Paylocity closes the $320.2M Airbase acquisition and gains a second, transaction-metered billing model
Paylocity completed its acquisition of Airbase Inc. on 2024-10-01 for cash consideration of $320.2M net of cash acquired, funded by a $325.0M draw on its revolving credit facility. Airbase brought AP automation, expense management, corporate cards and procurement — and with them the first genuinely usage-metered SKU in Paylocity's contract, Spend Management Payments.
A per-employee-per-month HCM subscription. Every meter in the Paylocity contract keyed to headcount or to a named module; no transaction-count allocation anywhere.
The same PEPM subscription plus a spend-management line whose contract terms meter monthly AP Automation and Expense Management Transactions against an allocation set in the Order, with overage invoiced monthly on a 15th-to-14th cycle and unused allocation that does not roll over.
Paylocity signed an Agreement and Plan of Merger with Airbase Inc. on 29 August 2024 and closed on 1 October 2024, per its FY2025 and FY2026 Forms 10-K. Cash consideration was $320,205 thousand — about $320.2M — net of cash acquired and purchase-price adjustments, funded by borrowings under its revolving credit facility; Paylocity drew $325.0M on that facility in September 2024. Total purchase-price allocation came to $361.5M, of which $234.3M was goodwill and $75.2M proprietary technology. Airbase represented 9% of Paylocity’s total assets and under 2% of total revenues as of and for FY2025.
The strategic framing in the 10-K is explicit: the deal “was consummated to enable the Company to provide a comprehensive solution and modern client experience for managing payroll and non-payroll spend on a single integrated platform.”
The pricing consequence is the part that does not appear in any press release. Paylocity’s published Additional Service Terms now define “Expense Management Transactions” and, where “the Order specifies a number of AP Automation and/or Expense Management Transactions (‘Spend Management Payments’) per month”, meter them: unused monthly allocation does not roll over, and overage fees are “invoiced monthly, between the 15th of the previous month and the 14th of the month the invoice is dated”. That is a conventional allocation-plus-overage usage meter — the first one in a Paylocity contract, and one that behaves nothing like the headcount subscription the marketing describes.
The Airbase lineage is still visible on the live site: Paylocity’s own Card Program Agreement directs cardholders to [email protected], and a customer quote on the pricing page reads “Airbase by Paylocity is a finance tool meant for finance.”
Airbase was folded into a buyer-facing suite nine months later, when Paylocity launched Paylocity for Finance on 22 July 2025 and rebuilt its pricing page around HR / Finance / IT tabs.
Paylocity closed its acquisition of Airbase Inc. for $320,205 thousand net of cash acquired, funded by a $325.0M credit-facility draw. The Additional Service Terms now meter monthly AP Automation and Expense Management Transactions ("Spend Management Payments") against an Order allocation, with overage invoiced on a 15th-to-14th cycle and no rollover.