# The Small Business AI Budget: What to Actually Pay For > Small Business · AI Course · SB-10 > Source: https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/course/small-business-ai-budget > Last updated: 2026-08-25 **Decide what deserves a subscription and what does not — per-seat pricing at small headcount, usage-based alternatives, and the free tier that is genuinely enough.** ## The Short Answer **Small businesses accumulate AI subscriptions faster than they cancel them, and per-seat pricing punishes every hire. ibl.ai has no per-seat pricing and you own all the code and the data, so adding staff does not add licence cost and leaving does not mean losing your data.** On ibl.ai you own all the code and the data, run it model-agnostic across any LLM, and pay with no per-seat pricing — so you can deploy anywhere, from your own cloud to a fully air-gapped network. [Request Access](https://ibl.ai/contact) · [Explore Small Business](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business) ## Course facts - **Level:** Foundational - **Duration:** 3.5 hours across 8 modules - **Format:** Self-paced with a budgeting lab - **Modules:** 8 - **Catalog code:** SB-10 - **Frameworks covered:** TCO analysis ## What is this course about? Small businesses accumulate subscriptions faster than they cancel them, and AI has accelerated it. This course audits what you already pay for and barely use, models per-seat against usage-based at five, twenty, and fifty employees, identifies where a free tier is genuinely sufficient, and builds the consolidation case — including honest switching costs. ## Who is this course for? - Owner-operators - Business and office managers - Bookkeepers advising on software spend - Founders controlling burn ### What do I need before starting? - A list of current software subscriptions and their costs - Comfort with a spreadsheet ## What will I be able to do afterwards? - Audit what you pay for and what you actually use - Model per-seat cost at five, twenty, and fifty employees - Estimate usage-based cost from your real volume - Identify where a free or low tier is genuinely sufficient - Build a consolidation case with honest switching costs ## What does each module cover? ### Module 1 — What are you already paying for? The subscription audit that reliably finds tools nobody has opened in months. _(35 min)_ **Objectives** - Inventory every subscription and its cost - Measure actual usage per tool - Identify immediate cancellations **Topics:** Subscription inventory · Usage measurement · Zombie subscriptions · Immediate savings **Activity:** Audit twelve months of statements and find every subscription. ### Module 2 — What does per-seat cost as you hire? Modeling per-seat at five, twenty, and fifty employees — the growth penalty owners do not see at signup. _(40 min)_ **Objectives** - Model per-seat cost across growth scenarios - Identify the headcount where it becomes painful - Compare against usage-based at the same volume **Topics:** Per-seat modeling · Growth penalty · Threshold identification · Comparison **Activity:** Model your AI spend at five, twenty, and fifty employees. ### Module 3 — How do you estimate usage-based cost? Bottom-up estimation from real volume rather than headcount. _(40 min)_ **Objectives** - Characterize your real usage volume - Estimate cost from volume - Model variability and worst-case months **Topics:** Volume characterization · Cost estimation · Variability · Budget caps **Activity:** Estimate your usage-based cost from a month of real activity. ### Module 4 — When is a free tier genuinely enough? The honest cases where free works, and the limits that eventually bite. _(35 min)_ **Objectives** - Identify where free tiers meet your real need - Recognize the limits that will eventually matter - Avoid free tiers with unacceptable data terms **Topics:** Free tier sufficiency · Limit analysis · Data terms on free tiers · Upgrade triggers **Activity:** Assess three free tiers against your real requirements and their data terms. ### Module 5 — Can one platform replace six tools? The consolidation case, modeled honestly including what you lose. _(40 min)_ **Objectives** - Map capability overlap across your stack - Model consolidation savings - Identify capability you would genuinely lose **Topics:** Capability mapping · Consolidation savings · Capability loss · Honest comparison **Activity:** Map your stack's overlaps and model a consolidation. ### Module 6 — What does switching actually cost? Migration effort, retraining, and the data you might not get out. _(35 min)_ **Objectives** - Estimate migration effort honestly - Assess data portability before committing - Include retraining and disruption cost **Topics:** Migration effort · Data portability · Retraining · Disruption **Activity:** Estimate the switching cost for one tool you are considering replacing. ### Module 7 — Is the time saved actually money? Deciding whether an hour saved converts into revenue or just into a shorter day. _(30 min)_ **Objectives** - Determine whether saved time converts to revenue - Value time saved honestly for your business - Justify spend on non-revenue time savings **Topics:** Time-to-revenue conversion · Honest valuation · Quality of life value · Justification **Activity:** Value the time saved by one deployed agent and decide whether it justifies the cost. ### Module 8 — Building your twelve-month budget The lab module: a dated budget with consolidation and cancellation decisions made. _(40 min)_ **Objectives** - Build a twelve-month AI budget - Commit to specific cancellations and consolidations - Set a quarterly review **Topics:** Budget construction · Decision commitment · Quarterly review · Growth allowance **Activity:** Build the budget and commit to at least one cancellation this month. ## What is the capstone project? **Twelve-month AI budget with a consolidation decision.** Produce a subscription audit with usage data, per-seat and usage-based models at three headcounts, free-tier assessment, a consolidation case with honest switching costs, and a twelve-month budget with committed cancellations. _Deliverable:_ A twelve-month budget with at least one cancellation or consolidation executed. ## How are learners assessed? - Audit must cover twelve months of statements, not memory - Switching cost estimate must include migration and retraining - At least one cancellation or consolidation actually executed ## What ships with the course? - **Facilitator guide.** Session-by-session running order, discussion prompts, and the questions that reliably derail a room. - **Learner workbook.** Exercises, checklists, and the templates each module's activity produces. - **Hands-on lab environment.