ERP Testing and UAT Staffing: Contract Testers for Go-Live and Every Release After

Somebody has to write the ERP test scripts. Somebody has to run them. And somebody has to put their initials on the result. That’s three jobs. The third one is yours. The first two, you can staff. ERP user acceptance testing is the stretch of a go-live where the people who will live in the system try to break it first.

The controller, the AP lead and the one person who understands the intercompany rules are exactly who the project needs for the first two. So testing gets thin, or the close runs late. Sometimes both.

Not your accountants. They know whether a vendor bill routed correctly. They don’t have three spare weeks to turn a process map into a binder of scripts. Not the implementation partner alone, either. At Colin’s firm, the engineer who builds a function never writes or runs the test that proves it. The failure of self-testing is rarely fake results. It’s gentle test design, scripts that walk the paths the builder already had in mind.

So the split is simple. A contract tester writes and runs the scripts. A contract business analyst turns your processes into test cases and runs the UAT sessions. Your accountants run their own steps, log what’s wrong, and approve. Staffing covers the first two. Nobody can staff the third for you.

The staffing model follows three passes. System integration testing, user acceptance testing, and release regression. Each one is a proof pass. A contract seat sets it and runs it, and one of your people initials it.

For system integration testing, a contract tester builds scripts from your integration list, runs them in the sandbox, and sends defects back to the build team. For user acceptance testing, a contract business analyst writes the scripts from your process maps and runs the sessions. A mid-level tester logs and retests defects. A junior tester handles the repeat runs.

Then every vendor release gets the same scripts rerun in the preview sandbox, before it reaches production. One mid-level tester comes back for the run, then rolls off until the next release. How many seats you need depends on your script count and your test cycles.

Here’s what the seats cost. Mid-level contract quality assurance testers bill seventy-three to ninety-four dollars an hour nationally. The median is eighty-three dollars. That’s modeled, from the KORE1 Contract Rate Index for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty-six.

Juniors run a median of sixty-two dollars an hour. Mid-level, eighty-three. Seniors, a hundred and six. Business analysts run a hundred and sixteen, across ten KORE1 placements, mostly in Southern California.

The tester rates are modeled from Bureau of Labor Statistics wages plus a twenty-four percent burden. The analyst rates come from KORE1’s own placements. Multiply the median by the hours you actually need.

In one regulated NetSuite estimate from Colin’s firm, validation came to roughly thirty percent of the base hours. A materially cheaper proposal is usually cheaper by exclusion, not efficiency.

So ask any bidder who comes in well under the rest one question. What are your validation hours, and who executes them? And if you’re not regulated, you still have scripts to write, cycles to run, and defects to retest. The same rule applies to who signs the result.

Nothing breaks on day one. That’s the trap. A rushed builder writes scripts that walk the paths they already had in mind, so the exceptions go untested. Then your accountants become the testers, clicking through scripts all week while the old system still has to close.

Then the defects surface in hypercare, where every fix costs hypercare hours. And the initials stop meaning anything, because if the signer never ran their own steps, the signature proves nothing at audit time.

It’s hourly W two contract. Contractors show up on time and get paid every Friday. You direct the work, and we handle the employment side. That’s why a tester can be on your calendar for a UAT window, and again for each release, without a permanent seat in between.

You might be wondering what happens after go-live. The tester comes back for each vendor release, reruns your regression scripts in the preview sandbox, then rolls off until the next one. NetSuite ships two major releases a year, and Dynamics ships release waves twice a year. And a contractor can convert to full time after ten forty hours worked, with no fee from KORE1.

Your accountants approve the tests. Contract testers write and run them. Send us the ERP platform, the phase you’re in, how many test cycles you expect, your start date, and whether you’re regulated. We’ll tell you which seats you need and how many hours to start with. The full rate table is on KORE1.com.