Your screen studio is closing the books on four productions in one Xero file, and the margins are guesses
A custom ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for a Wellington screen studio or multi-entity tech firm runs NZD 180,000 to 480,000 over 5 to 10 months. You build custom when off-the-shelf NetSuite or SAP can't model job-costed productions, government grant tranches, and freelance crew payroll inside one ledger. NetSuite handles the GL beautifully and chokes the moment a Wellington post-house needs costs split across three overlapping jobs that share a colourist for eleven days.
You run a Miramar post-production house or a SaaS company with a government contract arm, and the books live in one Xero file with a tab per project. NetSuite and SAP assume a tidy org chart with departments and cost centres. Your reality is a colourist booked across Production A and Production B in the same week, gear hired against a job that got rescheduled, and a NZ Film Commission grant that pays in tranches tied to delivery milestones, not invoices.
Off-the-shelf ERP wants every cost mapped to a department before it'll report margin. Your costs map to jobs that overlap, share people, and close on different dates. So the GST return is clean and the per-production P&L is a spreadsheet someone rebuilds by hand the week after wrap, which is exactly when nobody has time and the numbers are already stale.
What breaks first in Wellington
- A freelance editor's day rate gets charged to whichever production the producer remembered, not the one that actually used the suite
- NZ Film Commission and screen-grant tranches arrive on milestones, but NetSuite recognises them as flat deferred revenue
- GST and PAYE filing to IRD is correct while per-job margin is rebuilt by hand after every wrap
- Gear hire (cameras, lenses, lighting) booked against a job that slipped two weeks still shows on the old job's cost line
The fix: erp built for Wellington, not rented
A custom ERP makes the job the primary object, not the department. Crew time, gear hire, facility days, and grant tranches all post against a production code that can run concurrently with five others, so the moment a shoot wraps the margin is already final, not a Friday-afternoon reconstruction. It speaks to IRD for GST and PAYE, and it lets a producer see committed-versus-actual spend on a live job before the overspend becomes a fire.
What erp costs in Wellington
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Job-costing ERP core (single entity) | $180k to $280k | 5 to 7 months |
| Multi-entity with grant revenue recognition | $300k to $420k | 7 to 9 months |
| Full build with IRD filing and crew payroll | $400k to $480k | 8 to 10 months |
The capability list that earns its budget
Wellington ERP: the full scope
Everything an ERP build here can cover: Microsoft Dynamics 365, ERP migration, cloud ERP, manufacturing ERP, distribution ERP, custom ERP modules and ERP API integration.
Exactly what you get
A ledger where the production is the unit of truth. Crew, gear, and facility costs post against concurrent job codes, grant tranches recognise on delivery, and IRD filing runs without re-keying. It connects upward to your business intelligence dashboards and sideways to project management software and inventory management software for gear, so the same job code carries through from booking to final margin.
How to choose a developer in Wellington
Hire a team that has shipped accounting-grade software and worked with NZ tax. Wellington's design-aware culture means studios expect clarity and craft, so ask to see a prior job-costing build and have them walk one transaction from crew time-sheet to per-job P&L. If they can't show real production accounting, they'll learn it on your money.
- !They demo a generic project-accounting module without asking how your productions overlap. Ask them to model two jobs sharing one editor.
- !No one on the team has built against IRD's payday-filing API. Ask for a specific prior NZ tax integration.
- !They quote a fixed price before discovery. Ask what they'd need to learn first.
- !They propose ripping out Xero on day one. Ask how parallel-run and reconciliation work during cutover.
- !They can't explain milestone revenue recognition in plain English. Ask them to walk a grant tranche through the GL.
Teams investing in erp in Wellington usually scope it next to internal tools, shopify, inventory management, since these systems share data and budgets.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from just using NetSuite in Wellington?
NetSuite excels at department-based accounting and standard revenue. It struggles when a Wellington post-house needs one editor's time split across three overlapping productions and grant tranches recognised on delivery milestones. A custom ERP makes the job, not the department, the primary object.
Can it file GST and PAYE to IRD?
Yes. A proper build integrates IRD gateway services for GST returns and payday filing, including contractor withholding for freelance crew, so you don't re-key figures from a separate payroll tool.
How long before it replaces Xero?
Plan for 5 to 10 months depending on entities and grant complexity. You run Xero in parallel during cutover and reconcile until the custom ledger is trusted, usually one or two full month-end closes.
What does a realistic Wellington ERP build cost?
NZD 180,000 to 480,000. A single-entity job-costing core sits at the low end; multi-entity with grant revenue recognition and IRD filing reaches the top.