2 runs
An ERP allocation is only as current as the headcount it read.
Spreading rent by headcount or IT by users is standard in a finance system. What differs is which basis the run reads, and what a second run does after someone corrects it.
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Systems Stackmark profiles whose record says what it takes to change the account structure after go-live (Sage 300). Coverage of the dataset on 1 November 2026, not of the market.
Every ERP will report by department, location and product. Where that detail sits decides whether adding a new cut next year is a setup change, a batch job that locks the ledger, or a fresh implementation.
Should departments, locations and product lines go into the account code, or into dimensions beside it? Most answers stop at the principle: keep the natural account lean and put the analysis in dimensions. The principle is sound, and it skips the part that hurts later. Each ERP decides which parts of its account structure can still change once entries have been posted, and two systems that appear on many shortlists answer that in opposite ways.
In Oracle Fusion Cloud General Ledger an account is a string of segments, up to 30 of them, defined in a chart of accounts structure. Three segment labels are required: a primary balancing segment, usually the company, a cost centre segment and a natural account segment. A second and third balancing segment and an intercompany segment are optional. Each label can be assigned once in a chart, and Oracle notes that no validation runs when labels are assigned, so a mistake there is not caught at setup.
Oracle's help is direct about what happens next. The structure and its instance cannot be altered once they are used: the number of segments, their order, and each segment's label, length, type and value set assignment cannot be updated. A product line segment that was not in the string before the first journal cannot be added afterwards. There is a reporting catch as well. A segment with no label is summarised in Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence, so detailed reporting on it needs a user defined label, which is a design decision to make before go-live rather than after.
Dynamics 365 Business Central takes the other route. Microsoft's guidance is to use dimensions such as department or project instead of setting up separate general ledger accounts for each, so the chart stays short. A company can define as many dimensions and values as it needs, and the combination of values on a line is stored as a dimension set.
The dimensions are not all equal, though. Two can be global dimensions, which work as filters on reports, batch jobs and XMLports. Up to eight can be shortcut dimensions, which appear as fields on journals, document lines and ledger entries. Any other dimension is entered through the line's dimension set rather than as a field of its own. Choosing which two are global is the decision that is expensive to reverse.
Changing a global dimension later means updating every entry posted with it. Microsoft provides a Change Global Dimensions action in two modes. Sequential mode runs as one transaction, locks several tables and blocks other users until it finishes, and on a large database it may not complete. Parallel mode splits the work across background sessions, and it will not start while more than one database session is active. Microsoft's own advice is to choose global and shortcut dimensions carefully to avoid changing them later. Two smaller rules matter in design: a dimension used on any line or record cannot be deleted, even if nothing was posted, and Microsoft warns against making a dimension mandatory on accounts that the Adjust Exchange Rates or Post Inventory Cost to G/L batch jobs post to, because those jobs cannot use dimension codes. A rule that every entry carries a cost centre therefore has exceptions written into the product.
Across every text field of the 55 systems Stackmark profiles, six records mention the chart of accounts or dimensions at all. Three describe how reporting detail is structured. The Sage Intacct record describes dimensional reports across department, project, location, fund or grant without expanding the chart of accounts. The Unit4 record says its data model lets organisations add dimensions, cost centres and reporting lines without custom development. The Sage 300 record gives GL account segments by edition: 3 in Standard, 4 in Advanced and 10 in Premium.
Only the Sage 300 record says what a later change involves: changing the segment structure after go-live is a re-implementation rather than a configuration change. The other 54 records are silent on it. That is a gap in what vendors and their profiles publish, not evidence that change is easy elsewhere, and it means the question has to be put to each vendor directly.
Then work backwards from your own reporting. List the cuts management asked for in the last two years that the current system could not give without a spreadsheet: a product line, a sales channel, a grant, a new region. Those are the dimensions most likely to arrive after go-live. The design should either include them now, or sit on a system where adding them is a setup change rather than a batch job or a rebuild.
To put these questions to every shortlisted vendor in the same words, open the requirements builder, mark financial management as a must have, and add the questions in the notes step. They travel with the Markdown, CSV and Excel exports, so each vendor answers the same list.
2 runs
Spreading rent by headcount or IT by users is standard in a finance system. What differs is which basis the run reads, and what a second run does after someone corrects it.
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Nine of the 55 systems Stackmark profiles name intercompany in their records, and none says how the second entity's entry gets made. Two vendors' own help pages show why that is the question to ask before the demonstration.
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Business Central and Oracle Fusion both document automatic cash application, and both match on the reference the customer sends with the money. The useful demonstration is the receipts that arrive without one.