Skai Solutions publishes A$299 a month for 500 minutes and A$599 for 1,500 in Australia, NZ$325 and NZ$649 in New Zealand, plus a one-off setup fee of A$499 or NZ$545. All prices exclude GST.
Skai Solutions publishes two plans for Australian venues and does not hide them behind a form. A$299 a month buys 500 included minutes. A$599 buys 1,500. Anything past the included block is A$0.80 a minute. Setup is A$499, charged once. Everything there excludes GST, so the amounts that leave your account are A$328.90 and A$658.90, and a GST registered venue claims the difference back. The full breakdown, including what happens across multiple sites, sits on the Australian pricing page.
Five hundred minutes is roughly 250 calls at two minutes each. Most single-site venues that answer bookings, enquiries and a steady trickle of takeaway orders land inside that. A busy takeaway on a Friday does not.
NZ$325 a month for 500 minutes, NZ$649 for 1,500, extra minutes at NZ$0.87, and a one-off NZ$545 setup fee. GST here is 15% rather than 10%, so the all up figures are NZ$373.75 and NZ$746.35. The New Zealand pricing page carries the same detail in NZD.
The gap between the two markets is currency and GST, not a different product. Worth saying because operators on both sides of the Tasman assume one market is being charged a premium.
Most of the confusion about what an AI receptionist costs comes from comparing four different billing shapes as though they were one price.
| Model | How it bills | Where it hurts |
|---|---|---|
| Per minute | A rate for every minute the agent is on the line | Your bill peaks in exactly the month your covers peak. December is the worst possible time for a variable cost |
| Per call | A flat fee per answered call regardless of length | A wrong number and a fourteen minute function enquiry cost the same |
| Per seat | A monthly fee per user or per handset | Fine for one venue. It scales badly the moment you open a second |
| Flat monthly with an included block | A fixed fee, a minute allowance, an overflow rate | You pay for headroom you may not use. This is the Skai Solutions model |
None of these is dishonest. They suit different venues. But a per minute quote and a flat monthly quote cannot be compared by looking at the two headline numbers, and that is usually how they get compared.
A setup fee that buys nothing is a bad sign, so it is fair to ask. Skai Solutions' A$499 or NZ$545 covers four specific pieces of work: building your menu into the agent so it can quote a price and a substitution, connecting it to your point of sale so orders land where your kitchen already looks, tuning the voice model against how your customers actually speak, and staying on it through go-live. That takes five days.
The voice tuning is the part that matters most locally and gets the least attention in pricing pages. Speech models are overwhelmingly trained on North American English. A Kiwi vowel, a Māori place name or a suburb like Papatoetoe is where an untuned agent fails, and it fails silently, by mishearing rather than by stopping. If a quote has no setup line at all, ask what replaced that work.
Two comparisons decide this for most operators, and both are published numbers rather than estimates.
The first is a person. The Fair Work Commission raised modern award minimum wages 4.75% from 1 July 2026, taking the national minimum wage to A$26.44 an hour, or A$33.05 for an award-free adult casual once the 25% loading is applied. Cover 5pm to 9pm seven nights and you are buying 28 hours a week, about 121 hours a month, so roughly A$4,000 before superannuation, penalty rates or leave. In New Zealand the adult minimum wage is NZ$23.95 an hour from 1 April 2026, and 121 hours plus the 3% minimum KiwiSaver contribution is about NZ$2,990 before holiday pay. Those hours and that arithmetic are Skai Solutions' own, shown so you can put your own roster through them.
The second is your phone system, which is a separate bill people forget they are already paying. Need to Know Comms, an independent Australian communications guide, put business phone plans at A$8 to A$20 per user per month for a basic tier and A$20 to A$35 once you want an auto attendant and ring groups, with handsets at A$80 to A$250 one off, as at August 2026. An AI receptionist sits on top of that rather than replacing it.
Every comparison of this kind stops at the sticker price, and the sticker price is not what a purchase costs an Australian small business. The tax treatment is, and it changed in a way that is worth about seventeen thousand dollars of deduction on the wrong side of a single dollar.
