What your software vendors really cost you
For finance and general management in small and mid-sized companies. Every article prices one line of spending from public sources, shows its assumptions, and ends with a decision you can make.
It's the only line in the income statement that no one defends item by item. It is chosen by the people who use it, priced by the people who sell it, and decided by the people no one explains it to.
- €68,545
- real cost of a 48,000 euros gross hire
- 137 days
- break-even point to switch to a contractor
22 articles published · Published by Privateer
Seven questions, seven figures
The questions finance departments ask us most often.
- How much will my software invoice increase over five years? €60,933
- How do I compare two software quotes on equal terms? 5.96 fees per product
- How much should my company spend on software and technical teams? 3 to 6 %
- I received an audit letter from a vendor, how much should I provision? 10 to 30 %
- Can I get out of my maintenance contract? 10 years, worldwide
Where to start
Four ways into the same spending: what you pay your vendors, and what it costs to decide, or not.
- Invoice What the vendor collects: list price, annual increase, added fees, the real scope of the spend.
- Contract What the paper allows and forbids: term, renewal, termination, audit, exit, the right to compare.
- Payroll What a person costs the company: gross pay, employer contributions, the collective-agreement floor, the gap with the market and with a contractor.
- Exit What a person's exit triggers: time to replace, dependency on a single person, the value of a skill over time.
- Trade-off The decisions that move both lines at once, and the limits of what can be known before deciding.
How these figures are produced
Every figure published here starts from an open, dated, citable source, or from a calculation whose assumptions are shown and editable. Every page carries its last review date and an estimated validity period: past that term, the article is reviewed or withdrawn.