Your software stack costs more than you think it does.

The bit the total doesn't show

The money isn't the expensive part

Four subscriptions is an annoyance. Four subscriptions that don't know about each other is a job.

The proposal you wrote in PandaDoc doesn't become the project in Asana. The hours in Harvest don't become the invoice in Xero. Somebody copies the scope across. Somebody reads the timesheet and types the numbers into a bill. In a business of one to five people, that somebody is the founder, and it happens at the weekend.

Nobody ever quit a consultancy because the software was £40 too expensive.

Call it two hours a month of re-keying — a conservative figure if you invoice more than three clients. At a £600 day rate, that's roughly £150 of your own time, every month, spent moving numbers between boxes. It doesn't appear on any invoice, so it never gets counted.

That's the number worth fixing, and it's the reason a single system usually wins even when the subscription maths is close.

Honest notes

Where these figures come from, and where they'll be wrong

Everything above is list pricing from each provider's public UK or US pricing page as at August 2026, taken at the annual-billing rate where one exists. Dollar prices are converted at £1 ≈ $1.27 and rounded.

Three things will make your real bill differ. Monthly billing costs more than annual on almost every platform. Monday.com sells seats in bundles with a three-seat minimum, so a two-person business still pays for three. And accounting software is charged per company rather than per person, which is why your total flattens as you grow rather than rising in a straight line.

If you bank with NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank or Mettle, FreeAgent is free — worth checking before you pay for anything else. QuickBooks raised UK prices across the board in January 2026, so older comparisons you find elsewhere will understate it.

Prices move. Check each provider before you decide anything, and tell us if you spot one that's out of date.