Life after Acorn: a modern home for your TDABC model
Quick answer. Acorn Systems built the first generation of TDABC software, and many finance teams still run models with that lineage on premise. The method has aged well; the deployment model has not. CostCtrl is a modern SaaS home for the same TDABC discipline: time equations, capacity cost rates and whale curves, fed by CSV or SAF-T exports, stood up in weeks and owned by your own finance team.
A note on what follows. The historical facts below are broadly public. Where the record on current ownership or support is uncertain, we say so rather than guess. Weighing one approach against another is our professional opinion, formed over 25 years of TDABC work.
If you are reading this, you probably do not need to be sold on TDABC. You already run it, or you did.
You need somewhere for the model to live for the next decade. This page sets out that path.
What happened to Acorn?
Acorn Systems was the pioneer of TDABC software. Steven Anderson, who developed Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing with Robert Kaplan and co-authored the 2007 book, founded Acorn, and the product line commercialised the method for enterprise profitability analysis.
The product later changed hands more than once, passing through the VMware portfolio era before moving on again CONFIRM: exact ownership chain, current owner, product naming (Acorn Performance Analyzer / PA5G) and current support status. Whatever the precise corporate history, the practical situation many users describe is the same: an on-premise deployment from another era, a shrinking pool of people who know it, and a question mark over the roadmap.
That is not a criticism of anyone involved. Software generations turn over. Methods, when they are good, do not.
Why is the method worth keeping even if the tool is not?
TDABC solved a real problem: classic ABC drowned in surveys and re-surveys, and TDABC replaced them with time equations and capacity cost rates. That insight is as valid in 2026 as it was in 2004.
If your Acorn-era model still runs, it almost certainly encodes years of hard-won knowledge: how long tasks actually take, which drivers matter, where capacity hides. That knowledge transfers. The install base does not have to.
The asset is the equations, not the executable.
What does the modern deployment look like?
CostCtrl is a SaaS TDABC platform. No servers to patch, no virtual machines to keep alive, no single veteran who is the only person who knows where the model lives.
It works from the exports your systems already produce: CSV files and SAF-T, at transaction level. Our largest current model processes 525,000 transaction rows for a logistics operator, so scale is not the constraint it was in the on-prem era.
Time equations, capacity cost rates, whale curves and dashboards are native. The outputs your board already understands arrive without a separate BI project.
And the operating model is deliberately front-loaded: Cost and Profitability Consulting runs a free Profit Check, rebuilds the model with your team, and hands it over. You stay autonomous.
How does a migration from a legacy TDABC tool actually work?
Harvest the logic
Export or document the existing time equations, driver definitions and resource costs. Even a stale model is a superb starting inventory.
Re-time what moved
Businesses drift. A short pass with process owners updates the minutes that changed and retires activities that no longer exist. This is days of work, not months, because TDABC updates by editing equations, not re-surveying the company.
Reload at transaction level
Point current CSV or SAF-T exports at the rebuilt equations. First whale curve out in weeks.
Hand over
Your finance team runs the refresh cycle. The consulting rolls off.
THE MIGRATION FLOW
How do legacy on-prem tools and CostCtrl compare?
| Legacy on-prem TDABC deployment | CostCtrl + Cost and Profitability | |
|---|---|---|
| Method | TDABC (first generation) | TDABC (same method, current practice) |
| Where it runs | Your servers or hosted VMs | SaaS, browser-based |
| Upgrades and patches | Your IT, if still supported | Included in the subscription |
| Key-person risk | Often one veteran administrator | Designed for a normal finance user |
| Data in | Era-specific loaders and integrations | CSV and SAF-T exports |
| Scale | Bound by the installed hardware | Large transaction datasets (525K-row model in production) |
| Reporting | Often exported to external tools | Dashboards and whale curve built in |
| Roadmap | Uncertain for legacy lines CONFIRM: current vendor support status | Actively developed |
The legacy column describes the situation users of aging deployments commonly report, not any specific vendor's current offering. Verify support status with the vendor.
Two of three sound familiar? Thirty minutes settles it.
You still believe in TDABC, and the model has paid for itself more than once. But the deployment depends on infrastructure someone wants to decommission, or on a person who is close to retirement, or on a support arrangement nobody can quite confirm.
If two of those three sound familiar, the migration conversation costs you thirty minutes and nothing else.
Fair questions.
- Is CostCtrl based on the same TDABC method as Acorn?
- Yes. Both implement Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing as defined by Kaplan and Anderson: time equations for the work, capacity cost rates for the resources. Your existing modelling logic is conceptually portable.
- Can we reuse our existing time equations?
- Largely, yes. Equations are harvested from the old model, refreshed where the business has drifted, and reloaded. The knowledge in a mature TDABC model is the most valuable thing to migrate, and the easiest.
- Do we need an integration project to feed CostCtrl?
- No. CostCtrl reads CSV and SAF-T exports your ERP already produces, at transaction level. No middleware, no HANA, no era-specific loaders.
- How long does the move take?
- Typically weeks: a free Profit Check, a harvest-and-refresh pass on the equations, then a reload from current exports. The bottleneck is usually calendar time with process owners, not technology.
- We lost the person who ran the old model. Is it too late?
- No. If the model files or documentation survive, we harvest what we can; if not, TDABC models rebuild quickly precisely because time equations are estimated from a small set of observations, not from company-wide surveys.
Give the model a modern home.
Book a free Profit Check, straight to a partner, and bring whatever remains of the old model. We will tell you what is worth migrating.
Notes and trademarks. This page reflects our professional opinion alongside publicly available historical information, current as of mid-2026. It is commentary on fit, not a statement about the quality of any product, and not advice for a specific situation. Verify current product and support details with the relevant vendor. Acorn, Performance Analyzer and related marks are trademarks of their respective owners. VMware is a trademark of its respective owner. Cost and Profitability Consulting and CostCtrl are independent and not affiliated with, authorised, sponsored or endorsed by any of these companies.