Moving Away from Sage and Xero is becoming a common next step for growing foodservice businesses — and with good reason. What once worked perfectly can quickly start to slow you down. Systems like Sage and Xero are great in the early days — simple, affordable, and familiar. But if you’re now wrestling with disconnected processes, lack of visibility, or duplicate data entry, you’re not alone. More and more companies are leaving behind these entry-level tools and choosing systems that can actually scale with them.
In this post, we’ll break down exactly why foodservice businesses are moving away from Sage and Xero — and what they’re choosing instead.
You’ve Outgrown Basic Accounting Features
Moving away from Sage and Xero often starts with one simple realisation: your business has outgrown basic bookkeeping. While Sage and Xero are great for managing the early stages of finance, they weren’t built to handle the complexities of a growing foodservice operation.
Once you’re managing suppliers, tracking inventory across multiple locations, and juggling customer-specific pricing or compliance requirements, you need more than an accounts package.
You need a system that gives you full operational visibility — not just a view of what’s coming in and going out of the bank. That’s why so many foodservice businesses are turning to ERP: they need a platform that can handle purchasing, production, finance, and reporting — not just invoices.
An ERP system like SAP Business One brings everything together. Your finance team, warehouse, and sales team are no longer working in silos — they’re sharing the same data and working smarter, not harder.
Managing Stock and Orders Separately Is Slowing You Down
Still juggling stock control in spreadsheets or separate systems? You’re not alone — but it’s costing you time and increasing the risk of errors. As you expand, the cracks show.
This is one of the biggest reasons foodservice businesses are moving away from Sage and Xero. These systems don’t offer the deep stock integration or automated fulfilment processes needed to run a growing food business efficiently.
With an ERP system, you can streamline goods-in, automate stock movements, and get accurate insight into what’s available — so you never promise what you can’t deliver. It means fewer delays, fewer refunds, and happier customers.
You Can’t See the Bigger Picture
If generating performance reports takes hours — or worse, if you’re relying on someone else to extract and combine the data — your systems are holding you back. Decision-makers in foodservice need to move fast, and that means access to the right data, at the right time.
Sage and Xero can show you financial data, but what about product margins? What about wastage? Or sales performance across different customer types?
This lack of insight is a key reason growing foodservice businesses are moving away from Sage and Xero. ERP software brings all your data together into clear dashboards and reports — helping you make quicker, smarter decisions based on facts.
You’re Planning to Scale — But Your Systems Won’t
Growth exposes the cracks in any system. You might be expanding your menu, onboarding more suppliers, or opening new distribution routes. The more your operations grow, the more you need systems that scale with you.
Sage and Xero aren’t built for multi-site inventory control, detailed bill of materials, or industry-specific compliance needs. And while you can bolt on third-party tools, it quickly becomes complicated and costly.
Foodservice businesses that are serious about growth are switching to ERP systems that give them room to grow — without outgrowing the tech every few years.
Manual Workarounds Are Now the Norm
Let’s be honest — are your team spending more time moving data around than actually acting on it? Manual workarounds are fine in the short term, but long term? They drain time, introduce errors, and stop your team from focusing on the tasks that really add value.
This is a big reason foodservice businesses are moving away from Sage and Xero — they want to remove the manual headaches and replace them with automation and integration.
So, What Are Foodservice Businesses Switching To?
The answer for many? ERP systems like SAP Business One. It offers everything foodservice SMEs need — stock control, batch traceability, finance, reporting, order management — all under one roof. And it’s designed to grow with your business, not hold it back.
Thinking About Moving Away from Sage or Xero?
If you’re feeling the limitations of Sage or Xero, now might be the perfect time to look at what’s next. At Signum Solutions, we help growing foodservice businesses upgrade to ERP with minimal disruption and long-term benefits.
Let’s talk about whether it’s time for your business to make the switch — and how we can help make that transition smooth and successful.