[
  {
    "slug": "ai-features",
    "name": "AI features",
    "description": "The assistive layer vendors bolt onto the transactional core — invoice capture and coding, anomaly flags on journals, cash forecasts, natural-language querying of reports. The gap between what gets demoed and what is generally available is wider here than in any other module.",
    "questions": "Which of these features are generally available to all customers today, and which are in private beta or on the roadmap?; Where is our data processed when a model runs, and is any of it retained or used to train something outside our tenant?; When the system codes an invoice or flags a journal, what does the audit trail record about why it decided that?; What accuracy has this reached at a customer with our transaction volume and our chart of accounts, and who reviews the exceptions?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "asset-management",
    "name": "Asset management",
    "description": "The fixed asset register and its depreciation runs — capitalisation, useful life, disposals, revaluation — and in some systems the maintenance of physical plant as well. Worth establishing which of those two a vendor means, because both are sold under this name.",
    "questions": "Can one asset carry separate books for statutory, tax and IFRS depreciation, and post each to a different ledger?; How is a mid-life change handled — impairment, revaluation, a revised useful life — and does it restate prior periods or only adjust forward?; Can construction-in-progress accumulate costs from purchase orders and project time before it is capitalised?; Does the maintenance side exist as a real module here, or is asset management only the finance register?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "business-intelligence",
    "name": "Business intelligence",
    "description": "Reporting and analytics over everything the system holds — statutory statements, ad hoc queries, dashboards, and the export route into whatever warehouse the business already runs. The question is rarely whether reports exist, but whether finance can change one without a consultant.",
    "questions": "Can a controller build and change a report without developer help, and does that report survive the next upgrade?; Do reports run against live transactional data or a replica, and how far behind can the replica get?; What is the supported way to get raw data into our own warehouse — an API, a scheduled extract, a direct read?; Are row-level permissions enforced in reporting, so an entity manager cannot query the whole group?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "crm",
    "name": "CRM",
    "description": "Accounts, contacts, opportunities and quotes, held close enough to the ledger that a won deal becomes a sales order without rekeying. Most finance buyers already own a CRM, so what matters is whether this one replaces it or has to live beside it.",
    "questions": "If we keep our existing CRM, what is the supported integration — which objects sync, in which direction, and how often?; Does a quote built here carry its pricing, discount approval and tax treatment straight through to the sales order?; Can a salesperson see a customer's credit limit and overdue balance before they quote?; Who owns the customer master when both systems can create one, and how are duplicates resolved?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "ecommerce",
    "name": "Ecommerce",
    "description": "The storefront, or more often the connectors to one, and the plumbing that keeps orders, stock levels, pricing and returns in step between the shop and the ledger. Whether the vendor sells its own store or integrates yours changes the shape of the whole project.",
    "questions": "Is this a storefront you host, or connectors to Shopify, Amazon and similar — and which specific channels are live today?; How often does available stock republish to each channel, and what prevents overselling between syncs?; How are marketplace settlements — fees, refunds, chargebacks — broken back out into journal entries rather than a single net deposit?; Where is VAT or sales tax determined for a cross-border online order: the storefront, this system, or a third-party engine?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "field-service",
    "name": "Field service",
    "description": "Work orders, scheduling and dispatch for technicians who go to the customer, plus the parts they consume and the contract or warranty that decides who pays. It only earns its keep when van stock and technician time both land in the ledger without a re-key.",
    "questions": "Does the scheduler account for technician skills, certifications and parts availability, or only for their calendar?; Is a van or truck a real stock location, so a part used on a job relieves inventory and costs the work order?; How are contract work, warranty work and billable work separated on the same job, and what reaches the invoice?; What can a technician do on the mobile app with no signal at the site, and what happens when they reconnect?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "financial-management",
    "name": "Financial management",
    "description": "The general ledger and everything anchored to it — chart of accounts, journals, payables, receivables, and the period close. This is the module every other one posts into, and the one a finance team lives in daily.",
    "questions": "How many legal entities can post to a shared chart of accounts, and what happens when two entities need different local charts?; Is intercompany elimination built in, or does it happen in a spreadsheet outside the system?; What does a period close actually involve — which steps are automated and which are still manual checklists?; Can a closed period be reopened, and what audit trail does that leave?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "hr-payroll",
    "name": "HR and payroll",
    "description": "Employee records, time and absence, and the pay run itself. The line to watch is where the vendor's own payroll stops and a local partner takes over, because that boundary tends to fall exactly at the countries you operate in.",
    "questions": "In which countries do you run payroll yourselves rather than through a partner, and who owns statutory filing in each case?; How does the payroll posting reach the general ledger — one summary journal, or costed down to department, project and cost centre?; How are statutory changes such as new rate tables or filing formats delivered, and are they included or chargeable?; Can an employee sit in one legal entity and be costed to another, and does that raise an intercompany charge automatically?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "inventory-management",
