From £1,950 · finance-grade from £6,500
You stopped using it years ago. You're still paying for it.
Almost every business has one: an old ERP, finance system or CRM that nobody works in, kept alive because the history has to stay reachable. The licence still renews, the server still runs, and once a year somebody spends a fortnight remembering how to drive it. Archive it properly and you can switch it off.
Stop paying for a system nobody opens
Licence or maintenance, partner support, a Windows and SQL licence, a server or a VM, backup, and security updates if it has aged out of support. None of that buys you anything except the ability to look something up.
Have the audit pack ready before anyone asks
Auditors, HMRC and buyers in a due diligence process all ask with a deadline attached. Answering from a documented archive takes an afternoon. Answering from a system nobody remembers takes a fortnight and a favour.
Actually finish the decommissioning
Most migrations are declared done while the old system quietly stays on. This is the piece that lets you close the project, hand back the server and stop carrying it on the risk register.
Add up the lines you are still paying.
Not every line applies to every business, and yours will differ. The point is the shape of the bill, because for most estates the archive costs less than one more year of keeping the original alive.
| What you are paying | Roughly | Why it is still on the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Sage 200 subscription | £3,700 to £4,700 a year | There is no read-only or archive tier. The smallest Standard base subscription includes three desktop users you have stopped using. |
| Legacy Dynamics Enhancement Plan | 20% of list, rising to 21% | Charged as a percentage of protected list price, and it has gone up every year since 2022. The percentage rises again in October 2026, alongside a list price increase of around 10%. |
| Epicor or Infor maintenance | about 18% to 22% of licence a year | The industry norm on perpetual licences. Stop paying it and you keep the right to run the software but lose updates and support entirely. |
| Partner support contract | from £1,800 a year | Often still running on a system nobody logs into, because cancelling it feels riskier than paying it. |
| What you are paying | Roughly | Why it is still on the bill |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Server Standard licence | about £5,900 | Four core licences is the minimum per instance. The free Express edition caps a database at 10 GB, which six years of transactions will usually blow straight through. |
| Windows Server Standard licence | about £875 to £950 | Per 16-core server, at list, before client access licences. |
| Or a small cloud VM instead | about £850 to £900 a year | A two-core Windows VM in UK South with a 128 GB disk and backup, all in, before any SQL licence. The VM rate includes the Windows licence, so this replaces the two lines above rather than adding to them. |
| Extended Security Updates, if it is out of support | from 75% of licence list, rising | Year one is 75% of the current licence price, year two 100%, year three 125%, and you have to buy the earlier years to get the later ones. Billed per core of the host, not per virtual machine, so one legacy server on a 32-core host is charged for all 32. |
Figures are list prices as at August 2026, excluding VAT, and are there to show the shape of the bill rather than to quote your situation. Cloud and self-hosted lines are separated on purpose: a cloud VM rate already includes its Windows licence, so those totals should never be added together.
The dates that turn a cost into a decision
Dynamics AX 2012 stopped receiving security patches in January 2023, so there is nothing left to buy. SQL Server 2016 went out of support in July 2026 and Windows Server 2016 follows in January 2027. Dynamics GP support ends in December 2029 with security updates running to April 2031. If your retired system sits on any of those, the question is not whether to deal with it but whether you would rather do it on a plan or in a hurry.
Six years is the floor, not the ceiling.
The rule most people quote is that records are kept for six years from the end of the last company financial year they relate to. What gets missed is that six years is a minimum which somebody else can extend: an open HMRC enquiry, a return filed late, an asset expected to last longer, or a transaction spanning more than one accounting period all push it out.
So deleting the data is rarely an option, and that is precisely why so many dead systems are still running. The only variable genuinely under your control is what it costs you to stay able to read it.
For a CRM, an operational system or a smaller finance system where nobody needs a signed trial balance.
- Historic data modelled properly rather than dumped
- A queryable reporting archive in your own tenant
- Record counts and key totals reconciled, with the evidence included
- Documentation written for somebody who has never seen the old system
- A decommissioning checklist, so you know what can be switched off and when
For a finance system where the numbers will be challenged and have to hold.
- Everything in the single system archive
- Trial balance, profit and loss, and balance sheet
- Drill down to individual transactions
- Reconciled back to source at £0 variance, or it does not ship
- An audit pack you can hand over without a covering explanation
Find out whether the archive costs less than another year of the old system.
50% to book, 50% on delivery, 14 days to pay.
Invoice or card, whichever suits your finance team. All prices exclude VAT where applicable.
The deposit holds your date
Booking blocks out my diary, so the first half is non-refundable inside 14 days of the start date. Move it with more notice than that and nothing is lost.
Work pauses on an overdue invoice
Not a threat, just how it works, and saying it now saves an awkward conversation later.
Scope changes get quoted, not absorbed
Every fixed price names what it covers. Anything outside that gets priced before it starts rather than appearing on a final invoice.
Access delays move the date, not the price
Waiting on permissions is the most common reason a turnaround slips. It shifts the delivery date and never the fee.
Frequently asked questions
What is a Legacy System Archive?
When you stop using an old system, the obligation to produce its data does not stop with it. Auditors, HMRC and your own finance team still need the history, so the system limps on for years and keeps costing money. This turns it into a queryable reporting archive with an audit pack ready to go, so you can switch the old system off and stop paying for it. From £1,950 for a single system, from £6,500 for a finance-grade archive with full reconciliation.
Why are there two prices?
Because they are genuinely different jobs. Archiving a CRM or an operational system with a couple of years of history is a few days of work: model it, make it queryable, document it, check the record counts and totals tie out. A finance system is a bigger job because the reconciliation has to stand up to an auditor: trial balance, P&L, balance sheet, drill down to individual transactions, tied back at £0 variance. Paying finance-grade money to archive a small CRM would be daft, and I would rather say so on the page than in a quote.
Which systems does this work with?
Anything whose database can be attached or exported. Sage, Dynamics, Epicor, Infor, bespoke SQL systems and most CRMs have all been done. The work is driven by the database rather than the badge on the front, so an unusual or heavily customised system is not a problem, it just changes the scoping conversation.
How do I know the archive is accurate?
On the finance-grade version, a trial balance reconciles back to the source system and if it does not tie out at £0 variance it does not ship. On the single-system version, record counts and key totals are reconciled and the reconciliation is included in the pack. Either way you get the evidence rather than an assurance, because an approximate archive invites a decision that cannot be defended later.
Does this touch our live system?
No. The data is attached read-only or worked from a backup, so nothing is written back and nothing live gets slowed down. If the system is already switched off, a backup file is all that is needed.
Do you keep a copy of our database?
No. The archive is delivered into your own Power BI tenant and the data stays with you, which is where it belongs. If you also need a restorable copy of the original database retained somewhere for a regulator or an insurer, that is a job for your IT provider or a specialist archiving vendor rather than something I take on.
How long do we have to keep this data anyway?
Long enough that deleting it is rarely an option, which is exactly why so many dead systems are still running. Company and tax records have statutory retention periods measured in years, and an auditor, an HMRC enquiry or a due diligence process can ask for them at any point inside that window. The question is not whether to keep the data, it is whether you keep paying a licence and a server bill for the privilege.
Keep the data. Stop paying for the system.
A queryable archive with an audit pack ready to produce, from £1,950, or £6,500 for a finance-grade version reconciled at £0 variance.