If you buy hardware, a phone system, a PABX, handsets, an on-premise server, the money goes through the depreciation rules. If you subscribe, it is an ordinary deductible expense in the year you incur it and none of what follows applies to you.
| How you get your phone answered | How the money is deducted | Year one deduction on A$19,999 |
|---|---|---|
| Buy a system costing under A$20,000 | Instant asset write-off, deducted in full in the year it is installed ready for use | A$19,999 |
| Buy a system costing A$20,000 or more | Goes into the small business pool at 15 per cent in year one, then 30 per cent a year | A$3,000 on A$20,000 |
| Subscribe to an AI phone agent | Ordinary deductible expense as incurred | Everything you paid that year |
| Employ a person to answer | Wages, deducted as incurred, plus super | Everything you paid that year |
The rules, from the ATO's simpler depreciation pages, last updated 28 August 2026. The instant asset write-off limit for a business with aggregated turnover under A$10 million is A$20,000 for assets first used or installed ready for use on or after 1 July 2023. It applies per asset, so several items each under the limit each qualify.
Here is the cliff, and it is sharper than almost anyone realises. The test is on the total cost of the asset, not on your business-use portion, and if the cost is equal to or more than A$20,000 the whole thing goes into the small business pool instead. So a system at A$19,999 gives you a A$19,999 deduction in year one, and a system at A$20,000 gives you A$3,000, because the pool deducts 15 per cent in the allocation year and 30 per cent each year after that. One dollar of purchase price moves A$16,999 of deduction into later years. The ATO's own example makes the point with a ute: a A$40,000 vehicle used 40 per cent for business cannot use the write-off even though the business portion is A$16,000, because the asset cost A$40,000.
Two honest points, because a page that only argues one way is not useful. This is a genuine argument for buying: if you were replacing the phone system anyway and it lands under A$20,000, the deduction is immediate, and a subscription cannot match that in year one. And if you choose the simplified depreciation rules you must apply the whole set to all your depreciating assets, not just the write-off. None of this is tax advice.
What it changes is the shape of the comparison. A bought system is capital that has to be right for years. A subscription is an operating cost you can stop. A person is an operating cost you cannot stop quickly, and carries super at 12.00 per cent on top, now payable each payday. We work the person side through in what a virtual receptionist costs in Australia, and the hardware side in restaurant phone system cost.
At very low call volume, yes, and it is worth saying so plainly. A human answering service billed per call is cheap when there are few calls to bill for. A venue taking twenty calls a month will pay less on a per call message-taking plan than on any flat monthly subscription, including ours.
The crossover comes faster than most operators expect, because per call pricing has no ceiling and a flat plan does. A venue on a per call plan pays more in December than in February by exactly the amount its trade improved, which is the wrong way round. We have priced that comparison properly on answering service and virtual receptionist cost in Australia, including the volume at which the two lines cross.
The other half of the comparison is not price at all. A message-taking service takes a message. It does not put an order into your POS, and it does not answer three calls at once during a Friday rush. If your phone mostly carries enquiries, a basic message-taking plan is the right buy and it is not us.
If your phone rings four times a day and every call is a booking you would have taken anyway, the honest answer is that a A$299 monthly line item will not pay for itself, and a voicemail box someone clears twice a day is the right buy. It is not us.
The maths turns somewhere around the point where missed calls cost more than the plan. Skai Solutions' own worked example on the homepage assumes 150 missed calls a month at A$40 average order value, which is A$6,000. Those inputs are assumptions, not measurements, and they are shown precisely so you can swap in your own. Count your actual unanswered calls for one week, multiply by your own average spend, and compare that to A$299. If the answer is close, wait.
Context worth holding while you decide: CreditorWatch measured a 10.4% closure rate across food and beverage services in the twelve months to January 2026, the highest of any industry and about double the economy-wide average. When margins are that thin, a fixed monthly cost is easier to defend to yourself than a variable one, which is an argument for the shape of the plan as much as the size of it.
This is the question that decides the purchase, and it can now be answered with official data rather than a vendor's model. ABS Australian Industry figures for 2024-25, released on 18 September 2026, put Australian food and beverage services at A$134.077 billion of sales and A$8.917 billion of operating profit before tax. That is 6.65 cents of profit in every sales dollar, and the division is ours.
