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Pricing and billing

Seat cost planner

Price a licence term seat by seat, put a figure on the seats nobody signs in to, and prorate a seat change that landed mid-cycle.

Free, no accountIn your browser

Seats the vendor invoices you for, used or not.

What one seat costs for one month, as you are billed for it.

How long the commitment runs: 12 for an annual term.

Of the seats billed, how many belong to nobody. A number you check, not one we can see.

Leave at zero if nothing changed partway through a cycle.

Try

Result

$350.00 a month · $4,200.00 over 12 months

$504.00 of that term is seats nobody signs in to.

  • Warning

    3 unused seats costs $42.00 a month

    Seats nobody signs in to are billed at the same $14.00 as the rest, so 3 of them is $42.00 every month and $504.00 across the 12-month term. That is 12.0% of the bill buying nothing.

    Pull the vendor’s last sign-in report, name the seats against it, and drop them at the next renewal date rather than mid-term, where a reduction is usually refused.

  • Info

    $4,200.00 over 12 months

    25 seats at $14.00 each is $350.00 a month, and 12 months of that is $4,200.00. That is the number to quote the customer against, because it is what the commitment costs whether or not the seats get used.

  • Info

    Charge of $10.27 for the 2-seat change

    2 seats added with 11 of 30 days left covers 36.7% of the cycle, so the part-cycle charge is $10.27. From the next cycle the change is billed in full.

The term

Seats billed
25
Price per seat
$14.00
Months
12
Monthly cost
$350.00
Term cost
$4,200.00

Seats nobody uses

Unused seats
3
Share of the bill
12.0%
Monthly waste
$42.00
Over the term
$504.00

The mid-cycle change

Seats
2
Days left of the cycle
11 of 30
Share of the cycle
36.7%
Charge
$10.27
  • The price per seat is the one you typed. This page holds no vendor price list and reads none, so a volume tier, a promotional rate or a mid-term uplift you have been given is only in the answer if it is in the field.
  • Unused seats are a number you count, not a number we measure: a vendor’s sign-in logs are not something this tool can see, and nothing in a ResellerHQ account knows who stopped signing in.
  • The mid-cycle change uses simple daily proration. A vendor that prorates by whole months, bills the change on the next invoice instead, or issues a credit note rather than reducing the charge will not match this figure.
  • Tax is not in any of these numbers, and neither is a contractual minimum seat count - the floor that stops a reduction going through is in the agreement, not in the arithmetic.

What this is

Most seat cost calculator pages stop at seats times price, which is the one number a reseller never needed help with. This one keeps going to the two figures that actually move a customer conversation: what the seats nobody signs in to are costing across the whole term, and what the seat somebody added eleven days from the end of the cycle is really worth.

A seat term has three costs in it. The monthly bill is the seats the vendor invoices times the price you pay for one of them. The term cost is that monthly figure held for the length of the commitment, which is the number worth quoting, because a twelve-month term does not get cheaper because somebody left in month three. The waste is the share of both that belongs to nobody.

A seat count that changes partway through a cycle is billed for the part of the cycle it covers, so the invoice that arrives is neither last month’s nor next month’s. The planner shows that part-cycle amount next to the term, because a reseller reconciling an invoice needs both to explain the number a customer is querying.

A term cost and a mid-cycle change are two different questions about the same seats, which is why Pricing what you resell: cost, markup and margin (/blog/pricing-what-you-resell-cost-markup-and-margin) covers this planner and the proration calculator one after the other, alongside the rest of a reseller’s pricing arithmetic.

How to read the result

Read the term block first: it is the commitment. Then read the waste block as a percentage rather than as cash - "nine per cent of this bill is unused" survives being repeated to a customer in a way that "$42" does not, and it is the figure that justifies a seat audit before the renewal date.

The mid-cycle block names the days the change covers and the share of the cycle they are, so the part-cycle amount can be checked by hand against the invoice line. If the share looks wrong, the day the change was dated is wrong, which is the usual cause of a disputed licence invoice.

Common mistakes

What goes wrong most often, and how to tell.

  • Treating the monthly figure as what a term costsA monthly price on an annual commitment is a payment schedule, not a price. Quoting the month and then discovering that seats cannot be dropped until the anniversary is how a reseller ends up carrying eleven more invoices for seats a customer has already stopped paying for.
  • Counting licences assigned instead of seats signed in toAn assigned licence with a leaver’s name on it is indistinguishable from a working seat on an invoice, and both cost the same. The number worth entering here is the seats somebody actually signed in to last month, which is a sign-in report rather than a licence list.
  • Expecting a mid-cycle reduction to arrive as money backSeats removed partway through a cycle are far more often credited against the next invoice than refunded, and plenty of agreements do not reduce a committed seat count at all before the anniversary. The credit shown here is the arithmetic, not a promise the vendor will pay it.
  • Auditing seats after the renewal has already gone throughThe only day a committed seat count can usually be cut is the renewal date, so an audit finished the week after it is an audit that costs a full term to act on. Put the seat check far enough ahead of the anniversary that the reduction can be submitted before it rolls.

