A licence price represents only one part of the cost of an automated process. A recent Power Automate update now allows some capacity to be shared across several workflows, making this a useful time to review subscriptions as well as the full cost of automation.
What has just happened
On July 30, 2026, Microsoft made it possible to share a Power Automate Process licence across a group containing up to 25 cloud flows, according to Share Process license capacity across workflows. Each Process licence gives the group a shared capacity of 250,000 actions per day, as explained in Create and manage a flow group. The rollout began in July and the option may not yet be visible in every Power Platform environment. Microsoft’s release plan, updated on August 11, 2026, also schedules an improved Power Automate licensing dashboard for August, centralising usage, trends and capacity warnings.
Why this affects you — or does not
This update directly affects organisations that already use Power Automate Process licences for cloud flows accessed by many employees. It is particularly relevant when a cross-functional business process, such as purchase approval, order handling or record creation, is implemented through several technical workflows.
Previously, assigning Process capacity to individual flows could result in unused licensing capacity. Flow groups now allow this capacity to be pooled, provided that the workflows are solution-aware, located in the same environment and remain within Microsoft’s shared capacity limit. Parent and child flows must be added separately and each counts as a member of the group.
The change is less relevant when:
- Your automations use only standard rights included with Microsoft 365. A Process licence may not be the appropriate model, although the administrator must still check the connectors, execution mode and account used.
- You mainly run unattended desktop automation. Flow groups apply to cloud flows. Unattended RPA remains subject to Process or Hosted Process licensing rules.
- You operate a highly demanding critical flow. Dedicated capacity may be safer than exposing other workflows to shared-capacity saturation.
- Your automation stack is based on n8n or Make. Your bill does not change directly, but the economic comparison with Power Automate may. Our Power Automate, n8n and Make comparison places licence cost alongside integration, hosting and reversibility.
A flow group is not automatically cheaper. It creates an optimisation option, not a guaranteed saving. The outcome depends on actual consumption, workflow architecture and the operating costs surrounding the platform.
What this changes in practical terms
Licensing can be managed as a portfolio
As of August 25, 2026, the French Power Automate pricing page lists Power Automate Premium at €13 excluding tax per user per month, Power Automate Process at €130 excluding tax per bot per month and Hosted Process at €186.30 excluding tax per bot per month, with annual payment. Public prices may differ depending on the Microsoft agreement, purchasing channel and negotiated terms.
These amounts are not the price of an automation. They only cover the right to use specific platform capabilities. The full cost must include the following components:
| Cost component | What must be priced | Accountable role |
|---|---|---|
| Process analysis | Business rules, exceptions, documents, data and responsibilities | Process owner |
| Design and build | Workflow, connectors, processing, logs and error recovery | IT or integrator |
| Licences and capacity | Premium users, Process, Hosted Process and third-party software | Microsoft 365 administrator |
| Integration | APIs, gateways, service accounts and CRM or ERP access | IT |
| Production deployment | Acceptance testing, permissions, documentation and manual fallback | Project manager |
| Operations | Monitoring, fixes, API changes and secret renewal | Technical owner |
| Process evolution | Changes to rules, forms and approval routes | Process owner |
The full cost is therefore analysis + implementation + licences + integration + deployment + operations + change. A quotation containing only development and licence lines leaves future expenditure outside the initial budget.
Finance can compare subscription costs with usage
Microsoft’s improved dashboard is intended to consolidate user and capacity licence consumption, major users, usage trends and recommendations concerning missing licences or capacity overruns. This gives finance and Power Platform administrators a common basis for separating genuinely used subscriptions from precautionary capacity.
However, the budget should be allocated to the business process rather than solely to each technical flow. If order processing depends on several workflows, a gateway and a service account, these items should appear under the same functional cost centre.
IT must prepare workflows before pooling them
Creating a flow group is not simply a setting that can be enabled on every existing workflow. Eligible cloud flows must be stored in solutions and located in the environment where Process capacity is assigned. When flows are deployed to another environment, group membership and licence assignments do not transfer automatically.
The administrator should therefore maintain a matrix showing each workflow’s owner, environment, business process, connectors, licence model, consumption, dependencies and fallback procedure.
Microsoft recommends reviewing daily action usage over the previous 28 days when selecting flows for a group. This observation period helps identify irregular or dominant workflows that could consume a disproportionate share of capacity.
Avoided cost is not the same as an accounting saving
Since July 16, 2026, Power Automate has provided a feature for estimating the time and money saved by desktop flows. The organisation enters the former manual duration and a monetary baseline, after which the platform aggregates estimated savings from successful runs, as described in Measure time and cost savings for desktop flows.
This is useful for monitoring, but released employee time does not automatically reduce accounting expenses. If that capacity is reassigned to other work, the company gains output capacity rather than an immediate reduction in payroll. Our guide to measuring Power Automate ROI separates avoided work, recovered capacity, error reduction and financial impact.
Consider an illustrative scenario: a purchase approval workflow may look simple if the scope only mentions a form and email notifications. Its cost increases when it must check commitment thresholds, query the ERP, handle absences, archive evidence and provide a manual recovery route. The number of visible screens is not a reliable measure of complexity.
What to do by September 30, 2026
- By August 31 — Microsoft 365 administrator: export the active-flow inventory, including owners, environments, connectors, licence models and execution history. The expected deliverable is a register that finance and IT can analyse.
- By September 7 — Process owners: associate every workflow with a named process and document triggers, data, exceptions and fallback procedures. Where the process remains unclear, use BPMN Studio, our BPMN modelling application, as part of a process audit and mapping engagement.
- By September 14 — Power Platform administrator: identify flows eligible for pooling, simulate their combined consumption and isolate those that require dedicated capacity. The deliverable is a target licensing architecture for each environment.
- By September 21 — Finance and IT: calculate the full cost of every automated process using the cost components above. Separate licences, maintenance, third-party software and internal work to make management decisions transparent.
- By September 30 — Executive management: decide which workflows should be pooled, kept on dedicated capacity, corrected or retired. Each retained process must have an operating budget, a business owner and a technical owner.
What you can ignore for now
You do not need to move every flow into a group as soon as the feature appears. A stable, correctly licensed and capacity-intensive workflow may remain isolated without indicating poor licence management.
You should not attempt to fill every group to the maximum number of flows either. Actual and variable capacity consumption matters more than the interface limit.
Changing platforms solely to reduce a licence line would also be premature. Moving to n8n or Make may transfer expenditure to hosting, supervision, connector redevelopment and internal skills. The decision must be based on full cost, reversibility and information-system integration.
Finally, automated savings estimates should not be copied directly into a budget. The former manual duration, monetary baseline and treatment of failed runs must first be approved by finance and the process owner.
Our view at D1 Consulting
Shared Process capacity addresses a licensing constraint that could make small cross-functional workflows disproportionately expensive. It does not resolve ownerless automations, duplicates or flows built around a poorly defined process. Pooling technical debt makes it less visible, not less risky.
Our method starts by identifying the process, its exceptions and its current cost. We then model the target operation, define the licensing architecture and price implementation separately from ongoing operations. This approach is part of our Process Automation and Optimisation service and our dedicated Power Automate, Power Apps and Power BI offering.
The objective is not to deploy more workflows. It is to know what each automation costs, who owns it and under which conditions it should be maintained or retired. That is the operational extension of a structured process optimisation approach.
👉 Book a free 30-minute diagnostic to calculate the full cost of a process and identify the licences, integrations and operating expenses that belong in your budget.
