The quote lands in your inbox and your eye goes to one number. Annual subscription, one number. You compare it to the other quote's annual subscription and think you have learned something.
You may not have. The subscription line is only part of the five-year total. The rest can be spread across other places, and not all of them appear on the quote. This guide covers those places, and our RFP requirements matrix shows how to ask for them up front.
A fee expressed as a percentage of every transaction is not a fixed software cost. It rises every time you add a session or raise a fee. Run your own number before the demo: take last year's total online registration and rental revenue, multiply by the quoted percentage, and put that next to the subscription line. In a hypothetical department processing $1 million a year, one percentage point is $10,000 annually.
Watch for the second version of the same thing, a flat fee per registration. It can hurt most on high-volume, low-price programs. As a hypothetical, a $2 fee on a $15 drop-in class is about 13 percent of the price.
Card processing includes interchange, a fee set by the card companies. Ask directly whether the vendor adds anything on top of it: what is the effective rate, and what portion, if any, is the vendor's margin? Our guide to PCI compliance and vendor payments covers the related responsibilities.
Then ask who is allowed to carry that cost. The Municipal Research and Services Center notes that merchant surcharges are capped at 4% of the transaction and may only be applied to credit cards, not debit or prepaid cards, and that government entities may charge a service fee on Visa and Mastercard credit and debit transactions under the card brands' government program. Confirm with your finance director or attorney whether your agency may pass any of it to residents before you build it into a pro forma.
The City of Rock Island's recreation management system RFP asks vendors to price three items separately: an annual subscription fee (recurring), implementation, configuration and training (one-time), and data migration (one-time). Also ask whether custom reports and finance-system integrations are included in the price or quoted separately. A quote that omits them is not cheaper, only incomplete. Our data migration go-live plan shows what that work involves.
Ask for each as a named line with a fixed price or a not-to-exceed amount, and ask what triggers a change order.
Five years, four rows, one page:
Make every finalist fill in the same template, and check the exit terms too: see contract exit rights. A common template is the only way to compare vendors honestly.
Prefer structures that cap the variable component instead of letting it float with your success. For reference, RecreationHQ lists five plans from $2.99 per month to $1,999+ per month, with 1.5% per transaction on Starter and 0.5% on Growth. Compare any vendor, including us, on the same five-year template. Our buyer worksheet can help.
It varies by vendor and by how the quote is structured. Ask for the annual subscription, any percentage or per-registration fees, payment processing markup, and one-time implementation and migration costs as separate lines, then total them over five years.
According to the Municipal Research and Services Center, surcharges apply to credit cards only and are capped at 4% of the transaction, while government agencies can charge a service fee on credit and debit card transactions under the card brands' government program. Confirm with your finance director or attorney what your agency may do.
Sometimes. Surcharges may only be applied to credit cards, not debit or prepaid cards, and check with your finance director or attorney before passing fees on.
Ask for implementation, configuration, training and data migration as named lines with a fixed price or a not-to-exceed amount. The City of Rock Island's recreation software RFP asks vendors to price them as separate one-time items, apart from the annual subscription.
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