User acceptance testing (UAT) is the stage where the people who will use the system decide whether it does the job. It is not a technical test and not a demonstration. It is your team, working through real tasks on a copy of the system, with the power to say "not yet". Companies that skip it discover the problems after go-live, when each fix costs more and interrupts real customers. This checklist helps you run UAT properly.
Who does what
- Business owner: decides what "accepted" means and signs off.
- Testers: two or three users per department who know the daily work.
- Project lead (on your side): keeps the plan, collects defects and chases fixes.
- Supplier: fixes defects, explains behaviour and prepares the test environment.
Prepare before testing starts
- A separate test environment that behaves like the real one but holds no live customer data.
- Realistic test data: real item names, customer types, prices, tax treatments and a few awkward cases such as a foreign-currency customer and a free zone buyer.
- Test accounts for each role, so you can check what each person can and cannot do.
- Written acceptance criteria, agreed in the specification: for example "an invoice with three lines and 5% VAT prints on one page, in English and Arabic, with correct totals".
Write scenarios from real work
A scenario is a short story: "A customer asks for 20 units at a negotiated price, the manager approves the discount, we deliver 15 now and 5 next week, and invoice both." Write twenty to forty scenarios that cover the main flows, and tick them off. For each, note the expected result so testers know when something is wrong.
| Area | Example scenarios |
|---|---|
| Sales | Quotation to order to invoice; discount above limit needs approval; credit note for a return |
| Purchasing | Purchase request to order to goods receipt to supplier bill; partial delivery; price difference |
| Stock | Transfer between branches; stock count adjustment; batch or expiry item issue |
| Accounts | Customer payment matched to invoices; bank reconciliation; period close; VAT report |
| HR and payroll | New joiner; leave approval; month-end payroll and salary file |
| Reports | Totals on reports equal the totals in the ledger |
UAE checks that are easy to forget
- VAT: standard, zero-rated and exempt items calculate correctly; rounding on multi-line invoices; credit notes reduce the right VAT. See VAT return filing and common errors.
- Invoice layout: required elements appear on the printed tax invoice, including your registration number and sequential number.
- Arabic: Arabic names, addresses and descriptions display, search and print correctly, with right-to-left layout where used.
- Currencies: a USD invoice shows the VAT amount in dirhams and posts exchange differences on payment.
- Multiple entities: a user of one company cannot see the other company's data unless permitted.
- Payroll files: the salary file opens in the format your bank or exchange house expects.
- Mobile: the screens used on phones work on the phones your staff actually own.
Test permissions and controls
- Log in as each role and try to open screens that role should not see.
- Try to edit a posted invoice or close a locked period.
- Check that approvals cannot be skipped, and that the audit log shows who did what. See role-based access and audit trails.
Log defects in a way the supplier can fix
For each problem record the scenario, steps to repeat it, what you expected, what happened, a screenshot and the severity.
| Severity | Meaning | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | Wrong money or data, blocks a main process | Must be fixed before go-live |
| High | Main process works only with a clumsy workaround | Fix before go-live or agree a dated plan |
| Medium | Inconvenient but safe | Fix in the first release after go-live |
| Low | Cosmetic or wish | Keep on the backlog |
Retest and sign off
- After fixes, retest the defect and the scenarios around it, because fixes can break neighbouring features.
- Run the key scenarios once more end to end on the final build.
- The business owner signs an acceptance note listing what was tested, the open defects and the agreed dates for them.
- Only then plan the cutover. See ERP data migration and cutover.
A good supplier welcomes UAT. At Crafts Software we plan it into every engagement model, and our project brief template shows how to write acceptance criteria from the start.