---
slug: case-management-software-first-year
title: Case management software in a funeral director's first year | Funeral Casework
description: The thresholds that decide whether a new UK funeral director needs case management software in year one, and what year one costs at each UK vendor.
published: 2026-08-13
---

Token estimate: ~3,300

# Case management software in a funeral director's first year

Not on volume alone - at 25 funerals a year every published UK rate lands between £150 and £325, so the decision turns on who else needs the record and how many cases are waiting on paperwork at once.

Not until the record has to leave one person's head, which for most new firms is not in the first few months. Volume is the weakest reason to buy: every UK vendor that publishes a rate meters it by funeral, so a firm arranging 25 funerals in its first year pays between £150 and £325 for a full year of software, and a number that small decides nothing either way.

Three thresholds decide it instead. Whether a second person needs to see the record, how many cases are waiting on outside paperwork at the same time, and whether the price list is being retyped for every estimate.

Rates read from [www.funeralsoftware.co.uk/information](https://www.funeralsoftware.co.uk/information/), [seker.co.uk/pricing](https://seker.co.uk/pricing/), [funeralmanager.co.uk/pricing](https://funeralmanager.co.uk/pricing/) and [arranger.com/pricing](https://arranger.com/pricing), last verified on 12 August 2026.

## Price is not what decides the first year

Nobody in this market sells software per seat. eFD gates users at the tier boundary, Funeral Manager states outright that there is no per-seat charge, and Evolution FMS publishes no seat component at all. What every published rate meters is the funeral, so the year-one bill is a function of how few funerals a new firm arranges.

-   ****Evolution FMS** - £150 to £300 at 25 funerals, £300 to £600 at 50**
    
    Oak states no setup fee and no support fee. The one extra it prices is training: remote is free, on-site is £420 plus VAT plus expenses.
    
-   ****eFD Premium** - £250 plus £75 onboarding at 25 funerals, £500 plus £150 at 50**
    
    Onboarding is 30 per cent of year one, in advance, on a 12-month initial term.
    
-   ****Arranger** - from £250 at 25 funerals, from £500 at 50**
    
    Unknown. The ladder behind "from £10 per funeral" is not published.
    
-   ****Funeral Manager** - £292.50 at 25 funerals, £585 at 50**
    
    Onboarding priced on enquiry, and it includes an in-person training visit.
    

The Evolution FMS row is a range rather than a figure because Oak Technology publishes £5.00 per record plus VAT and never defines a record, so 25 funerals is 25 or 50 records depending on a rule the company has not written down. Every vendor's model, and that ambiguity in full, is in [what UK funeral director software costs](https://funeralcasework.co.uk/articles/uk-funeral-director-software-cost). Eulogica publishes no price of any kind and quotes on a core system plus modules, which puts it outside a first-year comparison rather than at the top of it.

Two of those numbers may not survive contact with a quote. Funeral Manager publishes no monthly minimum and nowhere states that there is none, so whether £292.50 is a real annual bill at 25 funerals or a floor sits underneath it is unknown. Arranger's row is a floor by construction, since its pricing page carries no figures at all and routes to email.

The recurring cost in year one is not the licence anyway. It is the days spent entering a price list, a document set, a supplier list and a product catalogue before the software returns anything. That is the one thing eFD's customers complain about in public - "understanding and setting up products, suppliers and contacts, which is fiddly and repetitive" - and Seker's published reply is that training has been enhanced and a data import tool is recommended. Funeral Manager's own FAQ says some businesses are up and running in as little as four weeks and others take longer, which makes four weeks the floor on the vendor's telling. Eulogica sends someone to the premises for an Analysis Day and notes that installation may run to several days.

## A second person needing the record is the strongest threshold

One person arranging every funeral can hold a case in their head, a folder and a phone. The moment somebody else has to answer a question about a case they did not arrange, the record has to live outside the first person's memory.

That second person is rarely a second arranger. It is out-of-hours cover taking a first call at two in the morning, a part-time bookkeeper raising the invoice, a bearer who needs the address and the time. A named Funeral Manager customer describes exactly that shape, with chapel and out-of-hours staff each holding their own login.

Crossing this threshold costs nothing extra anywhere in the market. Unlimited users is the published position at Funeral Manager, eFD caps them at 15 on Premium and makes them unlimited on Enterprise, and Evolution FMS attaches no user component to its rate. The question is whether the record needs to be shared, not how many people will share it.

## Concurrent cases, not annual cases, is the number that matters

Twenty-five funerals a year is one a fortnight on the average and three in a week in January. What fails is not the volume of work but the number of outstanding waits held at once.

Each case carries several - medical examiner scrutiny, the registrar's appointment, a coroner's release, a doctor who has not returned a call, a crematorium slot that cannot be confirmed until the paperwork is. One case with four open waits is a note on a pad. Three cases with four each is twelve items belonging to four different outside parties, none of whom will chase you.

Buying an incumbent system does not solve that. Not one UK vendor models an outstanding wait as an object with an owner outside the firm and an age. eFD has staff-owned tasks and smart checklists, with no external owner, no ageing and no medical examiner or registrar integration anywhere in its public surface. Arranger publishes no task-ageing at all. Eulogica uses a digital checklist and sells status visibility as a separate module. Evolution FMS pushes funerals into Outlook or Google Calendar, and a calendar holds appointments, which by definition already have a date. Funeral Manager has task widgets and per-person dashboards, and names no external party. A firm crossing this threshold and buying one of them gets a better place to record the case and the same pad of paper for the chase.

