What are Price Drivers?
Price Drivers are customisable conditions that determine how a price is calculated for your services. They allow for dynamic pricing based on specific client requirements.
Depending on the type of service, Price Drivers could include things like:
Number of transactions per month
Company size or number of employees
Complexity of the client's financial records
Urgency or turnaround time
In Socket, you define these Price Drivers in the back end (e.g., dropdowns, sliders, inputs) and then assign pricing logic to each driver (e.g., £50 per 100 transactions).
This allows users or team members to input facts during the scoping process, and Socket automatically calculates a consistent price based on the pricing logic.
It ensures transparent, consistent, and scalable pricing without manual intervention.
⚙️ To customise and tailor your price drivers, you'll need to set up your pricing menu in Services & Pricing first.
Types of Price Drivers
Price Drivers are broken down into two configurable parts:
Option Type – how the data is collected
Calculation – how it affects the price
You can apply as many price drivers to a service as needed.
Option Types
Here are the available option types you can choose from:
Numeric – Price per unit
Example: "Number of bills per month" → £1.50 per bill
Supports tiered pricing setups (e.g., payroll per employee)
Boolean – Yes/No toggle
Example: "Do you require VAT returns?" → If yes, add £100
List – Predefined options with pricing logic attached to each
Example: "Level of complexity" → Simple, Medium, Complex
Range – Defined price bands based on input ranges
Example: "Annual turnover" →
£0–£500k = +£0
£500k–£1M = +£50
£1M+ = +£100
Frequency – Defines how often the service is delivered
Example: Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly
Note: Frequency is always calculated last
Hourly Rate – Multiplies a set hourly rate by the number of hours entered
Example: 5 hours at £100/hr = £500
Calculation Types
Each driver also uses a Calculation method to define how it affects the base price:
Add – Adds a fixed amount to the base price
Subtract – Deducts a value
Multiply – Multiplies the total so far
Divide – Divides the total so far
Example Scenario
Let's say you're quoting for a complex weekly bookkeeping service for a limited company with a £2 million turnover.
You set a base price of £5 and use 3 price drivers:
Driver | Option Type | Calculation |
Turnover | Range | Add |
Complexity | List | Multiply |
Frequency | Frequency | Multiply |
Pricing logic:
Turnover: £500k+ = Add £50
Complexity: Complex = Multiply by 2
Frequency: Weekly = Multiply by 3
Calculation:
((5 + 50) × 2) × 3 = £330
⚠️ Note: Frequency will always calculate last, regardless of the order the drivers appear in.
With Price Drivers, you can design a pricing model that is not only accurate and consistent, but flexible enough to reflect how your practice works.
Check your setup with Preview Pricing
Preview Pricing lets you check how a service prices will calculate before publishing the pricing menu. Pricing Preview works on both a draft menu or when editing your live pricing menu.
You'll find it in Services & Pricing. Open the service you want to test and click the Preview Pricing icon.
Choose a value for each driver, just as you would when scoping a real client, and Socket shows a Price Calculation Breakdown underneath.
You can see the base price, each driver, the operation applied, and the running total, ending with the final price and billing frequency. Nothing you enter here is saved, it is purely for checking the formula calculating the final price.
This is the quickest way to catch a driver that has been set up wrong, like a multiplication that should have been an addition or drivers organised in the wrong order, before you publish the menu or send anything to a client.
Tip: charging a set fee per unit (for example per director or per employee)
To charge a set fee for each of something, like a fee per director, per employee, or per entity, use a Numeric driver with a Multiply calculation. A Range driver sets a price between two numbers, so it will not multiply by the quantity, and that is the most common reason per-unit pricing comes out wrong.
One important tip: if that per-unit fee is the whole price for the service, set the service base price to £0. Otherwise the base price is added on top and your total comes out too high. For example, £52.35 per director with a £0 base price gives £157.05 for three directors.
Controlling what clients see on the proposal
By default, the drivers you select when building a proposal will be visible to the client. If you'd rather show just the service name and price without the driver details, you can control this on a per-proposal basis during the creation process.
On step 3 of creating a proposal (the customisation screen), scroll down to Additional Customisation. You'll see the option "How do you want to display proposal line items to clients?" with a dropdown. The options are:
Title only — shows the service name and price, no driver detail at all.
Summary — shows the service name, a brief description, and price.
Detailed — shows the full driver breakdown alongside the price.
Set it to Title only if you want the simplest view, or Summary to include your service description without exposing the individual driver selections. You can preview how each option looks using the Preview button in the top bar before sending.
Note: this setting is per-proposal and doesn't change your default. If you want a particular level of detail to appear every time, you can save a Proposal Template with your preferred customisation settings already applied.