** A sandboxed ibl.ai deployment so exercises run against real agents, not screenshots. - **Assessment bank.** Scenario questions and rubric criteria mapped to each stated learning outcome. - **Source bibliography.** Every primary regulation and standard cited on this page, linked and dated. ## Which AI agents does this course use? - [Business Insights Agent](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/agent/business-insights-agent) - [Bookkeeping Agent](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/agent/bookkeeping-agent) - [Payroll Cash Flow Agent](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/agent/payroll-cash-flow-agent) - [Invoicing Agent](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/agent/invoicing-agent) ## Where does the course material come from? Every module is grounded in primary sources — the regulation, standard, or research itself, not a summary of it. Each was resolved at authoring time. - [U.S. Small Business Administration](https://www.sba.gov/) — SBA. Small business financial management and technology spend guidance. - [Ideas Made to Matter](https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter) — MIT Sloan. Research on technology consolidation and adoption economics. - [AI Index Report](https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index) — Stanford HAI. Model pricing trends underpinning the usage-based estimates. - [Business guidance](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog) — Federal Trade Commission. Subscription and auto-renewal disclosure rules relevant to the audit. ## Delivery notes Binding guidance for anyone preparing and delivering this course: - Module 4 must be honest that some free tiers are genuinely sufficient for a small business. A budgeting course that always concludes 'buy something' is a sales deck. - The switching cost work in Module 6 should sometimes conclude that switching is not worth it. Include a worked example where staying put is correct. - Module 7's time valuation is where owners over-claim. An hour saved on a Tuesday evening is real quality of life but does not pay a subscription, and the course should let them value it honestly either way. - Use real current pricing and date it. Owners will check, and stale figures discredit the whole model. - Require an executed decision in the capstone. A budget nobody acts on is the normal outcome and the assessment should prevent it. ## Why run AI training on a platform you own? - **You own the course, not a licence to it.** Course content, learner data, and the platform run inside your perimeter — you own all the code and the data. - **Model-agnostic delivery.** Run the course's AI components on any LLM — Claude, GPT, Llama, Gemini, Command — and switch anytime. - **No per-seat training licences.** Usage-based or self-hosted, so cost tracks actual use rather than headcount. - **Deploy anywhere.** Cloud, private VPC, on-premise, or fully air-gapped — including for cohorts that cannot use public AI tools. ## Frequently asked questions ### What does the The Small Business AI Budget: What to Actually Pay For course cover? Small businesses accumulate subscriptions faster than they cancel them, and AI has accelerated it. This course audits what you already pay for and barely use, models per-seat against usage-based at five, twenty, and fifty employees, identifies where a free tier is genuinely sufficient, and builds the consolidation case — including honest switching costs. It runs 3.5 hours across 8 modules across 8 modules, at foundational level, and closes with a capstone: Twelve-month AI budget with a consolidation decision. ### Who should take The Small Business AI Budget: What to Actually Pay For? It is written for Owner-operators, Business and office managers, Bookkeepers advising on software spend, Founders controlling burn. Prerequisites: A list of current software subscriptions and their costs; Comfort with a spreadsheet. ### Can we run this course on our own infrastructure? Yes. ibl.ai is model-agnostic and deploy-anywhere — cloud, private VPC, on-premise, or fully air-gapped — and you own all the code and the data. Cohort data, submissions, and any material learners upload stay inside your perimeter, which matters for small business teams that cannot send work to a public AI tool. ### How do we get access to The Small Business AI Budget: What to Actually Pay For? Request access and we will set it up for your cohort — hosted by ibl.ai, or running against your own deployment. Tell us the group size and timing you need, and whether it should run inside your own perimeter. ### How much does AI training for small business cost on ibl.ai? There is no per-seat pricing — you pay for usage or self-host and pay only for the infrastructure, so a 5,000-person rollout does not cost 5,000 licences. 1.6M+ users across 400+ organizations run the platform this way, including NVIDIA, MIT, and Syracuse University. ## More Small Business courses - [Your First Five AI Agents in Thirty Days](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/course/first-five-ai-agents-in-30-days): A practical sequence for an owner-operator with no IT department — which five agents to deploy first, in what order, and how to tell within a month if each earns its keep. - [AI Customer Support That Does Not Sound Like a Robot](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/course/ai-customer-support-not-a-robot): Automate the first response without losing the relationship — tone, escalation thresholds, and the questions a small business should never let an agent answer. - [AI Bookkeeping and Cash-Flow Forecasting for Owner-Operators](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/course/ai-bookkeeping-cash-flow): Use AI for categorization, reconciliation, and a cash-flow forecast you can trust — plus a clear line for where your accountant still has to sign. - [Lead Follow-Up Agents: Responding in Minutes, Not Days](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/course/lead-follow-up-agents): Speed-to-lead is the highest-leverage automation a small business can make — answer every inquiry immediately without sounding automated or breaking consent law. - [AI Marketing for Local Business: Content, Search, and Ads](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/course/ai-marketing-for-local-business): Produce marketing that ranks locally and does not read as generated — local search fundamentals, review-driven content, and ad testing on a small budget. - [Quoting and Estimating with AI for Trades and Services](https://ibl.ai/solutions/small-business/course/quoting-estimating-with-ai): Get accurate quotes out the same day — pulling from your historical jobs, current material pricing, and margin rules, with your approval before anything goes out.