We hereby present the findings of the online survey on transfer pricing documentation software which we conducted in September 2016.
The main goal of the survey was to get a feel for the selection criteria that are used by the (potential) buyers of transfer pricing documentation software. Before we started the survey, it was really a black box to us what selection criteria MNEs would consider relevant. Would it be the reputation of the software provider, user-friendliness, core features of the software, or would other considerations be relevant for the final decision? We think that the findings of this survey shed some light on this matter.
We would like to thank our respondents for their time and efforts.
As a follow-up, we will present a comprehensive overview of the transfer pricing software market in one of our next articles.
Click here to download the detailed results and our analysis.
Executive summary
This online survey investigates the criteria that are relevant for financial, tax and transfer pricing professionals in the process of selecting transfer pricing documentation software. The key conclusions of our survey are:
- Most respondents considered improving the quality and consistency of the transfer pricing documentation as the most important reason for using transfer pricing documentation software.
- More than 75% of our respondents considered the ability to prepare a Master file and Local files as the (most) important core functionality of the transfer pricing documentation software. The capability to prepare intercompany agreements was rated as the least important core functionality.
- Apart from the core functionalities, the effectiveness of the software was considered to be a very important feature of the software. The running/operating costs of the software were least important to our respondents.
- 61% of our respondents considered it (very) important to operate the software on the company’s own server.
- Limited importance was assigned to the question whether the transfer pricing documentation software has to be provided by a well-known, established company.
- Our respondents were indifferent or even considered it unimportant whether or not the software provider also offers transfer pricing related services (e.g. benchmark studies or functional analysis support).
- Additional criteria that were important to our respondents in the selection process of transfer pricing documentation software were:
- the software should be flexible so that it could capture changing situations in the business;
- the software should be capable to annually roll over information used in the prior year; and
- the software should contain access to upgrades to capture changes in transfer pricing legislation.
The online survey we conducted was visited by 120 respondents of which 65% completed the questionnaire in full or in part. The majority (78%) of our respondents were working with MNEs. Out of this group, by far most of the respondents represented a MNE with a turnover of more than Euro 750 million (53,8%). The remaining respondents (22%) were transfer pricing and tax advisors. Although we cannot disclose our respondents on an individual bases, the survey was completed by staff of companies from all over the world, i.e. the Americas, Europe and Asia.
Click here to download the detailed results and our analysis.
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