Holded

Whether the ERP keeps books a tax adviser and an auditor accept: general and subledgers, VAT per country, GoBD-compliant posting and archiving, e-invoices sent and received (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD), payments and dunning, and a DATEV export or a documented hand-over to the accountant.

0 — No accounting at all; invoices leave as PDFs and the books are kept somewhere else by hand.

3 — Invoices and credit notes are created in the system, but there is no ledger, no stated GoBD compliance and no export the accountant can import.

5 — Invoices, open items and payments in the system with a DATEV or accounting export, VAT rates per item, dunning, and e-invoices in XRechnung or ZUGFeRD format sent to customers.

8 — Full financial accounting or a live-synchronised one: general, receivables and payables ledgers, incoming e-invoices read and matched to purchase orders, bank feeds with payment matching, OSS and reverse-charge VAT, GoBD compliance stated with a procedure documentation, and several companies in one tenant.

10 — The money side closes inside the system: an auditor's GoBD or IDW PS 880 attestation published, consolidation and intercompany postings across entities, fixed assets and cost accounting, every posting traceable to the order, goods movement and user behind it, and period close with locked periods documented.

The goods chain from supplier to customer: quotes, orders and order confirmations, purchasing and goods receipt, stock per warehouse and bin, batch and serial numbers, picking and shipping, returns — and whether each step posts through to the next document and to the ledger instead of being retyped.

0 — No order or stock handling; the product is a contact list or an invoicing tool.

3 — Items with a stock count and an order list, but purchasing, goods receipt and delivery are not connected and stock is corrected by hand.

5 — Quote, order, delivery note and invoice as one document chain, purchase orders with goods receipt booking stock, and stock levels with reorder points per item.

8 — Several warehouses and storage bins, batch and serial number tracking, mobile picking and scanning, carrier and shop or marketplace connections, returns with restocking and credit note, drop shipping, and stock valuation that flows into the books.

10 — The goods chain runs and is evidenced in the system: demand-driven purchasing proposals, EDI with suppliers and customers, fulfilment and multi-channel stock allocation, best-before and recall traceability per batch from supplier to customer, and every movement attributed and dated.

The depth for the buyer's own business model: bills of materials, work orders and capacity planning for manufacturers; projects, time, resources and milestone billing for service firms; contracts, subscriptions and field service. A product is judged on the models it says it serves.

0 — Nothing beyond trading goods; no bills of materials, projects or service billing.

3 — A simple kit or set of items, or a project tag on invoices, but no production orders, no time recording and no planning.

5 — For at least one model a working core: bills of materials with production orders consuming stock, or projects with time recording and billing from logged hours, with the supported models named on the vendor's pages.

8 — Multi-level bills of materials with routings, work centres and capacity planning, or projects with budgets, resource planning, milestone and recurring billing, and service or maintenance contracts — with costs flowing to cost accounting.

10 — Industry depth documented for the models served: MRP runs with material and capacity planning, shop-floor data capture and quality checks, variant configuration, or full professional-services automation with utilisation, contracts and revenue recognition — each described with its limits in public documentation.

How the ERP connects and how the data gets in and out: a public API reference, webhooks, standard connectors for shops, marketplaces, banks, payroll, DATEV and BI, data import from the previous system, and a documented full export when the company leaves.

0 — No API, no import and no export beyond printing.

3 — CSV import and export of some lists, a few named integrations, but no public API documentation and no full export.

5 — A documented REST or OData API, CSV or Excel import for master data and open items, and standard connectors to common shops, banks and DATEV.

8 — A public, versioned API reference covering all main objects with webhooks, a connector marketplace, a documented migration path from named predecessor systems, and a full data export of master data, documents and postings available to the customer.

10 — Open by design and evidenced: complete API coverage with sandbox tenants and rate limits stated, open data formats or open-source code, a contractual exit with export format and timeline, and self-hosting or on-premise as a documented alternative to the vendor's cloud.

What it takes to go live and run the system: implementation path (self-service, vendor, partner network), onboarding and training, roles and permissions, audit log, updates and customisation that survive them, support channels and service levels, and availability.

0 — No information on implementation, roles, support or availability.

3 — A contact form and a help page, but no stated implementation path, no role model and no support terms.

5 — A described onboarding or implementation offer, user roles with permissions, a help centre with current documentation, and support channels with hours.

8 — Implementation methods with typical duration stated, a certified partner network or vendor services listed, fine-grained permissions with a change log, customisation without code that survives updates, and published service levels for support and availability.

10 — Operations are evidenced: a status page with uptime history, release notes and an update policy, a field-level audit trail, sandbox or test tenants, and support, training and implementation terms public enough to plan a go-live without a sales call.

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where the ERP data — customers, suppliers, prices, postings, employees — is hosted, and who the subprocessors are (cloud infrastructure, email, support tooling, AI features). Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; an ERP holds a company's entire commercial record, so the ownership chain counts, not only the server location.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy exists, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the processors behind the service are not named.

5 — EU hosting stated and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain (US hyperscaler, AI features, support or email tooling) run through non-EU providers without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessors listed with locations, a data processing agreement offered, and an on-premise or EU-only hosting option stated.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and every subprocessor, data export and deletion documented, and a certification such as ISO 27001 or BSI C5 published rather than implied.

Whether a company can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: price per user, module, company or transaction volume, which modules (accounting, warehouse, production, POS) cost extra, implementation and onboarding fees, minimum term, and what happens to the data on cancellation.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call or a partner proposal.

3 — A starting price or "from" figure exists, but what is included and how it scales with users, modules or companies is unclear.

5 — Prices per edition or module are public with the main inclusions, but at least one commonly needed piece (implementation, extra companies, warehouse or production module, API use) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every edition and module priced publicly with its scaling rule (per user, company or volume), onboarding and implementation packages priced, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given company size and module set, with every add-on, implementation, support and hosting cost and the cancellation and data-return terms published.