## Two obligations arrive with the first funeral, whatever the volume

The Competition and Markets Authority's Funerals Market Investigation Order 2021, in force since 16 September 2021, requires a Standardised Price List in the CMA's own template, displayed in the premises and on the website. The CMA's 2025 review of the sector records firms reprinting theirs a few times a year whenever a crematorium moves its fee, at a few hundred pounds a year in support costs. That review, published 7 August 2025, was the last, so the rules are settled rather than moving. [What has to be displayed, and where](https://funeralcasework.co.uk/articles/cma-standardised-price-list), is its own page.

Since 9 September 2024 the medical examiner's scrutiny has been a statutory step in every death in England and Wales not referred to a coroner. The informant's five-day registration deadline runs from [the registrar being notified of the cause of death](https://funeralcasework.co.uk/articles/working-with-a-medical-examiner) by the medical examiner or the coroner, not from the date of death, which changes what a firm can promise a family about dates.

Neither obligation requires software, and thousands of firms meet both on paper. What software changes is where the price list lives. Entered once in the structure the Order requires, it produces the estimate and then the invoice from the same figures rather than being retyped for each one.

## What "not yet" looks like, and what makes it reversible

Below those thresholds the working setup is a folder per case, one shared calendar, and a single list of what is outstanding and who owes it. The list is the load-bearing part. A firm can trade for a while without a case record; it cannot trade without knowing which four things are waiting on somebody else this week.

What makes "not yet" a decision rather than a delay is whether the data can move later. Funeral Manager describes onboarding that includes record migration, eFD recommends a data import tool during onboarding, and Evolution FMS publishes nothing either way. All of them import structure and none of them import prose. A spreadsheet with one row per case and a column per fact will migrate. A notebook will not, and neither will a folder of Word documents with the date of birth buried in a sentence.

## Where Funeral Casework will fit

Funeral Casework is being built for UK funeral directors, and its pricing is shaped for the firm that is not yet sure it needs the software.

The first 3 cases will be free on signup, with no card. After that cases will be bought in prepaid packs, from £10.00 a case down to £6.50. Credits will never expire, so a month with no funerals will cost nothing, and users will be unlimited at every pack size.

| Pack | Price | Per case |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 10 cases | £100 | £10.00 |
| 50 cases | £425 | £8.50 |
| 200 cases | £1,500 | £7.50 |
| 1,000 cases | £6,500 | £6.50 |

Packs come in tens, so 25 cases will be £300, an effective £12.00 a case - above the £10.00 headline, and above what two of the published UK rates charge at that volume. It settles at £425 for 50 cases, an effective £8.50 a case, and falls from there. Very low volume is the one place the pack model is not the cheap option.

What it buys against the thresholds above is the part the incumbents leave on paper. Each outstanding wait will be its own item carrying who it is waiting for, when it was last chased and how many days it has been open, grouped by who is being chased rather than by case, so three cases waiting on the same registrar will be one phone call. Once the decision to buy is settled, the question becomes which product suits a firm of one branch, and [funeral software for a one-branch funeral director](https://funeralcasework.co.uk/articles/funeral-software-one-branch) covers that.

## Q&A

### How many funerals a year before funeral software pays for itself?

There is no volume that decides it, because every published UK rate is metered per funeral and therefore costs little at low volume - £150 to £325 for a full year at 25 funerals, including first-year onboarding. What decides it is whether a second person needs the record, and how many cases are simultaneously waiting on paperwork held by someone outside the firm.

### Can a new funeral director run on a spreadsheet?

Up to the point where two people need it at once, or three cases are open together. What makes it work later is structure - one row per case, one column per fact. Data in that shape migrates into the UK systems, all of which describe importing records at onboarding. Prose notes and a folder of Word documents do not, and that is the cost of leaving it too long.

### Does UK funeral software charge more for more staff?

No. Funeral Manager states there is no per-seat charge and no limit on user numbers, Evolution FMS publishes no seat component, and eFD makes users the tier boundary rather than the bill, at 15 on Premium and unlimited on Enterprise. Giving out-of-hours cover its own login does not increase the bill anywhere in this market.

### What does funeral software cost in the first year for a very small firm?

At 25 funerals - £150 to £300 at Evolution FMS depending on whether one funeral is one record or two, £292.50 at Funeral Manager, from £250 at Arranger, and £325 at eFD Premium once its onboarding fee of 30 per cent of the first year is included. Eulogica publishes no price at all.

### Does a new funeral director need software to comply with the CMA price list rules?

No. The Funerals Market Investigation Order 2021 requires a Standardised Price List in the CMA's template, displayed in the premises and online, and a printed list satisfies it. What software changes is maintenance - a price list entered once in the required structure produces the estimate and the invoice from the same figures, rather than being retyped when a crematorium fee moves.

### Will case management software help with chasing the registrar and the medical examiner?

Not at any UK vendor with a public product page. eFD, Arranger, Eulogica, Evolution FMS and Funeral Manager all offer internal task lists, checklists or dashboards owned by a member of staff. None models a wait owned by someone outside the firm, with an age and an escalation. Ask a vendor to show the screen that answers "which cases are stuck at the registrar" before believing a task feature covers it.