SAP Business One · Pricing
SAP Business One® pricing: what a real proposal is made of.
What we can tell you is exactly what the cost is made of, and what moves each part of it. Read this and you can read any proposal, ours included, and know what you are looking at.
- 01
- User licences, per named user and by type
- 02
- Implementation services, priced per phase
- 03
- Development and add-ons, fixed or estimated per item
- 04
- Hosting and support, monthly, with what is covered stated
What you should receive
Six lines, priced separately
Whoever you buy from, a proposal breaks down the same way. If yours does not separate these, ask for one that does, because a line you cannot see is a line you cannot remove.
Proposal
What every line should say
Six lines · Priced separately
Line item
Priced on
What to check before you sign
Amount
- 01
User licences
Per named user, by type
How many are professional and how many are limited, listed by name or by role. A single total hides the most controllable cost on the page.
Amount not published on this page - 02
Implementation services
Per phase, with hours
That the phases are separately priced. A single implementation figure cannot be reduced by removing scope, which means it cannot be negotiated.
Amount not published on this page - 03
Development and add-ons
Per item, fixed or estimated
Whether each item is a fixed price or an estimate, and what happens if an estimate is exceeded. This is where proposals differ most.
Amount not published on this page - 04
Hosting
Monthly, per environment
Whether test and training environments are included, and what the figure does when your data grows.
Amount not published on this page - 05
Support agreement
Monthly or annual
What is covered and what is billed separately. Ask specifically whether integrations and custom applications are inside the agreement.
Amount not published on this page - 06
Annual maintenance
Percentage of licence value
Only on perpetual licences, and it starts the year after purchase. If it is absent from a perpetual quote, ask when it begins.
Amount not published on this page
What moves each line
Four components, and what makes each one bigger
Knowing the drivers is what lets you change the number. Most of the variation across proposals sits in the second and third of these.
- 01
User licences
Licensed per named user, not per concurrent login. Every person who needs access has their own licence, and the type depends on what they do in the system.
What moves it
- How many people need access
- The split between professional and limited users
- Perpetual purchase versus subscription
- 02
Implementation services
The project that turns the software into your system: discovery, configuration, data migration, testing, training and go-live support.
What moves it
- How many processes are in scope
- The state of your existing data
- How many integrations are needed
- How much of the testing your team can absorb
- 03
Development and add-ons
Anything the standard product does not cover: custom reports, workflows, add-ons, or one of our applications such as the B2B portal or the sales rep app.
What moves it
- Requirements that standard configuration cannot meet
- Third-party add-ons versus a build
- Integrations with systems you already run
- 04
Hosting and support
A monthly cost if we host the environment, plus the support agreement that covers users, the database, integrations and upgrades after go-live.
What moves it
- On premise versus hosted
- SAP HANA versus Microsoft SQL Server
- Coverage hours and scope of the support agreement
Licences
Two user types, and the mix is the lever
SAP Business One® is licensed per named user, not per concurrent login. Getting each person on the right type is the single easiest way to control licence cost, and it is the thing most often got wrong.
Professional user
Full access across the system: financials, sales, purchasing, inventory, production, reporting and administration.
Typically. Owners, controllers, finance staff, operations managers, system administrators and anyone who needs the whole picture.
Limited user
Restricted access, sold in financial, logistics and CRM variants. Each variant opens the functions that role needs and closes the rest.
Typically. Warehouse staff, purchasing clerks, customer service and sales people who work in one part of the business.
A typical distribution mix
Owner or general manager
Professional
Needs the whole picture, including financials and administration.
Controller or accountant
Professional
Full financial access, period close, reporting and setup.
Operations manager
Professional
Works across purchasing, inventory and sales rather than inside one of them.
System administrator
Professional
User setup, authorisations and configuration are professional functions.
Purchasing clerk
Limited logistics
Lives in purchase orders, goods receipts and supplier documents.
Warehouse and shipping
Limited logistics
Picking, packing, deliveries and stock movements.
Inside sales or customer service
Limited CRM
Quotes, orders and customer records, without the rest of the system.
Accounts payable or receivable clerk
Limited financial
Invoices, payments and reconciliation within finance only.
Guidance, not a quotation. The boundaries of the limited types are SAP's to define and they move between releases, so the final mapping is confirmed against the current licence guide during scoping.
Two ways to buy
Perpetual or subscription
A cash-flow decision more than a technical one, and it is reversible less often than people assume, so it is worth an hour.
Perpetual licence
You buy the licence once and own it, then pay annual maintenance to stay on support and receive new versions.
- Bought once, owned outright
- Annual maintenance keeps support and upgrades
- Lower total cost over a long horizon
Suits. Companies that plan to run the system for many years and prefer a capital purchase.
Subscription
You pay per user per month. Support and version updates are included for as long as you subscribe.
- No large up-front licence purchase
- Support and updates included
- Scales up and down with headcount
Suits. Companies that prefer operating expense, or want to start smaller and grow the user count.
Scope
What makes a project cost more, and less
Most of the variation is not in the software. It is in the state of your data and how much you decide to change, and both of those are partly yours to control.
Pushes it up
- Many integrations to systems that were never designed to be connected
- Poor data quality that has to be cleaned before it can be migrated
- Processes that cannot be met with configuration and need development
- Multiple warehouses, entities or currencies
- A team with no time to test or validate, so we do more of it
Brings it down
- A willingness to adopt standard SAP Business One processes where they already work
- Clean, well-structured master data
- One phase at a time rather than everything at go-live
- An internal owner who can make decisions without long delays
- Reusing our existing solutions instead of commissioning a new build
Why we quote instead of publishing a price
A published price for an implementation is either padded to cover the worst case or set low and recovered later in change requests. Neither is useful to you. We scope the work, itemize it, and hold the number.
Questions
Pricing questions we get
Next step
Get an itemized proposal, not a ballpark.
Tell us your user count, your systems and what has to work on day one. You get licences, services, development and hosting priced separately.