How Payables Brief prices AP automation

Every cost record on Payables Brief shows what a vendor’s own pricing page says, and what that means in dollars at three invoice volumes: 1,000, 5,000 and 25,000 invoices a month. This page is the full method: what we count, what we leave out, and why.

How a price becomes a figure

No vendor in this market prices its plans by invoices a month. They price by user seats, by team size, by a flat platform fee, or by usage credits, and none publishes a breakpoint anywhere near 1,000, 5,000 or 25,000 invoices. Turning a seat price or a platform fee into a monthly cost at a stated invoice volume takes a small number of stated assumptions. None of them is a vendor’s own number. They are Payables Brief’s modeling choices, open to challenge and open to change if a better one turns up.

The full table of assumptions, with the reasoning behind each one, is below in Assumptions. Change any of them and the figures change: every cost record names the plan and the line items behind its number, so a different assumption can be tried by hand against the same published prices.

Each figure includes the published per-user or per-plan subscription fee for the plan in use at that tier, plus the published per-transaction payment fee for ACH, check and international wire, weighted by the headline mix above. The full list of what counts and what does not is below in What a figure includes.

Card payments: a separate scenario, never a zero

Card payments do not appear in the monthly or per-invoice figure for any vendor. Instead, a computed record can carry a card scenario: what a 5 percent card share would add, where the vendor publishes a card rate. Where a vendor publishes no card fee at all, the scenario says so in words and shows no number. A missing card fee is a gap in that vendor’s own disclosure. It is never shown as free, and it is never averaged into the headline next to a vendor that does publish a rate. The same rule covers any other fee type: if a vendor does not publish a fee for one of the three headline methods, that method’s share is left out of the headline for that vendor and the record says so.

What’s excluded

Implementation and onboarding fees, unpublished per-plan fees (a vendor’s own site can advertise a feature like “a platform fee based on team size” with no dollar amount anywhere on the page), ERP connector fees that are not itemized in dollars, and negotiated discounts, multi-year commitments or any other custom quote term that only shows up after a sales conversation.

Published, partial and quote only, in full

A published record’s vendor publishes every figure the computation needs: a plan price and a fee for each of the three headline payment methods. Its monthly figure is a complete total under the stated assumptions, not counting the separate card scenario.

A partial record’s vendor publishes some of the needed figures and not others, most often a base subscription price with no published transaction-fee schedule. A tier can also turn partial on its own if a vendor is missing one of the three headline methods. A partial record’s figure covers only the published part and says plainly that it is a floor, not a full total. Its cost per invoice should never be read against a published record’s: it is missing a real cost component, not genuinely cheaper.

A quote only record’s vendor publishes no dollar figure anywhere on its own pricing page. The record states what is known instead: the pricing model, the named plans without prices, published payment fees if any exist, ERP integrations and segment. No number is estimated for a quote-only record. The For vendors page explains how a vendor sends its own numbers.

Marketplace listings stay separate

Some vendors list a price on AWS Marketplace, Microsoft Marketplace or a vendor-provided G2 pricing page, while publishing no price on their own site. Where that listing carries a dollar figure, the record shows it next to the vendor’s own-site numbers, labelled as a marketplace price, and it is never folded into the own-site total. A vendor’s own-site price and a marketplace price can differ, and the two are always kept apart.

How often records are rechecked

Every vendor’s own pricing page is rechecked at least once a quarter, and immediately whenever a reader or a vendor flags a change. Every recheck adds a dated entry to that record’s change log, whether or not a figure moved.

The cost per invoice calculator

The cost per invoice calculator uses the same figures as every cost record. Between the three stated volumes it keeps the plan and seats of the nearest tier and scales per-invoice and per-payment fees to the volume you type.

Where pages disagree

If two pages on the same vendor’s own site show different pricing, the record states both and computes no total from either until the vendor resolves it.

Sending real numbers

A vendor that publishes no prices can send its price list and have it carried on its record, computed with this same method. That is a paid verified pricing listing. Payment never changes a figure, a rank or a verdict. The For vendors page has the detail.

The three volume tiers

What a figure includes

Subscription and platform fees published on the vendor's own site
Per-user fees published on the vendor's own site
Per-transaction and payment fees published on the vendor's own site

Not included:

Implementation and onboarding fees
ERP connector fees the vendor does not publish
Negotiated discounts

Published, partial and quote only

Published pricing: The vendor's own site publishes enough prices to work out the monthly cost at every volume tier.
Partial pricing: The vendor's own site publishes some prices. Figures cover only the published parts and are labelled partial.
Quote only: The vendor's own site publishes no prices we can compute from. The record shows what is known: the pricing model, any published payment fees, ERP integrations and segment.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure comes from the vendor's own website and carries the date it applies to.
Marketplace listing prices are shown separately and never mixed into figures from the vendor's own site.
Prices and estimates published by third parties are never used.

Assumptions

Assumption	Value	Why
AP users per tier	2 at 1,000 invoices, 4 at 5,000, 20 at 25,000	One AP user is assumed to process about 1,250 invoices a month inside AP automation software. A floor of two keeps a second person on every team, for separation of duties: one preparer, one approver.
Invoices per payment	1.15	Most payment runs cover one invoice to one vendor, but AP software lets a finance team batch a minority of repeat vendors into a single payment a cycle. This ratio converts invoices a month into payments a month before any per-transaction fee applies.
Headline payment mix	ACH 75 percent, check 20 percent, international wire 5 percent	ACH is the dominant payment rail for US business payments. Checks are a shrinking but real minority. International wire is a small share for a typical US company at these volumes. The same mix is applied to every vendor's own published per-transaction fees, so the comparison is like for like.
Card payments	Not in the headline mix. A separate, labelled scenario at a 5 percent share	A card fee is usually a percentage of the payment amount, and vendors disclose it inconsistently. Folding card payments into the headline made a vendor that discloses a card fee look far more expensive than one that simply does not publish one, which is a disclosure gap, not a lower cost.
Average payment amount	$1,500, used only inside the card scenario	None of the three headline methods is priced as a percentage, so the headline total never needs this number. It exists only to turn a published percentage card fee into a dollar figure for the card scenario.
Plan used at each tier	The cheapest plan with a published dollar price, unless the vendor states a user or invoice cap the tier would exceed	Where a vendor states a cap, the tier moves to the next priced plan, or to quote only at that tier if none exists. Where no cap is stated, the plan stays the same across tiers rather than guessing when a company would be asked to upgrade.

Methodology change log

4 October 2026, version 1.0: First version: three volume tiers, included and excluded costs, and the pricing disclosure labels.