Guide
Where per-seat practice management stops working
Updated
A firm pays for practice management on a unit it does not control, because the seat count follows hiring rather than revenue, and the published plans handle that badly in ways their pricing pages do state if you read the conditions beside the figure.
The seat is the wrong unit for a firm
A sole practitioner buys one seat and knows the bill. A twelve person firm buys twelve, and then discovers the question nobody asks at the demo: does the receptionist need a seat, does the partner who approves two jobs a month need one, does the seasonal preparer need one for eleven weeks.
Every per-seat vendor in the table answers that the same way, which is that a person who logs in is a seat. The bill therefore tracks headcount, and headcount in an accounting firm is seasonal.
The one plan that does not count seats
Xero Practice Manager prints a single practice figure of 163.90 Australian dollars a month for up to ten users, including GST, for new and Bronze partners. Inside ten people the seat question disappears, which is a different product shape rather than a discount.
Compared within the same currency, FYI's cheapest plan prints 30 per user and will not sell fewer than five, so five seats print 150 and ten print 300. No conversion is involved in that comparison because both vendors print Australian dollars.
Source: Xero Practice Manager, read 2026-09-12
Floors and conditions to read before the feature list
Two of the six publishing vendors attach a condition to the cheaper number rather than to the product. FYI sets a five seat minimum, so a three person firm pays for five. Karbon offers monthly billing only to teams of four or more, so a smaller firm takes the annual commitment or the higher rate.
Neither is hidden. Both are printed beside the figure, and both are invisible in any comparison that copies the headline price into a table without the condition.
Source: Karbon pricing, read 2026-09-12
What a firm should price instead of the seat rate
- The bill at your peak headcount, not your current one, because that is the month you will actually pay.
- Whether seats can be removed mid-term, and on what notice, since seasonal hiring is the whole problem.
- The modules the plan excludes, which on Canopy's Standard plan includes the tax and close automation add-ons.
- Whether a partner-level relationship changes the price, as it does for Xero at Silver level and above.