Most founders have a version of this story. Personally, I’ve watched this happen (and made this mistake myself): the tool looks great in a demo, then headcount grows and reality hits.
You pick a modern, impressive-looking tool. The demo is smooth. The UI feels fast. Everyone’s excited. For a while, it works. Then the company grows.
You hire more people. Someone leaves. Finance asks for historical data. An auditor wants proof of approvals. A manager needs limited access. You try to connect one system to another. Suddenly, what used to feel simple becomes expensive, rigid, or fragile.
The problem usually isn’t that the software was bad. It’s that no one asked how it behaves over time.
This guide is about choosing “boring” software on purpose, the kind that does not impress in a demo, but also does not create future operational pain.
Why “boring” software matters more than you think
Back-office software quietly shapes how fast your company moves, how secure your data is, and how much time leadership spends on admin instead of growth.
The pain rarely shows up on day one. It shows up later, when headcount grows and permissions become messy, when finance needs clean exports for close or reporting, when auditors ask who approved what and when, or when an admin leaves and access is not cleanly revoked. By the time you try to switch tools, you may discover your data is difficult to extract and your workflows are tightly coupled to the system.
At that point, switching costs are no longer theoretical. Workarounds creep in. Manual processes pile up. What once felt lightweight becomes a liability.
That’s why founders should evaluate software not by how impressive it looks at purchase, but by how predictable it stays as the company changes.
The Founder Scorecard: how to evaluate any software
This scorecard is intentionally simple. You can use it for any category, whether you are evaluating HR, expenses, CRM, accounting, or security tools.
If a vendor struggles to answer these questions clearly, that information matters.
Data export and portability
If you ever switch tools, the export is the whole game. A good platform lets you export all core records, not just summary reports, in common formats like CSV and ideally JSON. It should not trap critical context in proprietary views.
Check whether you can export attachments such as receipts, invoices, and signed documents, along with custom fields and historical records, not just the current snapshot. If the vendor offers an API export for bulk data pulls, even better. If they cannot clearly show a “download everything” path, assume you are buying future migration pain.
In regulated environments, portability is not just a convenience. The GDPR’s data portability provision reflects a broader expectation that data should not be impossible to move.
Integrations
Most software problems are not features. They are data flow.
Ask what integrations are native and what is handled through third-party connectors. Then ask what requires custom work via an API. The practical test is whether the tool can reliably sync the basics without manual re-entry: users, customers, invoices, expenses, approvals, and status updates.
Also check how failures are handled. Does it surface error logs, retries, and clear alerts when a sync breaks? A tool that integrates poorly becomes a spreadsheet magnet.
Permissions and roles
As soon as you have more than a few people, permissions stop being a nice-to-have. Look for role-based access control, meaning you can assign roles such as submitter, approver, finance admin, or read-only, and restrict who can view, edit, export, or administer sensitive data.
You want the ability to limit access by function and ideally by scope, such as teams, departments, or regions. Also ask how offboarding works. Can you disable a user instantly, revoke access, and keep a record of what they did while they had access?
For a clear baseline on authorization and access control, the OWASP Authorization Cheat Sheet is a solid reference.
Audit trail and change history
An audit trail is your black box recorder. It should show who changed what, when, and from what to what. That includes approvals, edits to amounts, vendor details, policy exceptions, and permission changes.
Ideally the audit log is immutable, searchable, and exportable. This matters for accountability, fraud prevention, and any time you need to explain decisions later.
If you want a concrete definition of what strong audit records include, NIST’s AU (Audit and Accountability) control family is a practical guideline.
Onboarding effort
The real cost is often implementation, not the monthly fee.
Ask what setup looks like in real terms: data import, role configuration, approval routing, policies, and templates. The best tools have sane defaults, but also let you configure what matters, such as thresholds for approvals and required fields.
A useful test is whether you can run a small pilot before rolling out company-wide. A tool that takes weeks to become usable without a consultant can quietly drain ops time.
Support quality
Support becomes critical the first time payroll is wrong, an expense is stuck, or a sync fails.
Look for high-quality documentation, a clear support channel, and realistic response times. Even better, a status page and incident history so you can see reliability patterns. The practical question is simple: when something breaks, can you get a fix without endless back-and-forth?
Total cost over 12–24 months
The price you see is rarely the price you pay.
Estimate total cost across per-seat fees, add-ons, implementation time, training time, and any external help needed. Also factor switching costs. If you outgrow the tool, will you lose productivity for weeks during migration?
A cheap tool can become expensive if it forces manual work, duplicate entry, or constant admin babysitting.
Optional, if explained clearly
API access, single sign-on, and retention policies can matter, but only if they are explained in plain language. The question is whether these capabilities reduce future friction, not whether they exist on a pricing page. If you want a neutral baseline for identity and authentication fundamentals, NIST’s Digital Identity Guidelines are a useful reference.
Questions to ask vendors (copy and paste)
Founders don’t need clever questions. They need demonstrations. Use these verbatim:
“Show me how to export everything.”
“Show me roles and permissions.”
“Show me audit logs or change history.”
“What happens when an employee leaves?”
“Which integrations are native versus paid add-ons?”
“Do you have an API?”
“What’s your support response time and channel?”
If answers are vague or deflected, that is part of the evaluation.
Examples of “boring” software categories
Every company eventually assembles a set of unglamorous but critical tools. These are rarely the systems that drive growth headlines, but they are the ones that quietly keep the business running.
Founders usually start by shortlisting a few “boring but essential” categories: HR/payroll (e.g., Gusto or BambooHR), expense management (e.g., Concur or SutiExpense), CRM (e.g., HubSpot CRM or Salesforce CRM), accounting (e.g., QuickBooks Online), and password management (e.g., 1Password). These aren’t exciting purchases – they’re operational infrastructure. Each one becomes a system of record for sensitive data and approvals, which is why the exit plan (exports, permissions, audit history) matters as much as the feature list.
Plan your exit on day one
A simple rule applies here: never buy software without knowing how you would leave it.
That does not mean you expect to switch. It means you respect future reality.
Before committing, make sure you can answer a few basic questions without guessing. Where does your data live? Who owns administration? How do exports actually work when someone asks for them? What happens to access when an employee leaves?
Keeping a lightweight internal inventory that answers those questions takes minutes to document and can save months of cleanup later.
Final takeaway
Founders don’t need perfect tools. They need tools that stay predictable as the company changes.
If a vendor cannot clearly show exports, permissions, and audit history, you are not buying convenience. n You are buying future pain.
Boring software is not exciting, but it is often what allows everything else in the business to move faster.
