FAQ: Solver Pricing and Licensing Guide, Aug. 2024

Introduction

Welcome to the Solver Pricing and Licensing Guide for Solver extended financial planning and analysis (xFP&A) solution for mid-sized organizations. This guide comes in three editions. One for Solver  internally, another for Solver’s sales channel (e.g., Partners), and one for customers.

August 2023, Solver simplified its pricing from 15 item codes to 4. Starting August 2024, Solver added 3 more items to its price list: Solver Suite module, Sage Intacct Consumption, and Solver Consumption. For a total of 7 priced items. Every August Solver will publish updates to pricing for new customers, and the pricing that will go into effect for existing customer the following January.

The new pricing is designed for 80% or more of the orders to require no more than 3 item codes for software. Customers get all Solver capabilities with the simple purchase of Solver Suite.

This document is a guide and will be updated from time to time. For the edition, you can always look at the cover page to see which edition and version of this guide you are using. For further questions or comments, please contact sales@solverglobal.com.

In summary, the new pricing is as follows for USA customers who purchase Solver using the August 2024
pricing model. Solver Suite fee does not apply to customers who purchased under the pricing models prior to August 2024. For more details, please read the sections below.

Licensing

Solver’s licensing is designed to give customers all the capabilities of its xFP&A solution with the purchase of the Solver Suite license and “Planning and Reporting User” licenses, limited capabilities with a Viewer license, and options for additional tenants, cloud data, and consumption of select types of data using the Solver Data API.

Licensing Items

Solver Suite

Access to the following services and capabilities are included with the purchase of a Solver Suite license (see diagram below). The purchase of at least one Planning and Reporting User is required to access these
services and capabilities. No user licenses are included with the Solver Suite. 

Footnotes:

1. One free Ascend Pass is included per new Solver customer. Not per User. If the customer is not
   able to attend Ascend in the year of purchase, the customer may attend the following year.
   Customers may purchase additional passes. Additional year passes require fee payment.
2. The first tenant is automatically included. Additional Tenants may be purchased.
3. Each Tenant comes with 30GB. Additional 30GB increments may be purchased.
4. Dashboards: Dashboards may be created in Excel with Solver report design tool. Advanced
   dashboards in Power BI or Tableau may be enabled with Solver Data API. Future Solver
   Consumption fees may apply.
5. An Academy license upon request is available for every Planning and Reporting User license.
   Does not apply to Viewers.

Planning and Reporting User

A Planning and Reporting User license provides the capabilities to enter data (e.g. budget data) and run
reports using run time parameters (period, department, scenario, etc.). A Planning and Reporting User may be given additional capabilities by customer’s master administrator through the setting of security
permissions. Examples of some of these capabilities include the ability to create/change reports/input forms, create/change data models and create/change integrations. A Planning and Reporting User license inherits all the capabilities of a Viewer license. At least one Planning and Reporting User license is required to be purchased as part of the Solver solution.

Viewer

Viewer allows customers to view and drill down on previously published reports delivered by a Planning and Reporting User (Archive Reports). Also, Viewers may be distributed reports from Solver’s Publisher feature to their Solver portal or via email that are in Excel or PDF format. Any reports published to Solver Portal or via an email attachment require recipients to have at a minimum, a Viewer license. In addition, a Viewer license provides Solver’s Ad Hoc Reporting feature for viewing customers data in the Solver Data Warehouse with query, reporting, and charting capabilities.

Additional Tenant

All customers get one Tenant with 30GB cloud data included with purchase of Solver Suite.

Additional Tenants may be purchased for additional security, data base, and data models for different purposes. Examples include testing, different business models/entities, data history archiving, etc.

Additional 30GB 

An additional 30GB of cloud data may be purchased for one or more of your Solver Tenants. 95% of  Solver customers use less than 30GB per Tenant today. Customers approaching their limit will be notified when their tenant is within 20% of their cloud data limit and they will have the option to reduce data or purchase an additional 30GB per Tenant or more should their business needs dictate.

Data Services

Currently Solver has one data service consumption fee it bills for, Sage Intacct Consumption, and another  one soon for Solver Consumption. There will likely be other consumption data services in the future that  require a fee. Solver will evaluate the costs and method to bill for such fees as they become known. 

