DualEntry, the company behind an agentic enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, is making the case for a new enterprise software model in which businesses pay for work completed by AI agents rather than for the number of employees accessing an application.

The concept, which the company describes as Agents as a Service (AaaS), challenges the per-seat pricing model that has defined much of enterprise software for the past two decades. Per-user licensing has long been the default in ERP, with established vendors such as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft selling access by named user. Where traditional ERP systems provide the tools finance teams use to perform accounting work, AI agents can take on operational tasks such as processing invoices, reconciling transactions, investigating discrepancies, and preparing journal entries for approval. Under such a model, software spending would be tied to completed accounting work rather than to user licenses.

“SaaS was only ever competing for the software budget. Agents compete for the labor budget,” said Benedict Dohmen, co-founder of DualEntry.

According to DualEntry, the shift is already taking shape in customer support, where companies such as Intercom offer outcome-based pricing for AI agents alongside traditional software subscriptions. Intercom, for instance, charges per customer conversation resolved by its AI agent, tying what customers pay to results delivered rather than to seats. The company sees a similar opportunity in finance, a function in which businesses spend heavily on both ERP systems and the personnel required to operate them.

Completing accounting work autonomously, however, requires more than connecting an AI model to existing software. Agents need access to the full financial context behind transactions, while approvals, period locks, and audit trails must remain enforceable regardless of whether an action originates from an employee or an agent. Those controls carry particular weight in ERP, where the system serves as the system of record for a company's financial reporting.

DualEntry's approach places agents within the ERP's financial architecture, allowing them to prepare accounting work while humans retain responsibility for approval and judgment. In this setup, agents operate under the same controls that govern human users, keeping financial records subject to existing review processes.

The company points to its customers as examples of how modern ERP systems can support leaner financial operations. Slash manages $600 million in annual recurring revenue with a two-person finance team, while Graphite reduced its month-end close from 20 days to one.

How the model develops in practice remains an open question. Whether incumbent ERP vendors will respond with outcome-based options of their own, how buyers will define and measure what counts as completed accounting work, and how audit and review practices will adapt as machine-prepared entries become more common are unresolved issues for the category.

DualEntry argues that the next generation of ERP will be measured less by how many people use the software and more by how much work it completes. As Dohmen puts it, “SaaS gave every accountant a login. AaaS gives every accountant a team.”