How much does Power BI cost a business? Licences, implementation and ready-built packages

The question “how much does Power BI cost?” often goes without a clear answer, because the price is made up of two entirely different parts: Microsoft licences and report development. It is worth costing them separately.

1. Microsoft licences

The licence is paid directly to Microsoft and depends on how many people will be viewing the reports. Power BI Desktop, the tool for building reports, is free, but sharing reports with colleagues requires a paid licence.

In practice, most small and medium-sized businesses need only a handful of licences: the people who actually open the reports are the managing director, the finance lead and a few department heads.

2. Report development

This is where the biggest price difference lies, depending on which route you take.

A ready-built report package. If you use Rivilė or Finvalda, the reports have already been built: they just need to be adapted to your data structure. That is why the price is a monthly fee, starting from €59 a month for a package of 8 reports; a package of 20 reports costs €89 a month.

A custom project. This is needed when data comes from several different systems, when you need specific metrics, or when your accounting system is not Rivilė or Finvalda. This kind of work is charged by the hour, at €70 an hour.

When each option is cheaper

A ready-built package is almost always cheaper if your needs are standard: revenue, expenses, profit, sales, debts, inventory. Building the same thing from scratch would cost more, and the result would be much the same.

A custom project pays for itself when:

• data needs to be combined from several systems (accounting + CRM + tills + Excel files);
• you need metrics that are not in the standard reports;
• your business model is unusual and the standard breakdowns do not fit.

What most often works in practice is a hybrid approach: you start with a ready-built package and later add a few custom reports. That way you are not paying for something that already exists.

What not to forget when costing it

It is worth adding to the price what you are currently paying indirectly: the hours your finance staff spend each month preparing reports by hand. Two days’ work a month often costs more than a subscription to a ready-built package.

Costings for two businesses

To make this more concrete, here are two typical cases.

A 20-employee trading company using Rivilė. The reports are viewed by the managing director, the finance lead and two department heads. They need the standard breakdowns: revenue, expenses, profit, sales, debts, inventory.

• 20-report package: €89 a month
• 4 Microsoft licences
• Implementation: a few days, with no separate project fee

For comparison: if the finance lead spends two days a month on reports, that time alone costs more.

A manufacturing company with several systems. Data comes from accounting, production management and Excel files with standard costs. They need unit cost calculated by product, which the standard reports do not cover.

Here the ready-built package covers the financial side, while the production metrics are built separately at the hourly rate. That is the hybrid approach in action.

When the cost rises unexpectedly

Three things most often increase the scope of a project, and all three can be spotted in advance:

• Messy data in the accounting system. If product groups have been set up inconsistently or departments are labelled in different ways, cleaning it up takes time. This becomes apparent at the very first data review stage.
• Undefined metrics. If the company has not agreed how margin is calculated, a report will not settle the argument. The agreement has to come before the work, not after it.
• Requirements that grow along the way. The classic case: it started with five reports and ended with thirty. That is why it is worth fixing the scope of the first phase and expanding only once it is working.

Does it pay for itself?

A simple way to check is to add up three numbers: how many hours a month go on reports, what that hour costs, and how many times a year a decision is made late because the data was not available in time.

The first two give you a concrete figure. The third is usually the real reason businesses get started, but it is impossible to put into a spreadsheet. We write in more detail about when it is worth starting in a separate article.

How to find out your price

You will find a comparison of all plans, with a specific list of reports, on the pricing page. If you are planning a custom solution, we describe such projects on the Power BI implementation page.