Three different things get called EPR software
| What it is | What it does | Best when |
|---|---|---|
| Compliance scheme | Carries the regulatory relationship, registers you, submits on your behalf | You want the registration and the filing handled outside your team |
| Packaging data platform | Holds packaging at component level and produces the documents each regime wants from it: submissions, declarations of conformity, tax data, assessments | The packaging data has to be established and turned into the documents every regime wants |
| Reporting or ERP module | Aggregates data already inside a system you own and formats a return | Complete component data already sits in a system you own |
These are not competing answers to one question, and plenty of producers hold more than one. The expensive misunderstanding is assuming that whoever files for you has also established what your packaging is made of. Nobody can file a correct submission, or sign a Declaration of Conformity, from data that does not exist yet.
So the useful first question is not who files, it is what has to be produced - and whether you can currently state, per component, the material, the weight, the recycled content and the recyclability rating that every one of those documents is built from.
The criteria that actually separate these tools
Every product in this category will tell you it does EPR reporting. The differences are further down, and these are the questions that expose them. Ask them as demonstrations rather than as questions - "show me" rather than "can you".
- Does it hold packaging at component level, or at product level? A tool that stores packaging weight per SKU cannot produce a correct material split or a per-component recyclability rating, and no amount of reporting on top will fix that.
- Can a component weight have a date? If a component was respecified mid-year, the period's tonnage spans two versions. A single current-value field silently reports the wrong one.
- Does the recycled content field distinguish "not recorded" from "confirmed zero"? If those collapse into one blank, you cannot tell a data gap from a compliant answer, and Plastic Packaging Tax needs the difference.
- Is an assessment stored with its methodology and version? RAM 1.1 and RAM 2027 apply to different supply years. A rating that is just a colour cannot represent both.
- How does supplier data get in? A portal that validates on intake is a different proposition from an email template and a spreadsheet someone retypes.
- Does it produce the actual submission file, or a report you then transcribe? Transcription is where errors enter.
- Which regimes come from the same data set? UK pEPR, Plastic Packaging Tax, PPWR conformity and national EU schemes all want the same component facts cut differently.
- Can it tell you what a rating change is worth before you make it? Fee modulation makes this a budgeting question, not a reporting one.
- What happens at audit? Ask to see the trail from a submitted tonnage back to the component weights and the supplier declaration behind it.
- Pricing basis: per SKU, per component, per user, per tonne or flat. This decides whether the tool gets more expensive as you improve your data coverage, which is a perverse incentive worth knowing about.
Signals worth being wary of
- A demo built entirely on sample data, with no offer to load a slice of yours
- Recyclability presented as a property of a material rather than of a component under a named methodology
- A single "recyclability" field with no version or date behind it
- Fee figures quoted as fact without saying whether they are confirmed or illustrative rates
- Reluctance to show the submission file the tool actually generates
- A comparison page - including this one - that cannot name a case where the vendor is the wrong choice
Where Merchant fits
Merchant is a packaging data platform, the middle row of the table above. It holds packaging at component level, collects specifications from suppliers through a validating portal, records a recyclability grade per component, and produces the documents each regime wants from that one data set.
That includes the documents themselves, not just the data behind them: Report Packaging Data submission files for UK pEPR, Plastic Packaging Tax exposure reports, EU PPWR Declarations of Conformity, the French, German and Italian scheme declarations, and the Article 12 sorting label for every component. Because they all derive from the same component records, a change made once carries into every document that depends on it.
It is a good fit if:
- Your packaging data is spread across spreadsheets, supplier emails and PDFs, and assembling a submission is a project each time
- You report into more than one regime, and are maintaining a separate mapping for each
- You have suppliers to chase, and the chasing is the bottleneck
- Modulated fees have made you want to know which components cost you money
It is the wrong choice if:
- Your packaging data is already complete, component-level and inside a system you are happy with, and you only need a file formatted. A reporting module will be cheaper
- You need this week's submission filed and have no component data at all. The data collection is the long pole, and no tool compresses it to days
A sane evaluation process
- Write down which regimes you report into now and which you will within two years. This alone eliminates most of the market.
- List the documents you have to produce for each of them - submission files, declarations of conformity, tax returns, assessments - and who produces each one today.
- Take your three worst SKUs - the multi-component, multi-material, supplier-data-missing ones - as the test set. Every tool handles a simple bottle.
- Ask each vendor to load that test set and produce the actual submission file. Compare the files, not the slide decks.
- Trace one number back. Pick a tonnage in the output and ask to be walked back to the component weights and supplier declaration behind it.
- Check the pricing basis against your growth, particularly whether improving data coverage increases the bill.
- Ask each vendor where they are the wrong choice. The answer tells you how much of the rest to believe.