    "name": "Inventory management",
    "description": "Tracking what stock exists, where it sits, and what it is worth. The valuation method it supports is usually what decides whether a distributor or manufacturer can use the system at all.",
    "questions": "Which valuation methods are supported — FIFO, weighted average, standard cost — and can they differ by warehouse or item class?; How are cycle counts handled, and can they run without freezing transactions?; What happens to costing when stock moves between entities in different currencies?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "localizations",
    "name": "Localizations",
    "description": "The country-specific layer: local chart of accounts, statutory report formats, tax rules, e-invoicing clearance, and the languages the interface and printed documents run in. This is where an otherwise capable system quietly turns out to be unusable in a given market.",
    "questions": "Which of our countries are covered by your own localisation, and which depend on a partner's add-on?; Who maintains a localisation when a tax authority changes the rules mid-year, and what is the usual lag before it ships?; Is e-invoicing clearance — ZATCA, Peppol, SAF-T, whichever applies to us — native, or does it go through a certified third party?; Can one entity report on a local statutory chart while the group consolidates on a different one?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "manufacturing-management",
    "name": "Manufacturing management",
    "description": "Bills of material, routings, work orders, and the planning run that decides what to make and when. Systems differ most in how they cost a job and how much shop-floor reality — scrap, rework, substitutions — they can absorb without invalidating the plan.",
    "questions": "Which manufacturing modes are supported natively — make-to-stock, make-to-order, engineer-to-order, process with recipes and yields?; How deep can a bill of material nest, and can a work order substitute a component without raising a change order?; How is variance calculated and posted when actual material, labour and overhead differ from standard cost?; How long does an MRP run take at our transaction volume, and can it be run for a single site rather than the whole group?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "procurement",
    "name": "Procurement",
    "description": "Requisitions, purchase orders, and the approvals between them, through to matching a supplier invoice against what was ordered and received. Where spend control is either enforced or quietly bypassed.",
    "questions": "Can approval limits vary by department, cost centre and amount at the same time?; Is three-way matching automatic, and what is the tolerance for a quantity or price mismatch?; What stops someone raising a purchase order after the invoice has already arrived?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "project-management",
    "name": "Project management",
    "description": "Projects as a costing object: budgets, time and expense booked against them, work in progress, and the billing rules that turn effort into revenue. For a services business this is effectively a second ledger, and it has to reconcile with the first.",
    "questions": "Which billing models are native — time and materials, fixed fee with milestones, retainer, cost-plus — and can one project mix them?; How is revenue recognised on a fixed-fee project, and does percentage-of-completion run off cost, hours, or a manual estimate?; Can a project span legal entities, with resources charged across them at a transfer rate?; What are the approval paths for a timesheet and for an expense claim, and can they differ per client?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "quality-management",
    "name": "Quality management",
    "description": "Inspection plans, holds, non-conformance and corrective action, plus the certificates and traceability records a regulated customer or auditor will ask for. In food, pharma and aerospace this is not an optional module — it is what makes the system auditable.",
    "questions": "Can inspection be required at goods receipt, in process and before despatch, with the stock quarantined until it passes?; How does a non-conformance escalate into a corrective action, and can that be closed without evidence attached?; Can you trace a finished lot back to every input lot and forward to every customer shipped, and how long does that query take?; Are electronic signatures and audit trails to 21 CFR Part 11 supported in the core product or through an add-on?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "supply-chain-management",
    "name": "Supply chain management",
    "description": "Working out what will be needed and getting it there: demand forecasts, replenishment planning across sites, supplier schedules, and the freight and duty that arrive with the goods. Distinct from procurement, which executes the buying this module decides on.",
    "questions": "What does the demand forecast run on — history, seasonality, promotions, a planner's override — and can we see why it proposed a given number?; Can replenishment plan across several sites at once and move stock between them rather than buying again?; How is landed cost — freight, duty, insurance — apportioned onto item cost, and at what point in the receipt?; Can suppliers see and confirm delivery schedules in a portal, or does that stay in email?"
  },
  {
    "slug": "warehouse-management",
    "name": "Warehouse management",
    "description": "Running the building: bin-level locations, directed putaway and picking, scanning, and the wave and packing logic that decides what a picker does next. Distinct from inventory management, which knows what you own — this knows where it is and who last touched it.",
    "questions": "Is picking directed by the system to a handheld scanner, or is a location just a text field on the stock record?; Which picking strategies are supported — wave, batch, zone, cluster — and can the rules differ by order type?; How are lot, serial and expiry handled at bin level, including first-expired-first-out picking?; What carrier and label integration ships as standard, and where do packing and cartonisation happen?"
  }
]