Questions

What people ask about this tool.

  • Multiply the seats nobody signs in to by the price you pay for one seat, then by the months left in the term. The monthly figure usually looks ignorable and the term figure rarely does, which is exactly why the term one is the one to take to the customer.

  • Because it is a count of days, not a fraction of a month: eleven days of a thirty-day cycle is 36.7 per cent of it, and the amount is rounded to a whole cent once, at the end. Rounding the daily rate first and then multiplying by the seats drifts by cents that grow with the seat count.

  • No. Every figure here comes from the fields on this page. Nothing is read from an account, no vendor price list is fetched, and no sign-in data is available to it, so the seat counts and the price are whatever you have checked and typed.

  • There are no days left for it to cover, so the part-cycle amount is zero and the whole change appears on the next invoice at the full monthly rate. The planner flags that case, because a change that costs nothing today is the one people forget to tell the customer about.

Use it from the API

The same check, as one request.

Request
curl -X POST https://resellerhq.com/api/tools/seat-cost-planner \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"seats":25,"pricePerSeat":14,"termMonths":12,"unusedSeats":3,"changeSeats":2,"changeDirection":"add","daysInCycle":30,"daysRemaining":11}'
Response
{
  "tool": "seat-cost-planner",
  "input": {
    "seats": 25,
    "pricePerSeat": 14,
    "termMonths": 12,
    "unusedSeats": 3,
    "changeSeats": 2,
    "changeDirection": "add",
    "daysInCycle": 30,
    "daysRemaining": 11
  },
  "result": {
    "verdict": {
      "tone": "warning",
      "headline": "$350.00 a month · $4,200.00 over 12 months",
      "summary": "$504.00 of that term is seats nobody signs in to."
    },
    "findings": [
      {
        "id": "unused-seats",
        "severity": "warn",
        "title": "3 unused seats costs $42.00 a month",
        "detail": "Seats nobody signs in to are billed at the same $14.00 as the rest, so 3 of them is $42.00 every month and $504.00 across the 12-month term. That is 12.0% of the bill buying nothing.",
        "fix": "Pull the vendor’s last sign-in report, name the seats against it, and drop them at the next renewal date rather than mid-term, where a reduction is usually refused."
      },
      {
        "id": "term-cost",
        "severity": "info",
        "title": "$4,200.00 over 12 months",
        "detail": "25 seats at $14.00 each is $350.00 a month, and 12 months of that is $4,200.00. That is the number to quote the customer against, because it is what the commitment costs whether or not the seats get used."
      },
      {
        "id": "mid-cycle-change",
        "severity": "info",
        "title": "Charge of $10.27 for the 2-seat change",
        "detail": "2 seats added with 11 of 30 days left covers 36.7% of the cycle, so the part-cycle charge is $10.27. From the next cycle the change is billed in full."
      }
    ],
    "parts": [
      {
        "kind": "facts",
        "title": "The term",
        "rows": [
          [
            "Seats billed",
            "25"
          ],
          [
            "Price per seat",
            "$14.00"
          ],
          [
            "Months",
            "12"
          ],
          [
            "Monthly cost",
            "$350.00"
          ],
          [
            "Term cost",
            "$4,200.00"
          ]
        ]
      },
      {
        "kind": "facts",
        "title": "Seats nobody uses",
        "rows": [
          [
            "Unused seats",
            "3"
          ],
          [
            "Share of the bill",
            "12.0%"
          ],
          [
            "Monthly waste",
            "$42.00"
          ],
          [
            "Over the term",
            "$504.00"
          ]
        ]
      },
      {
        "kind": "facts",
        "title": "The mid-cycle change",
        "rows": [
          [
            "Seats",
            "2"
          ],
          [
            "Days left of the cycle",
            "11 of 30"
          ],
          [
            "Share of the cycle",
            "36.7%"
          ],
          [
            "Charge",
            "$10.27"
          ]
        ]
      }
    ],
    "limits": [
      "The price per seat is the one you typed. This page holds no vendor price list and reads none, so a volume tier, a promotional rate or a mid-term uplift you have been given is only in the answer if it is in the field.",
      "Unused seats are a number you count, not a number we measure: a vendor’s sign-in logs are not something this tool can see, and nothing in a ResellerHQ account knows who stopped signing in.",
      "The mid-cycle change uses simple daily proration. A vendor that prorates by whole months, bills the change on the next invoice instead, or issues a credit note rather than reducing the charge will not match this figure.",
      "Tax is not in any of these numbers, and neither is a contractual minimum seat count - the floor that stops a reduction going through is in the agreement, not in the arithmetic."
    ]
  }
}

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