How does P3 Cost Analysts charge, and how is that different from weAudit?

Per costanalysts.com, P3 Cost Analysts uses a contingency model, sharing verified savings on a 50/50 basis for 12 to 60 months depending on service level. weAudit charges a low flat monthly fee published on its website, so clients keep 100% of the savings found and there is no multi-year share of the savings.

Do processing fee auditors receive money from processors?

Some firms in this industry receive referral fees, commissions, or revenue share from processors. weAudit receives none: no revenue share, referral fees, or commissions from any processor, ever. Its only revenue is what clients pay. Ask any auditor this question and expect the answer in writing on their website.

How long is the commitment with a processing fee auditor?

It depends on the firm. weAudit is month to month with no contract, backed by a 60-Day Love-The-Results-Or-Don't-Pay Guarantee. P3 Cost Analysts describes a savings share that runs 12 to 60 months per its website, so ask how many months or years the share applies before you sign.

Do processing fee auditors charge cancellation or early termination fees?

Some do. Certain auditors use multi-year agreements with cancellation or early termination fees, which is ironic because an early termination fee is a classic processor lock-in tactic that a fee auditor is supposed to protect you from. weAudit charges no cancellation fee and no early termination fee, ever; it is month to month and you can cancel anytime. Ask any auditor, in writing, whether a cancellation or early termination fee applies.

Is it better to use a processing specialist or a general cost-reduction firm?

It depends on your goal. A generalist like P3 Cost Analysts audits many cost categories (telecom, utilities, waste, property tax and more), which is useful if you want one vendor for everything. weAudit audits credit card processing only, which the card networks change twice a year, so a specialist stays current on the one thing it does. Ask whether processing is all the firm does and who will actually perform your audit.

What technology do processing fee auditors use?

Ask what analyzes your statements and who owns it. weAudit uses MADR (Mass Analysis Data Reporting), a proprietary in-house engine that cost more than $1 million to build and is updated every April and October when the card networks change their rules and rates. P3 Cost Analysts references a proprietary benchmark database but does not name a dedicated payments audit engine.

Should a processing fee auditor's executives have worked for a credit card processor?

Ask whether anyone on the firm's executive team has been an executive for an actual credit card processor, not an ISO, sales agent, or generalist consultant. It is the difference between studying the machine and having helped build it. weAudit's founder is a former executive at Fifth Third Processing Solutions, the company that became Vantiv, then Worldpay, today part of Global Payments. Verify any firm's experience claims yourself on LinkedIn.

Choosing an Auditor

P3 Cost Analysts vs. weAudit: How to Choose a Processing Fee Auditor

If you are comparing P3 Cost Analysts and weAudit, you already suspect your business is overpaying for credit card processing, and you are deciding who should find the money. We are weAudit, so you know where we stand. That is exactly why every statement about P3 Cost Analysts on this page comes from their own website or their public BBB profile, with dates, so you can verify each one yourself.