Sage Intacct Consumption

Sage implemented a Sage Intacct consumption fee for Marketplace partners, like Solver, on 1 January 2024. This fee is per Sage Intacct “Company ID” that is flagged as “production” and integrated with Solver via Solver’s Sage Intacct Connector. Company IDs that are flagged as Demo, sandbox, or dev are not charged a fee. Customer’s Sage Intacct system administrator will need to provide the number of “production” Sage Intacct “Company ID(s)” they wish to integrate with Solver.

A Sage Intacct “Company ID” may have one or more companies (entities) within in it. Therefore, it is  important to not assume the number of companies the customer wants to plan and budget for within  Solver are the same number of Sage Intacct “Company IDs.”

For example, if a customer has one company; one company in Sage Intacct and one within Solver they  want to manage, there would be one Sage Intacct Consumption fee.

Another example, customer has 15  companies, and they all are within one Sage Intacct Company ID, there would be one Sage Intacct  Consumption fee.

One more example, if a customer has 45 companies, 2 in one Sage Intacct Company ID  and 43 in another company ID, there would be two Sage Intacct Consumption fees. This fee is charged for all new customers beginning August 2024. Existing customers as of January 2024 were billed separately from their subscription renewal in the first half of 2024 for their 2024 fee. Sage Intacct customer renewals starting  with January 2025 billing will include this fee. 

Solver Consumption 

Solver Consumption fee is for transporting data out of Solver’s data warehouse through its Data API, as  well as data consumption by Microsoft’s Power BI and Salesforce’s Tableau. Currently Solver is working on understanding the data transmission costs and how best to bill for them. Later in 2024 we plan to have more information to share on how Solver Consumption fee will be billed.

Additional Software Licensing Requirements

Additional required software not supplied by Solver: 1) Microsoft Excel Desktop required for report and input form (e.g., budgets) design; 2) if you want to use Solver Power BI and/or Tableau Connectors for advanced dashboards you will need Power BI and/or Tableau licenses; and 3) APIs required to get data from sources where Solver does not have a Connector.

Existing Solver Cloud Customers

License Migration 26 August 2023

With the Solver Cloud update on 26 August 2023, all existing Solver Cloud customers received all the functionality referenced in Licensing above for no additional subscription fee. Additional Tenants,  additional 30GB, or API Transactions that were already licensed were included.

Licensing from old to new is as follows:

Solver Publisher Subscribers as of August 2023

Solver Publisher Subscribers as of August 2023. Solver sales representatives contacted all Publisher Subscribers to get an accurate number of Viewer licenses needed to enable Publisher recipients to  continue to receive reports. The identified number of Viewer licenses were provided free of charge,  indefinitely to subscribers of Publisher as of August 2023.

The new requirement is that all Publisher recipients must have a Planning and Reporting User or Viewer license. This new requirement has been enforced in the Solver product as of 1 January 2024. Recipients without a Planning and Reporting User or Viewer license will not receive their reports without purchasing Planning and Reporting Users or Viewers. 

Special Pricing for Existing Solver Cloud Customers Prior to August 2023 

Customers who purchased Solver using pricing model prior to August 2023, receive a 50% discount on  the current price for adding Planning and Reporting Users. All other modules pricing is at current pricing  at the time of add-on purchase. 

Solver Suite: Existing Customers Prior to August 2024 

Solver Suite module was introduced into Solver’s pricing model August 2024. Customers who purchased under Solver pricing model prior to August 2024 will automatically have the Solver Suite at no additional  cost. 

Annual Price Adjustments

Typically, Solver has annual price adjustments that address additional product capabilities and rising  costs. Customers should plan price increases of between 5-10% per year. If Solver prices increase more  than 10%, Solver will provide 9 months’ notice to customers directly or through reselling agents of Solver.

Annual price adjustments are published in August every year. The August pricing goes into effect for new customers in August and for existing customers the following January. For existing customers this  includes renewals where the renewal term starts on or after January and any new add-on purchases.

