Software subscriptions build up slowly. It could be a free trial that wasn’t canceled. Or a subscription that was bought for a project that’s no longer being worked on. Subscriptions are built up slowly, and before you know it, you’re getting a renewal notice. Here’s how to run a SaaS audit and figure out what you’re really paying for before your renewal notices.
SaaS sprawl isn’t the result of one bad decision, it’s the result of many small reasonable decisions. A subscription was signed up for and used as a free trial. A subscription was bought for a project that is now complete. Employees have adopted their own software for use without telling the finance department. While all of these decisions were good decisions in the moment, they lead to a hidden, and recurring cost that is hard to identify, which quietly inflates small business software costs.
Step 1: Pull every recurring charge from the actual statement
We look at actual bank or credit card statements to check for software charges, rather than trust a potentially outdated list. Charges for the same software (or similar software) charged on a recurring basis will usually be easy to identify. This is the foundation of any software subscription audit.
Credit card and bank statements are the easiest way to find what is being paid, regardless of what people remember being signed up for. remember being signed up for. Tracking these recurring software charges is the first move in effective SaaS spend management.
Step 2: Match each charge to an actual owner and use case
For recurring charges, determine who requested it, who uses it, and why. Obviously, charges that have no identifiable current owner should be removed. However, charges with low usage should be evaluated by the team before being removed, as the reason the charge may be low may be due to the tool being critical and highly used.
Subscriptions tied to former employees are a common source of orphaned charges. See our IT Offboarding Checklist guide for how to close that gap.
| Finding | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| No identifiable owner | Likely safe to cancel — confirm with a broader team check before pulling the plug entirely |
| Owner identified, but rarely logs in | Worth a direct conversation — sometimes a tool is used rarely but is still critical when needed |
| Duplicate functionality across two tools | A genuine consolidation opportunity — pick one and standardize |
| Active, regularly used, single owner confirmed | Keep — this is the audit working as intended, not everything gets cut |
The goal isn’t to cancel everything — it’s to know what you’re paying for
A SaaS audit that results in the outright cancellation of low-usage tools can negatively impact a small but critical group of people who rely on those tools. The true value of the audit is the ability for businesses to assess what they’re paying for and make adjustments where necessary. Done well, this is the smartest way to reduce SaaS costs without disrupting your team.
Step 3: Check for duplicate or overlapping tools
- Group subscriptions by category: There’s a lot of overlapping surfaces when sorting by groups. Project management, for example, has crossover with communication and design. Analytics has crossover with design.
- Identify tools solving the same problem: Often two project management tools (or two design tools) are in use because different teams took their own initiative to select and implement their own tools. This is a common and easily fixable problem.
- Standardize on one, with a migration plan: Consolidating isn’t just canceling the unused one it usually means migrating data and retraining a team, which takes real planning, not just a cancellation click.
For planning that kind of move safely, see our Cloud Migration guide.
Step 4: Set a recurring audit cadence
A one-time cleanup solves the current problem but not the underlying pattern — new sprawl accumulates the same way the original did. A quarterly review of the actual credit card statement, even a quick one, catches new subscriptions before they’ve had a year to quietly compound.
Questions to ask during the audit
- Who actually owns this subscription, and are they still with the company?
- Does another tool we already pay for do the same thing?
- Is this on an annual plan we’re about to auto-renew?
- Are we paying for more seats/licenses than active users?
Frequently Asked Questions
For a small business, usually an afternoon to go through the statement and match charges to owners — the first audit takes longer than subsequent quarterly ones, since there’s more accumulated sprawl to untangle.
A simple approval step before any new recurring software purchase, even an informal “check with X before signing up,” meaningfully slows the accumulation without adding significant bureaucracy.
For larger teams with many subscriptions, possibly — but for most small businesses, a straightforward spreadsheet updated quarterly accomplishes the same thing without adding another subscription to track.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Most businesses are shocked by what we uncover in the first real SaaS audit they’ve had done. No one does anything wrong, but no one has taken a step back to review the big picture. The best part is the immediate cost savings, but having a true picture of what you are spending is key.
For how software spend fits into the bigger IT picture, see our Managed IT Cost & Pricing Guide.
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