The Short Version

	weAudit.com	P3 Cost Analysts
How you pay	Low flat monthly fee, published on our website	A percentage of your savings, described on their site as a 50/50 split for 12 to 60 months depending on service level (per costanalysts.com, as of July 2026)
What they audit	Credit card processing fees only. It has been the entire business since 2009	One of roughly a dozen cost categories P3 audits (telecom, utilities, waste, property tax, parcel and more); their own BBB profile files them under “Public Utility Consultants” offering “utility and telecommunication management services” (per costanalysts.com and bbb.org, as of July 2026)
Who performs your audit	The same four founding partners and our in-house analysts, on every audit	P3 markets franchise territories (“P3 Franchisees”); ask whether a central team or a local franchise owner performs your audit (per costanalysts.com, as of July 2026)
Compensation from processors	None. No revenue share, referral fees, or commissions from any processor, ever. Our only revenue is what clients pay us	Not specifically addressed on their website (as of July 2026)
When you stop paying	Cancel anytime, month to month	The savings share runs 12 to 60 months; per their site, after that finite period “they benefit from 100% of our work for the lifetime of their business” (costanalysts.com, as of July 2026)
Cancellation / early termination fee	None, ever. Cancel anytime with no penalty	Not published on their website. Ask them: is there a cancellation or early termination fee, and what does it cost to leave before the term ends?
Savings guarantee	We guarantee the largest savings, or our services are free	Contingency (“if we don’t find you savings, you don’t pay”); no largest-savings guarantee is published (per costanalysts.com, as of July 2026)
Founder background	Former executive at Fifth Third Processing Solutions (which became Vantiv, then Worldpay, today part of Global Payments)	Founder Aaron Stahl (listed President/CEO on the firm’s BBB profile) came from solid-waste and recycling consulting and luxury homebuilding, per his public LinkedIn; CFO is Colby Ezell, CFA. No credit card processing role appears on the founder’s profile (per bbb.org and LinkedIn, as of July 2026)
Experience	125+ years of payments-industry experience among our partners	Cites “30+ years” of cost reduction; BBB lists 34 years in business under the name Cost Analysts, Inc., while the founder’s LinkedIn dates his founding of P3 Cost Analysts to 2004 (per bbb.org and LinkedIn, as of July 2026)
Audit technology	Proprietary MADR (Mass Analysis Data Reporting) engine, built and maintained in-house at a cost of over $1 million, updated every April and October with the card networks’ rule changes	References a “proprietary benchmark database” of processor arrangements and storage in the Microsoft ecosystem; no dedicated, named payments audit engine is disclosed (per costanalysts.com, as of July 2026)
Ratings	BBB: A+ rating, Accredited since 2015, zero complaints on file. Google: 5.0 stars across 26 reviews (both as of July 2026)	BBB: A+ rating, in business 34 years, but NOT a BBB Accredited business (per bbb.org, as of July 2026). Google: 5.0 stars across 4 reviews (per Google, as of July 2026)

Every P3 Cost Analysts fact above is drawn from costanalysts.com or bbb.org as of July 2026. If anything changes, we will update this page.

The Biggest Difference: Who Keeps the Savings

Both firms find overcharges. The difference is what happens to the money after it is found.

P3 Cost Analysts’ model

A savings share. Their site describes sharing verified savings on a 50/50 basis for 12 to 60 months, depending on service level. Run that math on a real audit. If the audit cuts your processing costs by $4,000 a month, a 50/50 share sends $2,000 of your money to the consultant every month, potentially for five years. Their own site puts the arrangement plainly: after that finite period, “they benefit from 100% of our work for the lifetime of their business.” The better the audit performs, the more you pay, for as long as the share runs.

weAudit’s model

A low flat monthly fee, published right on our website. If we save you $4,000 a month, you keep the $4,000. Our fee does not grow because we did our job well, and there is no multi-year share of your savings.

There is also a quieter problem with percentage-of-savings pricing: someone has to decide what counts as a saving, and the party doing the counting is the one being paid by the count. With a flat published fee, there is nothing to interpret. Savings are simply your old cost minus your new cost, and all of it stays yours.

A Specialist, Not a Generalist

The clearest difference between these two firms is focus. Credit card processing audits are the entire business at weAudit, and have been since 2009. At P3 Cost Analysts, processing is one line on a much longer menu: their site lists roughly a dozen cost-reduction categories, from telecom and utilities to waste, property tax, and parcel shipping (per costanalysts.com, as of July 2026). That breadth is a real advantage if you want one firm to look at every vendor bill you have. It also means the people reviewing your merchant statements are generalists who move between categories as different as waste hauling and wireless. Even their own BBB profile files the company under “Public Utility Consultants” and describes its services as “utility and telecommunication management” (per bbb.org, as of July 2026), a fair signal of where the core business sits.

Payments is its own language. The card networks rewrite their interchange rules twice a year, processors invent new line-item fees constantly, and the real money hides in the fine print of a statement most business owners never read closely. A firm that audits eleven categories has to be competent across all of them. A firm that audits one has no choice but to be expert in it.

It shows up in who runs each firm, too. P3 Cost Analysts was founded in 2004 by Aaron Stahl, listed as its President and CEO. His own public LinkedIn traces a real record in cost reduction, but in solid waste and recycling, where he ran a consulting business across more than 10,000 locations, and before that in luxury homebuilding (per LinkedIn, as of July 2026). That is genuine entrepreneurial experience. It is not payments, and nowhere on his profile is a credit card processing role. weAudit’s founder, Robert Day, is exactly that: a former executive at Fifth Third Processing Solutions, the payments company that became Vantiv, then Worldpay, and is today part of Global Payments, serving more than 6 million merchant locations and processing $3.7 trillion a year. He learned how processors build statements by helping build them. As always, do not take our word for it: look up both firms’ leadership on LinkedIn and read the histories for yourself. We encourage it.

