Why ERP Reporting Is Broken: Lessons from the Legacy Trenches

After years as a NetSuite consultant, I kept seeing the same scene repeat itself. A smart, capable business user would sit across from me—frustrated, sometimes even embarrassed—struggling to pull what should be simple data from their ERP. “I just want to see which sales orders haven’t been invoiced yet,” they’d say. What followed was always the same: a 30-minute detour through table relationships, join constraints, and why their “simple” request required building a complex Saved Search.

Moments like that have stuck with me. When I joined Everest ERP in 2020, I didn’t set out specifically to fix reporting—but those experiences made it painfully clear what needed to change.

Saved Searches are a perfect example of what’s broken about legacy ERP reporting. They’re needlessly complex, full of arbitrary limitations, and force users to think like database admins just to answer everyday business questions. I’ve seen accountants waste hours during month-end close, not because the work was hard—but because the tools made it hard.

At Everest, we took a different approach. Our Custom Reporting system—and specifically the data sources feature—tackles this problem head-on. Instead of making users navigate a maze of tables, we organized reporting around how businesses actually operate. Select “Sales and Invoicing,” and you immediately see sales orders, invoices, and payments, already connected in a way that mirrors the real-world workflow.

The difference is night and day. Users start from familiar business concepts and drill down naturally—without ever having to understand what’s happening under the hood. It’s the reporting experience I always wished I could give my clients.

That user-first mindset drives everything we build at Everest. After seeing firsthand how painful enterprise software can be, we’re obsessive about making tools that actually work the way people think.

If this resonated with you, stay tuned. In my next piece, I’ll share how we’re using AI Agents inside Everest to power reporting and automate complex process flows.