Renewals

Customers prior to August 2023

Renewal subscription pricing did not change for customers who purchased Solver under the pricing  model prior to August 2023. Starting with January 2024 renewals, the annual billing amount will be the  same as the prior year, plus or minus any user licenses purchased under the August 2023 pricing model,  annual price adjustments, and any discounts (initial order discounts are not valid for renewals). See below  information about removing modules, Academy users, and removing Planning and Reporting Users.

For example, if a customer’s annual renewal in January 2023 was $20,000, they did not have any add-ons during 2023, and the annual inflation increase is 5% for 2024 renewals, the customer’s January 2024  renewal would be $21,000. 

If a customer had add-ons of $1,200 per year that they subscribed to between 1 January 2023 to 31 July 2023, the January 2024 annual renewal with 5% annual price increase would be $22,260.

Any add-ons done between 1 August 2023 through 31 December 2024 using August 2023 pricing model, will not have  the 2024 annual price increase applied to 2024 renewal. 

In other words, renewals for existing customers get an annual increase for anything subscribed to prior to August 2023. Any add-ons licensed after August 2023 through the end of 2024 will not have any annual increase for 2024 and will receive an increase in 2025.

Removing modules: This capability no longer exists for any customer after 16 August 2023. Solver’s  licensing changed to include all modules and no longer has the capability to remove modules. 

Removing Academy users: Starting August 2023 Academy users for Planning and Reporting Users are
included with every Planning and Reporting User and are part of a customer’s renewal going forward. Customers may remove any Academy users that they may have that are more than the number of Planning and Reporting Users they are licensed for. Customers may also request from Solver Academy  the changing of people who have access to the Academy. 

Removing users: Customers may remove Planning and Reporting Users and Viewers at renewal time. The price for customers who purchased under pricing model prior to 1 August 2023 will be determined by your Solver representative if not evident on your annual renewal. Your Solver representative will need to determine the last renewal price for the users being removed. Note – users can be removed at any time  but there is no credit or refund issued when removing users prior to the end of the subscription term.

August 2024 pricing does not automatically apply to subscription renewals for customers who purchased Solver using pricing model prior to August 2023. If a customer wants the new pricing, the customer needs to contact their Solver representative. The repricing will be at the current pricing and will include the  Solver Suite module and Planning and Reporting Users based on the list price at the time of re-pricing,  not at any previous pricing.

Customers prior to August 2024 

Solver Suite

Customers who purchased using pricing model prior to August 2024 will automatically get the Solver Suite item added to their annual renewal at no additional charge.

Sage Intacct Consumption Fee

Existing customers as of January 2024 were billed separately from their subscription renewal in the first  half of 2024 for their 2024 fee. Sage Intacct customer renewals starting January 2025 billing will include  fee. Fee is per Sage Intacct Production Company connected to Solver.

Solver Consumption Fee

Once Solver determines how to bill for this service, it will be added to existing customers renewal with  180-day notice. 

5.x Private Host Customers

5.x Private Host customers will not get the option of free use of all modules and capabilities of Solver  product with this revised pricing model effective August 2024. Customers will need to upgrade to Solver  Cloud to get all current Solver features and functionality. 5.x Private Host customers needing additional  users will need to get approval and pricing from Solver’s Vice President of Global Sales (sales@solverglobal.com).

Frequently Asked Questions for Existing Customers

1. I was a customer prior to August 2023, and Solver had three User Types: Power, Live, and Viewer. Why are there only two user types now: Planning and Reporting User and Viewer?
   ANSWER: The change was made to simplify Solver’s licensing and pricing. In addition, to encourage anyone that wants to modify or create reports and planning input forms to do so. Which in turn will increase usage and therefore the value a customer receives from Solver. To accomplish this, Solver decided to no longer charge extra for report and planning, modifying and creation capabilities, as well as other administrative capabilities. Lastly, to address security for Planning and Reporting Users, these users get basically the same permissions to capabilities as the previous “Live User” did. Solver administrator(s) will need to give any additional permissions to Planning and Reporting Users.
2. Is the Solver Suite a new module and fee? ANSWER: The Solver Suite is not new; it was provided  free of charge before and will continue to be offered free of charge for those customers who  initially purchased prior to August 2024 pricing model. New customers under the August 2024  pricing will be charged the Solver Suite fee.