Who Actually Performs Your Audit?

weAudit is one firm with one team. The same four founding partners, our founder, our VP of Operations, our CFO, and our General Counsel, an attorney, own the company and stand behind every audit alongside our in-house analysts. There are no outside investors and no territories. When you hire weAudit, you get weAudit.

P3 Cost Analysts operates on a franchise model; their own website recruits “P3 Franchisees” who own local territories (per costanalysts.com, as of July 2026). There is nothing wrong with franchising. But it raises a fair question worth asking before you sign: who will actually perform your audit, a central team of payments specialists or a local franchise owner whose territory happens to include you, and will it be the same people every time? Ask, and get the answer in writing.

One team, one specialty, and the savings are yours.

The Technology Behind the Audit

weAudit runs every statement through MADR (Mass Analysis Data Reporting), our proprietary in-house analysis engine, refined across thousands of merchant statements. We invested more than $1 million to build it, and it remains one of our largest ongoing expenses for a reason merchants will recognize: the card networks change their processing rules and rates every April and October, and MADR is updated on that same cycle, every single time. Your audit never runs on last year’s rules. Because we built and maintain the engine ourselves, we can also adapt it the moment processors invent a new fee, and they invent new fees constantly.

P3 Cost Analysts describes a “proprietary benchmark database” of thousands of processor arrangements and says it stores data in the Microsoft ecosystem (per costanalysts.com, as of July 2026). What their materials do not name is a dedicated payments audit engine, built and maintained for this one job and updated on the networks’ twice-yearly cycle. That does not mean their process is bad. It means you should ask what analyzes your statements, who built it, and how often it is updated.

Caution

There Is No License for What We Do

Read this before you read the questions below. There is no license for what we do. No certification, no regulator, no exam. Anyone can put up a website tomorrow that says “processing fee auditor” and “we are the industry experts,” and start signing up merchants by the afternoon. That is not a knock on the industry; it is simply the reality of it, and it means the entire burden of telling a real firm from a good-looking website falls on you. So do not trust claims. Trust records.

Records are public now, and they are hard to fake. Before you sign with anyone, on this page or off it, spend fifteen minutes verifying four things:

Leadership career history, on LinkedIn. Look up the people who actually run the firm. Where were the years spent, and inside which companies? An experience claim that does not trace to real roles at real companies is just a number on a website.
The BBB record. Is the firm accredited, for how long, at what rating, and how many complaints are on file? A firm that has put itself on that public record for years is telling you something a homepage cannot.
Published fees. Is the pricing written down where anyone can read it, or do you only learn the number after a sales call? Firms that publish their fees have nothing to hide in them.
The guarantee and contract terms, in writing. Get the guarantee, the savings-share duration, the cancellation policy, and any early termination fee in writing before you sign, not described to you on a call. This is where the surprises live. Remember that an early termination fee is the exact lock-in tactic a fee auditor is supposed to protect you from, and in this industry those fees can end up worse than anything the processor was doing.

We put weAudit on all four records on purpose: our leadership is on LinkedIn, our BBB file is A+ and accredited since 2015 with zero complaints, our fees are published on our website, and our guarantee is flat and month to month with no cancellation fee and no early termination fee, ever. Hold every firm you consider, including us, to the same four.

Seven Questions to Ask Any Processing Auditor Before You Sign

How do you get paid, and for how long? A flat fee ends the discussion. A percentage of savings should make you ask: what percentage, measured how, running for how many months or years?
Do you receive any money from processors? Referral fees, commissions, revenue share, anything. An auditor paid by the industry it audits is not working only for you. If the answer is no, it should be in writing on their website.
Can I leave anytime? Month to month means the auditor has to earn your business every single month, not lock you into a multi-year savings share.
Is there a cancellation or early termination fee? This is the one that stings most. An early termination fee is a classic processor lock-in tactic, the very thing a fee auditor is supposed to protect you from. Ask exactly what it costs to leave before the term ends, and get the answer in writing.
Who decides what counts as “savings”? If their paycheck is a percentage of savings, the answer matters a great deal.
Is processing all you do, and who will actually run my audit? A firm that audits a dozen cost categories through local franchisees is a different proposition than a specialist team that does only this.
Has anyone on your executive team been an executive for a credit card processor? Not an ISO. Not an agent. Not a generalist who also audits ten other categories. An executive inside a processor. That is the difference between studying the machine and having helped build it.

