How to normalize pricing across vendor proposals

• One term length — usually the contract length you intend to sign
• One user or site count, taken from your own volumes
• One treatment of one-off fees: implementation, migration, training
• One assumption about indexation or annual uplift
• One currency and one tax treatment

Per-user pricing multiplies out against your volumes and any minimum commitment. Per-site pricing needs your site list, including sites planned during the term. Tiered pricing needs the tier your volumes actually land in, not the headline tier. Time and materials needs an estimated day count — take the vendor's own estimate and record it as an assumption, not a price.

A normalized total that hides its inputs is a new source of argument. Show the vendor's original pricing next to the normalized figure so anyone can see how it was derived and challenge the assumption rather than the total.

The cheapest quote is often the one that excludes the most. Migration of a second source system, integrations beyond a set number, extra environments, and out-of-hours support are the usual candidates. Where an exclusion is likely to be needed, price it and show it as a separate line so the comparison reflects the real cost of ownership.

Every figure should carry a page reference. Proposight normalizes pricing structures during extraction and keeps the source link on each line — see vendor evaluation.