I ran a SaaS audit for a client last month. Thirty-two employees, healthy revenue, growing team. They were paying for 47 different software subscriptions. Forty-seven.

The kicker? Only 23 had been used in the past 90 days.

This isn’t unusual. The average mid-size company wastes 30-40% of their SaaS spend on unused or underused tools. When software is easy to buy (just a credit card swipe), it accumulates like stuff in a garage.

Time for a clean-out.

The Audit Process

Set aside two hours. You’ll need access to your company credit card statements, your accounting software, and ideally your IT admin credentials for each tool.

Step 1: Find Every Subscription

This is harder than it sounds. Subscriptions hide in weird places:

• Company credit cards
• Expense reimbursements (employees paying personally)
• Annual contracts you forgot about
• Bundled services (does your telco include something?)
• Free trials that converted

Export your transactions from the past 12 months. Search for recurring charges. Make a spreadsheet with columns for: Tool Name, Cost (Monthly), Cost (Annual), Users, Primary Owner, Last Used, Critical/Nice-to-Have.

Step 2: Check Actual Usage

For each tool, answer honestly:

• When was this last accessed?
• How many licensed users actively log in?
• What would break if we cancelled tomorrow?

Most SaaS platforms have admin dashboards showing login activity. Use them. You’ll find tools where you’re paying for 20 seats but only 5 people have logged in this month.

Step 3: Categorize Everything

Group your subscriptions into buckets:

Core Operations: Can’t run the business without it. Accounting software, email, your main CRM.

Productivity: Makes work easier but not essential. Project management, design tools, communication platforms.

Nice to Have: Used occasionally, usually by one person. That diagramming tool someone bought for a single project.

Unknown/Forgotten: You’re paying for it but can’t immediately explain why.

That last category is where the gold is.

Common Waste Patterns

After doing dozens of these audits, I see the same patterns:

Multiple tools doing the same job. One team uses Slack, another uses Teams. The marketing person has both Monday and Asana. Nobody can agree on a project tool so everyone has their own.

Seats for departed employees. That $50/month premium account for someone who left eight months ago? Still charging.

Upgraded plans nobody requested. Automatic renewal bumped you to the next tier. Features you didn’t ask for, price you didn’t approve.

Free trial conversions. Someone tested a tool, forgot about it, and it’s been charging the company card for 14 months.

Overlapping features. You pay for Zoom and Google Workspace. Both include video conferencing. Do you need Zoom?

The Hard Conversations

Some subscriptions aren’t obviously waste. They’re politically difficult.

The sales director’s favorite tool that nobody else understands. The designer’s expensive Adobe subscription when Canva might suffice. The CEO’s pet project software that was never really used.

Handle these carefully. Don’t make it personal. Focus on utilization data, not opinions about whether someone’s work is valuable.

“The data shows three people used this in the past quarter. Can we drop to three seats instead of fifteen?”

That’s a discussion about right-sizing, not criticism.

What to Cut First

Low-hanging fruit:

1. Unused seats. Reduce license counts to actual users plus 10% buffer.
2. Duplicate tools. Pick one and standardize.
3. Departed employee accounts. Create an offboarding checklist that includes subscription review.
4. Premium tiers on basic needs. If you’re on Business Premium but only use features in Business Standard, downgrade.
5. Annual contracts about to renew. Mark renewal dates. Review 60 days before, not the day it auto-renews.

Building Ongoing Discipline

An audit finds current waste. Process prevents future waste.

Centralize purchasing. All SaaS subscriptions need approval from one person or team. No more rogue credit card purchases.

Create a software register. Document every tool, its cost, owner, and renewal date. Review quarterly.

Establish a request process. New software requests should answer: What problem does this solve? What do we currently use that’s similar? Who will use it? What’s the annual cost?

Review with renewals. Every annual renewal gets a usage review 60 days before. Auto-renew is convenient but expensive.

A Real Audit Example

Let me walk through a real (anonymized) example.

Company: 28 employees, professional services.

Before audit:

• 42 subscriptions
• $14,200/month total SaaS spend
• $170,400 annual

Key findings:

• 6 project management tools across different teams
• Slack AND Teams both paid
• 14 Zoom licenses, 9 active users
• Adobe Creative Cloud for 4 people, 1 regular user
• Salesforce Enterprise for 8 people (Pipedrive would’ve sufficed)
• Various “trial forgot to cancel” subscriptions totaling $400/month

After audit:

• 28 subscriptions
• $8,900/month total SaaS spend
• $106,800 annual
• Annual savings: $63,600

That’s a part-time employee’s salary. Found in a two-hour audit.

The Negotiation Opportunity

Auditing reveals another opportunity: negotiation leverage.

When you know exactly what you use, you can negotiate renewals with confidence. “We need 15 seats, not 25.” “We only use these three features, so we want the cheaper tier.” “We’re evaluating alternatives, what can you do on price?”

SaaS vendors have flexibility, especially on renewals. They’d rather keep you at a discount than lose you entirely.

Your Homework

Block two hours this week. Pull your credit card statements. Build the spreadsheet. Be honest about what’s actually used.

I guarantee you’ll find at least 20% waste. Probably more.

That money has better uses than software nobody opens.