Why we charge per business, not per user

Nearly every accounting tool we looked at before building Spheyas charged per user. Add your accountant, and the bill goes up. Add a part-time bookkeeper, and it goes up again.

That pricing model quietly works against the thing the software is for.

The choice per-seat pricing forces

Bookkeeping is accurate when the people doing the work have access. The person who raises invoices, the person who records the bills, the accountant who checks it at year end — they all need to be in there.

Per-seat pricing turns each of those people into a line item. So businesses do the rational thing and share one login. Now the activity log says every entry was made by the same person, nobody knows who changed what, and the audit trail is fiction.

We would rather not sell you that.

Accounting software with unlimited users

Spheyas is priced per organization. Every plan — including the free one — includes unlimited users and unlimited clients.

• Your accountant gets their own login, for nothing.
• Your bookkeeper gets their own login, for nothing.
• The activity log records who actually did the thing.

The plan you pay for changes what the software does, not how many people may use it.

The honest catch

Pricing per business means we make less from a ten-person company than a per-seat tool would. We think that is the right trade: we would rather the books be right and the price be predictable than extract more from businesses as they grow.

It is also the thing to check first when you compare bookkeeping software for small business: not the headline price, but the price once everyone who touches the books has a login. A cheaper per-seat plan and a dearer flat one often swap places at the third user. We set out the arithmetic against the tools people usually weigh us against — QuickBooks, Xero and FreshBooks, among others.

If you want to see the plans, they are on the pricing page. The free plan does not expire and does not ask for payment details.