Software subscriptions are one of the most common sources of waste we find when we start working with a new client. Not because the business has been careless — but because SaaS pricing is designed to make it easy to start and hard to notice how much you’re spending.

A $29/month tool added by someone who left two years ago. Three separate project management tools running simultaneously because different teams chose different ones. A 25-seat licence on a platform where 8 seats are actively used. None of these feel like big problems individually. Together they add up quickly.

This is a process you can run yourself in an afternoon. No specialist tools required.

Step 1: Pull everything you’re actually paying for (30 minutes)

The goal of this step is a complete list — not what you think you’re paying for, the full reality.

Check your business credit card and bank statements for the last three months. Filter for recurring charges. Look for anything with words like “subscription”, “monthly”, “annual”, “SaaS”, or company names you half-recognise. Export to a spreadsheet.

Check your email for receipts. Search for “invoice”, “receipt”, “subscription”, “renewal”. Most SaaS tools send monthly receipts — they’re sitting in your inbox.

Ask your IT person or provider for their list. They may have visibility over licences you don’t see directly.

Check your app store accounts. Apple Business and Google Play accounts sometimes carry subscriptions that got set up on a personal account and switched to business billing.

At the end of this step you want one spreadsheet with: tool name, monthly cost (convert annual to monthly for comparability), who set it up, and payment method.

Step 2: Match each tool to a current user (20 minutes)

For each item on your list, answer two questions:

  • Who is actively using this? Not “who could use it” or “who set it up” — who has actually logged in or used it in the last 30 days.
  • Is that person still with the business?

Many SaaS platforms have a usage dashboard or admin panel that shows last login. Check it. You’ll often find licences assigned to email addresses that no longer exist.

Flag anything where the answer to “who is actively using this” is unclear or the user has left.

Step 3: Look for duplication (15 minutes)

Group your tools by function:

  • Communication — email, chat, video calls
  • File storage and documents — cloud storage, document creation
  • Project and task management — task lists, project tracking, kanban boards
  • Finance and accounting — invoicing, bookkeeping, expense management
  • CRM and sales — customer management, pipeline tracking
  • Marketing — email marketing, social scheduling, analytics
  • Security — password management, antivirus, backup

If you have more than one tool in any category, ask whether both are genuinely necessary or whether one is legacy — kept running because switching it off felt like effort.

The most common duplications we find: two cloud storage providers (usually Dropbox and OneDrive running in parallel), two project management tools (usually Trello and something newer), and two communication platforms (usually Teams and Slack coexisting).

Step 4: Check licence counts against actual users (15 minutes)

For your largest subscriptions — anything over $100/month — check the licence count against your current headcount.

Common pattern: a business that was 20 people bought a 20-seat licence, reduced to 14 staff, and is still paying for 20 seats. Licence counts often only go up, because adding a seat is urgent and removing one requires someone to remember to do it.

Most platforms let you reduce seat counts at renewal. Some let you do it mid-term. Either way, right-sizing licences is straightforward once you know where the gap is.

Step 5: Make three lists and act on them (20 minutes)

By this point you should have enough information to sort everything into:

Cancel immediately. Tools nobody is actively using, tools for people who have left, duplicates you’ve decided to retire. Cancel these this week — not “at renewal.” Every month you delay is money out.

Reduce. Licences where the seat count is higher than your active user count. Schedule a renewal reminder to right-size at next billing cycle, or contact the vendor now if the saving justifies it.

Keep and review. Tools that are actively used and appropriately licensed, but that you want to revisit — either because they’re expensive and the value isn’t clear, or because a contract renewal is coming up.

What a typical audit finds

We run versions of this process regularly with clients. The consistent findings:

  • 10–20% of spend is on tools nobody is actively using
  • Licence over-provisioning adds another 5–15% on top of that
  • At least one category has meaningful duplication

For a business spending $2,000/month on software, that’s typically $300–700/month recoverable — found in an afternoon, with no reduction in capability.

The harder question underneath this one

A software audit tells you what you’re paying for. The more useful question it surfaces is: what does our current tool stack actually say about how we work?

Businesses that have accumulated 15+ SaaS tools rarely set out to do that. It usually reflects a pattern of individual decisions made without a view of the whole — different teams, different problems, different vendors. The audit is a useful reset, but the longer-term answer is a deliberate technology strategy that prevents the same sprawl from rebuilding over the next three years.

If the audit surfaces something bigger than a few cancellations — if it points to a technology stack that needs rationalising, or a spend profile that doesn’t match the value you’re getting — that’s a conversation worth having properly. Get in touch and we’ll help you make sense of it.