We will answer all seven for weAudit right now: flat published fee; not one dollar from any processor, ever, and it says so on our website; month to month, backed by our 60-Day Love-The-Results-Or-Don’t-Pay Guarantee; no cancellation fee and no early termination fee, ever; savings are simply your old cost minus your new cost; processing is all we do and the same partners and analysts run every audit; and our founder is a former executive of the processing giant now known as Worldpay, part of Global Payments.

Call P3 Cost Analysts and ask them the same seven. We mean that sincerely. An informed merchant is our best customer.

What We Have in Common

In fairness, the two firms agree on a lot, and P3 has real strengths. Neither requires you to switch processors. Both review your statements at no upfront cost. Both monitor for fee creep after the initial win. P3 has been in business for decades and audits far more than payments, so if you want a single vendor to comb through your telecom, waste, and utility bills alongside your processing, that breadth is a genuine advantage weAudit does not offer. We simply believe that for credit card processing specifically, a specialist who charges a flat fee, lets you keep 100% of the savings, and is led by a former processing executive is the better deal. This is why we also guarantee the largest savings, or our services are free.

Third-Party Validation

weAudit.com is BBB Accredited (since 2015) and holds an A+ rating with zero complaints on file, per bbb.org as of July 2026. In an industry built on fine print, an A+ and a complaint record that reads zero is not luck. It is the flat-fee model working exactly as designed: when clients keep all the savings and can leave month to month, there is nothing to complain about. In 2019, the St. Louis BBB awarded weAudit its Torch Award, the Bureau’s recognition for ethics in the marketplace. On Google, weAudit holds 5.0 stars across 26 reviews (as of July 2026). You can read what our clients say, in their own words, on our testimonials page.

P3 Cost Analysts also holds an A+ rating with the BBB and has been in business for decades (34 years, per bbb.org as of July 2026), which is to their credit. One distinction is worth noting for anyone who weighs third-party accountability: P3 is rated A+ but, per bbb.org, is not a BBB Accredited business, while weAudit has been accredited since 2015 and holds the Torch Award. Accreditation is voluntary, so P3’s choice not to accredit means nothing negative on its own. It simply means only one of the two firms on this page has taken that extra, audited step. On Google, P3 Cost Analysts also holds a 5.0 rating, across 4 reviews (as of July 2026), the same star rating weAudit earns across its 26. On the stars themselves it is a tie, and we would rather say so plainly than spin it.

One more difference you can hold in your hands: our founder wrote the book on this industry. The Great American Heist, with a foreword by Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington, documents exactly how processors engineer their fees, and it is the playbook weAudit runs every day. We know of no equivalent from the other side of this page.

Comparing other auditors as well? See our Verisave vs. weAudit and Merchant Cost Consulting vs. weAudit comparisons.

Have you compared both firms as a customer, or spotted something on this page that needs correcting? We would genuinely like to hear it, whatever the outcome: [email protected]. That invitation extends to P3 Cost Analysts too.

Get Your Free Audit

Send us a recent processing statement. Our MADR engine and our analysts will show you exactly what you are overpaying, what it should cost, and what we would fix. If we find nothing, you owe nothing and you have lost nothing. If we find money, it stays yours: our fee is flat, published, month to month, and covered by our 60-Day Love-The-Results-Or-Don’t-Pay Guarantee. And one more promise no one else on this page makes: we guarantee the largest savings, or our services are free.

Get Your Free Audit

All statements about P3 Cost Analysts on this page are drawn from costanalysts.com and bbb.org as of July 2026 and are provided for comparison purposes. P3 Cost Analysts is a trademark of its owner. If P3 Cost Analysts, or anyone, believes any statement on this page is inaccurate or out of date, we welcome the correction at [email protected] and will review and update promptly.