Acceptance criteria
Acceptance criteria are the specific, testable conditions a piece of delivered software must meet before the buyer accepts it, written and agreed before work starts so both sides judge whether a milestone is finished the same way.
Submit a project Write acceptance criteria that end disputesReviewed by David Nguyen (CEO) · Updated 6 Oct 2026 · 2 min read
This term is one of the entries in the OutsourcingVN glossary of words buyers meet while preparing a software milestone.
Why it matters
Without agreed criteria, "done" is whatever each side privately assumed it meant, and that gap usually surfaces at the worst moment: the week a milestone is due for sign-off. Writing the conditions down earlier turns a subjective judgement call into a checklist either side can point to. OutsourcingVN is operated by Netbase JSC, and acceptance criteria are the document a milestone review is actually run against on the projects it delivers.
An example in practice
A login feature is not accepted because it "works" in a demo; it is accepted because a locked-out account shows the password-reset path, a wrong password shows a specific error message, and both behaviours are confirmed on the agreed test accounts. Each of those statements is one acceptance criterion: a starting condition, an action and an expected result that either passes or fails.
Common misreadings
Acceptance criteria are not a full test plan — a test plan covers how testing is executed, while acceptance criteria state what must be true for the feature to be considered finished, and some of them get turned into tests. They are also not a wish list of nice-to-haves gathered after the fact; each one is agreed before the work starts, not added during review to justify withholding sign-off. And meeting every criterion does not mean a feature is free of defects elsewhere — it means the specific conditions written down have been verified.
Plan the next step for your project
Common questions
Usually the buyer, with the supplier's help turning a requirement into a testable statement.
Before the milestone or sprint starts, not during the review that is supposed to accept it.
Related decisions
How a buyer writes acceptance criteria that end disputes, with a reusable template and worked examples, is the subject of the software acceptance criteria guide. When you are ready to put your own criteria in front of a team, describe the outcome you need, and Netbase will respond through Netbase's own outsourcing-services platform; submit a project to start.