Run A$299 a month through it. A$3,588 a year of plan cost against a 6.65% margin means a venue needs about A$53,950 of extra sales across the year just to stand still on profit, which is roughly A$1,040 a week, or about 26 covers a week at a A$40 average spend. At a A$70 average spend it is about 15 covers. If you are not confident the phone is costing you that, count your unanswered calls for a week before you buy.
The margin is the ABS's. The arithmetic and the cover assumptions are Skai Solutions' own, shown so you can substitute your own figures. Our page on average restaurant revenue in Australia sets out the full 2024-25 release, including where the money goes before it reaches that 6.65%.
In one line: AI receptionist pricing for an Australian venue on Skai Solutions is A$299 a month for 500 included minutes or A$599 for 1,500, plus a one-off A$499 setup, and the number that actually decides your bill is not the headline but the billing model underneath it. This is the cost question inside a bigger one. If you are still working out what the category is and whether it does the job, start with the Skai Solutions pillar on what an AI receptionist is and does, then read whether an AI receptionist actually works for the evaluation question. If your comparison is really against a human answering service rather than an AI one, virtual receptionist cost in Australia and phone answering service cost in New Zealand price that side of it properly.
Almost always, and the comparison is publishable rather than a matter of opinion, because Australian hospitality wages are set in an award.
On the Restaurant Industry Award MA000119 pay guide published 24 June 2026, a casual Level 2 food and beverage attendant is A$33.85 an ordinary hour. If the phone pulls somebody away for 40 minutes a day across lunch and dinner, that is A$22.57 a day, about A$687 a month at seven days trading, before any weekend penalty. Weekends are when the phone rings most and when labour costs most, so the true figure is higher than that.
Set A$687 of interrupted award labour against a flat monthly fee and the arithmetic is not close. What that arithmetic does not capture is that the staff member can do things software cannot, which is the honest limit of the comparison and the reason the next section exists.
Three things, in order of how often they surprise people.
What does not move the price is call volume within your tier. Every call is answered at once, so a Friday spike costs the same as a quiet Tuesday. That is the structural difference between paying for software and paying per call, and it is set out by category on what a telephone answering service is.
Book a demo and Skai Solutions will walk your actual call pattern through the plan, so you buy minutes you will use rather than minutes that sound safe.
Book a Free DemoSkai Solutions charges A$299 a month for 500 included minutes and A$599 for 1,500, excluding GST. Extra minutes are A$0.80. Adding 10% GST makes those A$328.90 and A$658.90 all up, which a GST registered venue claims back. Full published detail is on the Australian pricing page.
NZ$325 a month for 500 minutes and NZ$649 for 1,500 on Skai Solutions' published plans, excluding GST, with extra minutes at NZ$0.87. GST in New Zealand is 15%, so the all up figures are NZ$373.75 and NZ$746.35.
Usually yes, and it is the line most people miss when they compare monthly prices. Skai Solutions charges A$499 in Australia and NZ$545 in New Zealand, one off. It covers the full menu build, the POS connection, voice tuning for your venue and go-live support. Setup takes five days.
For evening cover, on published rates, yes. Covering 5pm to 9pm seven nights is about 121 hours a month. At the A$33.05 award-free adult casual rate that is roughly A$4,000 a month in Australia before superannuation. In New Zealand, at NZ$23.95 plus the 3% minimum KiwiSaver contribution, it is about NZ$2,990 before holiday pay. Those are Skai Solutions' own hours and arithmetic so you can change the inputs.
Because four different pricing models are being quoted as if they were one. Per minute, per call, per seat and flat monthly all produce a different bill from the same phone. A per minute plan looks cheap until a December Friday, and a per seat plan looks cheap until you add a second venue.
Turning the ring-out on your existing phone system into a voicemail box that someone actually clears. It costs nothing and it is the right answer for a venue taking a handful of enquiry calls a week. Paying for an AI receptionist only makes sense once missed calls are costing you more than the plan.