Free tool

What rota software really costs

Per-seat tools charge for every person who clocks in, so the bill grows every time you hire. This costs the whole decision: the licence, the clock-in add-on, the manager hours the admin eats, and the payroll accuracy you get back.

Your business

Staff who clock in20

Everyone who needs an account, including seasonal and casual staff.

Sites or venues1

£29 a site on Core, £59 on Pro. Ten sites or more is a Scale conversation.

Per-seat rate you are quoted£4.00

Most rota tools sit between £3 and £6 a user a month.

The extras a per-seat quote often carriesclock-in add-on, platform fee

Separate charge for the time clock

£/user

Several tools price attendance and clock-in as a second module.

Flat platform fee

£/month

What the admin actually costs youmanager hours, payroll leakage

Manager hours a week on rotas and timesheets5 hrs

Building the rota, chasing missing hours, retyping them into payroll.

What an hour of that time costs

£/hr

Fully loaded: salary, National Insurance and pension.

Share of those hours a system removes60%

Be honest. Nothing removes all of it: someone still has to decide who works when.

Weekly wage bill

Used only for the leakage line below. Set the share to 0 to leave it out.

Payroll leakage you would recover1%

Minutes lost to rounding, buddy punching and hours copied by hand. Keep this figure defensible.

Years to project3 yr

The licence line

20 staff · 1 site

A per-seat tool

£80/mo

£960 a year, and it grows with every hire

WagePilot Core

£29/mo

£29 × 1 site, any headcount

Difference

£612/yr

Saved on the subscription alone

Everything else it moves

Subscription savedPer-seat billing versus one flat charge a site: £612
Manager time given back156 hours a year at £22 an hour: £3,432
Payroll leakage recovered1.00% of a £6,000 weekly wage bill: £3,120
Total a year: £7,164

Subscription 9%
Manager time 48%
Payroll leakage 44%

The case

Over 3 years

3-year benefit

£21,492

Licence, manager hours and leakage together

Return on the subscription

21.59×

Every £1 spent returns about £22

Pays for itself in

18 days

From the start of the subscription

Core is a flat £29 a site, with unlimited sites and unlimited staff, so the only thing that moves this figure is opening another one.

Growing never moves you off Core, because sites and staff are both unlimited on it. Pro at £59 a site is a separate decision about features (cross-site analytics, rota automation, tips and tronc, HR documents, branding), never something your size forces.

The manager hours are worth more than the licence difference here. That is usually the real argument: the subscription is rarely the expensive part.

Start free and keep the £7,164 a year

Flat per site, never per head. No card to start.

Indicative. The per-seat figure is the rate you type in, billed monthly for every member of staff, plus any add-on you set. WagePilot is charged flat per site on whichever plan fits: you are never billed per head. The manager-time and leakage lines are your own assumptions, not claims about any named product. Real competitor pricing varies and several charge separately for the time clock: see our honest comparisons.

See full pricing Honest comparisons

Do it once here, or never again

Flat per site. Never per head. That is the whole model

There is no seat count to manage, no add-on for the time clock, and no version of this where hiring makes your software more expensive.

£29

A month, per site

One flat charge for the whole site, however many people are on the rota. One site with up to 5 staff stays free forever.

£0

Per person who clocks in

Hiring five people for Christmas moves your rota and not your bill. There is no seat count to manage and no licences to reclaim in January.

The time clock is not an add-on

GPS and QR clock-in, kiosk mode, photo verification and live labour cost are in the price rather than sold as a second module.

Leaving is a normal thing to do

Monthly billing, cancel any time, and your data exports in full. Nothing here depends on you finding it hard to leave.

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The economics

Why per-seat pricing feels cheap and then does not

It is not that per-seat is dishonest. It is that the price you evaluate is never the price you pay.

You evaluate at your smallest headcount

Software gets chosen in January, when the team is at its leanest, and paid for in December, when it is not. A per-seat quote is at its most attractive on the day you sign and at its least attractive on your busiest trading day of the year. Flat per-site pricing has the opposite shape: it looks expensive for four people and cheap for forty, and forty is where you will actually be using it.

The time clock is often a second bill

Rota and attendance are frequently sold as separate modules, so the per-user rate you were quoted is the rota rate, and clocking in adds another line. If you are comparing, get both numbers, then put them into the calculator together. The clock-in add-on field exists because that is a real quote pattern rather than a rhetorical one.

The seat count is admin in itself

Somebody has to add licences when you hire and remove them when people leave, and somebody has to notice when a seasonal starter is still being billed for in March. Every per-seat system quietly delegates a small recurring administrative job to the person least likely to have time for it.

The bigger number is manager hours

Five hours a week building a rota and chasing timesheets, at a fully loaded manager cost of £22 an hour, is about £5,700 a year. Removing 60% of that is worth roughly £3,400, which for most single-site operators is several times the entire licence difference. That is the number worth arguing about, and it is why the calculator makes you set the assumptions rather than asserting them at you.

And then payroll accuracy

Hours reconstructed from memory, times rounded generously, and shifts copied by hand into payroll all move money in one direction. We deliberately default that figure to 1% of the wage bill and let you set it to zero. A benefits case that survives a sceptical finance director is worth more than an impressive one that does not.

Common traps

How software cost comparisons go wrong

Four of these favour us and two do not. All six are worth checking before you sign anything, including with us.

Comparing the monthly licence and stopping there.

The licence is usually the smallest number in the decision. Manager hours and payroll accuracy move more money than the subscription does.
Costing per-seat software at today's headcount.

Price it at the team you are hiring towards. Per-seat pricing is cheapest on the day you sign and most expensive on your busiest day.
Forgetting the clock-in add-on.

Several rota tools price attendance separately, which can add half as much again to a per-user quote.
Ignoring the seasonal spike.

A per-seat bill peaks exactly when trading is hardest, and someone has to remember to remove the seats afterwards.
Assuming a benefits case has to be optimistic.

Set the leakage share to zero and the time saving to something you would defend out loud. A case that survives scepticism is worth more than a big number.
Treating an annual contract as a saving.

A discount for twelve months of commitment is a price for flexibility, not a reduction in cost. Price the flexibility too.

Pricing questions

What does per-seat pricing actually cost as a team grows?

Multiply the per-user rate by everyone who needs an account, every month, and add any separate charge for the time clock. A team of 20 at £4 a user is £80 a month; at 40 people it is £160 for exactly the same software doing exactly the same job. Seasonal hiring makes the bill move twice a year.

How is WagePilot priced?

Flat per site. One site with up to 5 staff is free forever. Beyond that it is £29 a month per site on Core or £59 a site on Pro, both with unlimited staff and unlimited sites. Pro costs more for what it does, never for how big you are. Headcount never appears in the sum: it only decides whether you are on the free plan.

Is the subscription really the main saving?

Usually not, and the calculator is built to show that honestly. For most operators the manager hours spent building rotas and chasing timesheets are worth several times the licence difference. That is the number worth arguing about.

What is payroll leakage?

The minutes that go missing between the floor and the payslip: clock times rounded generously, hours reconstructed from memory at the end of the week, buddy punching, and shifts copied by hand into a payroll system. Set the share to zero in the calculator if you would rather leave it out entirely.

Are you comparing against a specific competitor?

No. The per-seat rate, the clock-in add-on and the platform fee are all figures you type in from the quote in front of you. We publish separate side-by-side comparisons where we name products and cite their public pricing.

What happens to my bill when I hire?

Nothing. Ten more staff on the same site costs the same as it did yesterday. The bill moves when you open another site, which is a decision you make deliberately rather than one that happens to you in December.

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