Top 10 Accounting and ERP Systems

It's hard to keep up with accounting and ERP systems. The market moves extremely fast, and the spate of acquisitions and mergers continues. To give you some idea of the consolidation in the industry, take a look at the Sage software listing of software they support in North America.

Several sites have published a top 10 accounting systems list. Most analysts divide the market into the following divisions, although these are blurring today:

• Tier 1
• Mid-Market
• Entry Level

Tier 1 products include such products as Baan, JD Edwards, Lawson, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP (mySAP and R/3), and perhaps others (some include products line MAS-500 or Axapta in this category). SAP has by far the largest market share in this segment of the market. These products are designed for rapidly growing businesses with sales from $50 million, and larger enterprises with sales exceeding $100 million.

Mid-Market products are used in businesses with sales from $2 million to $250 million (some vendors say $500 million), with the "sweet spot" from $5 to $50 million. The top packages in this space (in no particular order) are:

• Sage ACCPAC ERP (links are to PDF of product brocure)
• Sage ACCPAC Pro
• Sage BusinessVision
• Epicor Vantage
• Microsoft Dynamics GP
• Macola ES (Exact Software)
• Sage MAS 90 & MAS 200 (formerly Best Software)
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV
• Netsuite
• PFW (Platinum for Windows Best)
• Microsoft Dynamics SL
• SysPro
• Traverse (Open Systems)

Entry level products include such products as QuickBooks (free trial and there is a free starter version) and Peachtree (links to a whitepaper, a free trial of Peachtree is available on the Sage website for download).

Our software evaluation database contains information on over 150 products from QuickBooks to SAP. You may download it now.