Our ERP selection page walks through what to settle.