The licence fee is usually the smallest number in the conversation. Workplace platforms are typically priced per user or per bookable resource per month, and that line is easy to compare across vendors, which is precisely why buyers over-index on it. The costs that actually differentiate one deal from another sit around it.

Implementation is the first step. Someone has to digitise your floor plans, define zones and desk attributes, configure booking policies per site, and connect the platform to your identity provider, calendar, HRMS, and access control. Some vendors include this; others quote it separately, and the gap between the two can exceed a year of licence spend. Ask explicitly what onboarding covers and what counts as a chargeable change request later.

Hardware is the next. Kiosks, room panels, and any occupancy sensors are capital purchases with a replacement cycle, and badge printers bring consumables. Platforms that run on tablets you already own, or that support your existing panels, remove a large line item here.

Then there is the cost that never appears on a quote: internal time. Rollout communications, training, and the admin hours spent maintaining floor plans and policies as offices change. A platform that needs a facilities coordinator to make routine edits costs more than one where a site admin can do it in five minutes, and neither vendor will quantify that for you.

Against all of this sits the reason anyone buys workplace software: real estate. Rent, utilities, and facilities services usually dwarf the software spend by an order of magnitude, so utilisation data that lets you release a floor, or avoid leasing one, tends to pay for the platform many times over. Cafeteria waste reduction and reclaimed reception hours add smaller amounts.

A defensible TCO model includes licence, implementation, hardware refresh, integration work, and admin time on one side, and space savings on the other. Anyone presenting a cost figure without the savings side is answering the wrong question and anyone presenting savings without a baseline utilisation measurement is guessing.