Buying event software under a procurement threshold in Finland

If your organisation is buying event software in Finland, the first question is how large the purchase is in the eyes of the procurement rules. This article sets out the one national figure we can cite with a source, explains why each organisation's own limit differs, and describes what a supplier should hand over so that a small purchase stays simple. It is general information, not legal advice. Check your own guideline.

What is the national procurement threshold for services?

The national threshold for goods and services is 60,000 EUR excluding VAT (Finnish Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts, section 25), according to hankinnat.fi, in a page dated 17.12.2025. Below it, the full procurement act does not apply to the purchase. That is a statutory figure. It is not the only limit that matters.

We are quoting an external source here, and we read it on the date this article was reviewed. Thresholds are revised from time to time, so open hankinnat.fi and confirm the current figure before you rely on it. EU thresholds are different again and depend on the type of contracting authority, so do not borrow a number from an EU-level table without checking which one applies to you.

Two things follow from the national figure. First, it is stated without VAT, so a price that includes VAT has to be adjusted before you compare it. Second, a purchase below the threshold is not a purchase without rules. Your own organisation almost certainly has a guideline for it.

Why do internal limits differ between organisations?

Every organisation sets its own internal procurement guideline, and the limits and steps vary. Some require two quotes above a small sum, some require a particular approval for any new supplier, and some treat the size of an event, or of a supplier's contract, as a trigger for their process. Kohtaa does not know your limit and will not guess.

What we have heard from buyers over several conversations is that process, rather than price, is what slows a purchase down. A low price does not help if the purchase still has to pass through a heavy procedure. That is why this article is about process: the steps around the purchase matter as much as the figure on the invoice.

So the advice is simple. Before you shortlist anything, find your organisation's guideline for small purchases, and ask your procurement unit three things: what is the limit for a direct purchase, what documents a supplier must provide, and whether recurring purchases from one supplier are valued together. Internal limits vary by organisation, and the answer from your own unit is the one that counts.

Does buying per event count as splitting a purchase?

The rules do not allow a purchase to be split into parts in order to stay under a threshold. Whether several per-event orders count as one purchase depends on whether they meet one recurring need, and that is a question for your procurement unit. Do not assume either way.

The principle is easy to state: you estimate the value of the purchase honestly, for the need as it really is. If you know you will run six events with the same tool this year, buying them one at a time to keep each order small is exactly the pattern the rule exists to catch. If you run one event and have no plan for others, that is a different situation, and your guideline will say how it is treated.

Kohtaa's pricing is built to make this easy to reason about. A single event is priced per event, and a year of events is priced as one annual plan. Both are published, so your estimate can be made from the price list, not from a quote that arrives later. If you already know you will use the tool repeatedly, the annual price is the honest figure to estimate with, and it is one figure rather than six. We will not tell you which route is correct for your organisation, because that depends on your guideline.

How is the estimated value calculated?

The estimated value is your own honest forecast of what the need will cost over the relevant period, and the procurement rules say how to read it for your type of purchase. Ask your procurement unit how they value a recurring need, and write the reasoning down. A written estimate protects the person who buys.

A practical way to build the estimate is to list what you know:

• How many events you plan to run with the tool in the period, even roughly.
• How many attendees each event is likely to have. Kohtaa's tiers depend on attendance: Medium covers up to 100 attendees, and Large has no attendee limit.
• Whether the events are separate needs or one programme.
• What the published price is for each route.

Then compare the total, without VAT, with your own limit. Kohtaa's published prices include VAT, so divide accordingly. If you cannot decide which route applies, the most useful thing to send your procurement unit is the price list and the supplier summary described below.

What does a supplier need to give you?

A supplier should give you enough to fill in your own forms without chasing: who they are legally, what it costs, how and when they invoice, and where the data is. If any of those four is missing, the purchase will stall. Ask for them in writing before you commit.

For Kohtaa, those four are:

• Who: Curtis Thomas, trading as Kohtaa, Oulu, Finland. Invoices are issued for Kohtaa; the invoicing party's business ID appears on the invoice.
• What it costs: published prices, VAT included, on the pricing page.
• How it is invoiced: an order first and an invoice later. The invoice can be sent before or after the event, as the buyer chooses, with payment due 14 days from the invoice date. Payment is by invoice, never by card.
• Where the data is: the application, database and images run on Hetzner in Helsinki, and email goes through Brevo in France. Data is stored only in the EU. Optional Google or LinkedIn sign-in and Telegram reminders send some data outside it.

Buyers who need more than that can ask for a 30-minute security call. Data-protection questions are answered in GDPR for event networking apps.

Be wary of a supplier who cannot say who their legal entity is, or whose price changes depending on who asks. Both make your own file harder to defend.

Where does Kohtaa's pricing sit?

Kohtaa has three published prices, all including VAT: Medium at 100 EUR per event for up to 100 attendees, Large at 950 EUR per event with no attendee limit, and Annual at 3,900 EUR per year for unlimited events. You can work out the estimated value of a purchase from the price list alone.

Whether any of these fits under your own limit is for your guideline to say, not us. We are deliberately not telling you that a purchase is small enough, or that no approval is needed, because we do not control your organisation's approval process.

What Kohtaa does control is the number of steps on its own side. The order is self-serve: you create the event, choose a plan, enter the organisation's details and business ID, and the event can go live as soon as the order is submitted. Kohtaa reviews orders afterwards. A buyer whose finance team has to supply the business ID or a purchase-order reference first may take longer, but that is your internal process, not a waiting step at the supplier.

For the full pack, including a supplier summary you can paste into your own form, see the procurement page. If you work in an innovation office or a university, the pages for innovation offices and universities describe how the product fits that setting. If you want to talk it through, contact us.