What determines the costs of adapting your software for the furniture passport?
There is no fixed amount for making your ERP, inventory or design software compatible with the digital product passport. The costs depend on how your current system is structured, how much product data you already record in a structured manner, and whether your supplier is already working on support for this obligation. Companies that already have their material data neatly stored in a database typically pay less than companies that do a lot of manual work in spreadsheets.
The most significant cost item is usually not the technology itself, but getting the underlying data in order: which materials are in a product, where do they come from, and who is responsible for which part of the chain. Software can support that process, but you as a supplier must provide the data yourself and keep it up to date.
Which factors determine the price
Three things typically have the most influence on what a software adaptation costs. First, the state of your current data: is material and origin data already recorded in a structured manner, or do you still need to collect it per product line. Second, the way your system can share data: some packages already have a connection (API) through which data can be automatically forwarded to a passport service, others require manual export or custom work. Third, the number of product lines and variants you carry; the more variants, the more work it takes to link the correct data per variant.
In addition, internal factors play a role that have nothing to do with software, such as the time employees spend gathering information from suppliers. That time is often underestimated in a cost estimate, whereas in practice it takes up a large part of the process.
What you can ask your supplier yourself
Before you request a quote for custom work, it is useful to first check with your current software supplier whether support for the furniture passport is already on the roadmap. Many suppliers of ERP and PIM systems (systems for product information) are working on modules that automatically prepare data for a passport service. Ask specifically whether your package can record material and origin data per product variant, and whether there is a connection or planned connection with external passport services. That determines whether you can make do with an update of your existing system, or whether a separate solution is needed.
In the knowledge base you can read per topic what exactly must be in a passport and which data are thus needed as a basis for your software discussion. That helps to ask targeted questions rather than a general question about "AI support" or "compliance modules", terms that say little about what your system actually needs to be able to do.
When a third party is needed
Not every company needs to adapt its own software. Some companies choose to supply data separately to a party that compiles and hosts the passport, without the company's own business software being modified. This can limit the costs of a software project, but does require a fixed way to supply and update data, especially since a passport must remain up to date over the useful life of the furniture. In an overview of how data becomes a passport you can see which steps are involved and where the responsibility of the supplier ends and that of the passport service begins.
What is not yet established
The exact technical requirements for data exchange result from a delegated act that has not yet been published; it is expected within the work plan of the regulation around 2028, with entry into force around 2030. As long as that act is not in place, it cannot be said with certainty which technical standard will be mandatory, and therefore neither what type of software integration will be exactly necessary in the future. Suppliers who claim right now to be fully "passport-ready" deserve a critical question for that reason about what that claim is based on.
For your own situation, including an assessment of what an adaptation means concretely for your company, a legal professional or specialized advisor is the appropriate party; this article describes only the general outline.
Would you like to see first where your company roughly stands before you have a conversation with your software supplier? Do the free quick-scan with a few short questions or browse through the frequently asked questions about the furniture passport for a quick overview.