SCTrue Cost of Software
Home/Calculators/Invoicing Software Cost Calculator

Invoicing Software Cost Calculator

The subscription is the smaller half. See what your invoicing actually costs once payment processing is counted - it is usually several times the software fee.

Enter your numbers

All invoices, including the ones nobody pays on time.
Mean invoice amount, not your largest. Card fees scale with this.
Invoices settled by card or online transfer rather than bank transfer or cheque.
2.9% is the standard online card rate. Amex and international cards cost more.
The flat component charged on every card payment, on top of the percentage.

Annual cost of invoicing and getting paid

--

Software plus payment processing for twelve months.

Monthly software fee

--

The number on the pricing page.

Monthly payment processing fees

--

What the card networks and processors take.

Software as share of total cost

--

The subscription is a rounding error against processing. This is how small.

Annual processing fees

--

The line that decides whether card payment is worth offering on large invoices.

Total cost per invoice

--

Including the cost of collecting on it. Compare against your margin per job.

3-year cost

--

Three years of software and processing at the current rate.

Estimates only. Vendor pricing and contract terms vary - always confirm figures on a written quote. Results update as you type and nothing is sent to a server.

Invoicing tools are sold at $10-30 a month, which makes them look like a trivial expense. They are - until you count the cost of getting paid. Card processing runs around 2.9% plus a fixed fee per transaction, and on business-sized invoices that dwarfs the subscription.

This calculator separates the two, because the useful decision is rarely which invoicing app to buy. It is whether card fees belong anywhere near a $5,000 invoice.

How to use this calculator

  1. Enter your average invoice value honestly. Card fees are a percentage, so a mean of $1,200 and a mean of $8,000 produce completely different conclusions for the same invoice count.
  2. Set the online payment percentage to your real figure. If most clients pay by bank transfer, processing is not your problem - and that is worth knowing explicitly.
  3. Watch the software share line. If it is under 10%, the decision that matters is your collection method, not your invoicing app.
  4. Change the average invoice value and watch the processing fee line. It scales linearly - which is why card payment is often a bad deal on large single invoices and a good deal on small frequent ones.
  5. Check your provider's client limit if you are on an entry tier. FreshBooks Lite allows five billable clients; the upgrade is forced, not optional.

Want invoicing with tracking and accounting attached?

FreshBooks combines invoicing, expenses, time tracking and basic accounting in one subscription, which suits service businesses billing by the hour.

See FreshBooks pricing

Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no cost to you.

Or unlimited invoices with no client cap?

Invoice Ninja charges a flat fee with unlimited invoices, clients and users, and supports self-hosting if you would rather not pay per client.

See Invoice Ninja pricing

Affiliate link. We may earn a commission at no cost to you.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the payment fee so much larger than the software fee?
Because it is a percentage of the money changing hands, and software is a flat monthly charge. On $1,200 average invoices with 60% paid online, processing takes roughly $21 per paid invoice. Eighty invoices a month is over $1,000 in fees against a $16.50 subscription.
Should I stop offering card payment?
Only if your clients will still pay. The usual compromise is to offer card payment on smaller invoices, where the fixed fee plus percentage is bearable, and ask for bank transfer on large ones - or pass a surcharge, where local rules allow it.
Do the free invoicing tools have a catch?
Usually the catch is in processing rather than the software - a free tool with its own payment processor can cost more than a paid tool that hands you an open choice. Zoho Invoice is genuinely free for the software layer if you already have a processor.
What is a reasonable cost per invoice?
Software and processing combined typically land between $0.20 and $1 per invoice on small invoices, but that range widens enormously with invoice value. The useful comparison is cost per invoice against gross margin per job, not against other tools.

Next steps

Invoicing software is cheap. Getting paid is not. If the processing line above dominates your annual cost, price your collection method before you price another app.