If your company has been considering an ERP and accounting software upgrade, 2026 may be a better time to look than you think.

The economy feels off, and leadership teams are being extra careful right now. Every big investment proposal gets more questions, more reviewers, and at least one person asking whether it can wait another quarter.

Even so, the market has shifted in a way that can work in the ERP and accounting software buyer’s favor. Software publishers want deals they can close, buyers want stronger proof, and partners are paying closer attention to which projects are likely to get funded and move forward. Everybody is a little less casual than they were a few years ago, which, frankly, is not the worst development in the history of ERP.

If you’re a cautious buyer with a compelling business case, you may have more leverage than you realize.

The market is crowded, and that helps buyers

Mid-market ERP and accounting software is not a quiet little corner of the technology world. Sage Intacct, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Acumatica, and other cloud platforms compete for many of the same buyers. Add newer AI-first entrants and plenty of industry-specific point solutions, and publishers must work harder to win attention. This can work in your favor.

A crowded market gives ERP and accounting software buyers options and, in some cases, more room to negotiate pricing, terms, implementation incentives, and support commitments. We’re not suggesting vendors are handing out free software and toasters. Still, serious buyers can have a different kind of conversation than they could when cloud ERP felt newer, shinier, and less proven.

A company moving up from QuickBooks, Sage 50, Dynamics GP, older Dynamics NAV, or another legacy system is no longer asking whether cloud financial software works. Plenty of companies have already answered that question. Now buyers are asking which system fits, which partner understands their business, how quickly they can see value, and what kind of deal makes sense.

Publishers are motivated

Software publishers have always wanted new customers. What’s different now is the pressure behind the chase. Publicly traded publishers still have forecasts to hit, growth stories to protect, and market share they do not want to hand to the next cloud platform in the evaluation. At the same time, buyers are moving slower, asking for a stronger business case and proof points, and bringing more people into the approval process.

Longer sales cycles and an uncertain economy make pipeline harder to predict, while AI has raised expectations for what buyers think new software should deliver. Buyers are asking about AP automation. Close management. Reporting. Forecasting. Cash visibility. AI features that actually reduce work and enable competitive advantages.

Sage shipped three Intacct releases already this year, and AI features are showing up in the form of line-level 3-way matching that catches invoice mismatches automatically, anomaly detection that flags a weird vendor payment before a human sees it, and a Finance Intelligence Agent that answers plain-language questions about your own numbers and shows its work. Publishers know they need to prove that stuff works in the real world, not just in marketing messages. They also know that a qualified buyer with real pain and a funded project is worth competing for.

That can give serious buyers a better hand to play. When publishers are trying to protect forecasts, win share, and prove adoption around new AI capabilities, a qualified buyer with a real project has room to ask for more. Pricing protection, service incentives, free months, phased rollout terms, and clearer support commitments may all be part of the conversation.

AI has made the conversation messier

A few years ago, most ERP and accounting software evaluations centered on fairly familiar questions. Can the system handle our entities? Can it automate revenue recognition? Can it support our reporting? Can it integrate with the systems we already use? Can our team survive the change management without mutiny? These are still important questions, but AI has added a new layer on top.

Now buyers want to know what automation is available today, what is still developing, and what the vendor is planning next. They want to know whether AI can help with invoice processing, expense coding, anomaly detection, cash forecasting, close tasks, and natural-language reporting. They also want to know how the system protects financial data, handles permissions, and keeps humans in control.

The AI conversation has also made publishers more eager to land the right customers. They want customers who will adopt the new capabilities, validate the roadmap, and give them credible proof points. Buyers should use this moment wisely.

Ask what is live now. Ask what is still in the early adopter phase. Ask what requires additional licensing. Ask what the product can actually do to save your teams’ time and effort.

Caution is not the same as standing still

Many companies are being careful with capital spending right now. Revenue forecasts are less predictable in many industries. Tariffs, policy changes, margin pressure, labor costs, and competing priorities all make leaders slower to approve major investments.

There are good reasons to be careful right now. There are also real costs to carrying an outdated system longer than you should. You can’t hire your way out of a finance capacity problem right now. Unemployment among accounting professionals sits around 1-2%, so nearly everyone qualified already has a job. CPA exam participation has dropped more than 30% since 2016. Sixty-one percent of finance leaders report a talent shortage this year, up from 46% last year.

So, when your senior accountant leaves, the seat may not fill next quarter. It may fill in two, if you’re lucky. The person covering AP and financial reporting is now juggling three roles, and month-end close slides from four days to ten — and there’s nobody free to fix the clunky manual process underneath it, because everyone’s busy just keeping it running.

It starts small. A workaround here, a manual step there, a spreadsheet somebody built two years ago that nobody wants to touch now because it’s the only one that still balances. Then the workarounds start needing their own workarounds. Month-end runs late because of extra steps nobody remembers deciding to add. Multi-entity reporting only works because two people know which numbers to fudge and why. Nobody chose this. It just accumulated, one exception at a time, until the exceptions were the job.

When the problems are minor, waiting may be fine. Annoying, but fine. When they start affecting cash visibility, management reporting, staffing, lender reporting, board confidence, or the ability to absorb growth, though, waiting becomes a decision with a real price tag.

Serious buyers can ask for more

The strongest buyers come into the process with a clear view of what they need to fix. They know which processes are too slow, and where reporting breaks down. They know what leadership is asking finance to provide and why the current system struggles to deliver it.

That clarity lets them push vendors on how the system handles their actual complexity, press partners on implementation tradeoffs, and negotiate things like pricing protection, rollout phasing, service incentives, and support commitments.

They can also walk away from a bad fit. That may be the biggest advantage of starting before the whole building is on fire. A company evaluating from a position of discipline has options. A company evaluating under panic has a calendar problem, a budget problem, and usually a few executives asking why nobody handled this two years ago. Nobody enjoys that meeting.

So, is now a good time to look?

Yes, if your pain is real.

A company that has outgrown QuickBooks or an older on-premises ERP and accounting software, or a spreadsheet-heavy finance process, should at least understand its options. The market is competitive, cloud platforms are well established, AI capabilities are moving quickly, and publishers are motivated to win serious deals.

Nobody should buy software just because the market happens to be favorable this year. Start with what’s actually costing you: too much time, too much risk, numbers that arrive too late, work that depends on one person or one spreadsheet or one heroic monthly scramble.

Answer that honestly, and you’ll walk into a vendor conversation with clearer requirements and a much stronger hand at the negotiating table. If you’re close to that point, 2026 is a good year to look around.

Want a second opinion on whether your pain points justify the project? Let’s talk before you make any decisions.