TemplatesSaaSCost Management

How to Audit Your Stack for Underused Subscriptions in 90 Minutes

bbudge

2026-02-06

9 min read

A 90-minute operations audit template to find underused SaaS, estimate monthly and annual savings, and consolidate vendors for immediate ROI.

Stop leaking budget to tools nobody uses: a 90-minute audit template for operations teams

Hook: If your finance team is tired of surprise renewal charges, your managers complain about too many logins, and cash flow forecasts keep missing the mark, you have a subscription problem — not just a budget problem. In 2026, with dozens of AI-first point tools arriving weekly and procurement pressure rising, operations teams need a fast, repeatable way to find underused subscriptions and turn them into immediate cost savings.

Why this matters now (2025–2026 context)

Late 2025 and early 2026 solidified two trends: an explosion of niche SaaS and AI tools, and renewed corporate cost discipline. Many organizations that experimented during the AI surge now face bloated stacks and rising vendor churn. Industry analysts including Gartner and Forrester highlighted cost optimization and vendor rationalization as top priorities for operations and finance teams. That makes a fast, repeatable audit — one that fits in a 90-minute operations sprint — both strategic and executable.

The promise: what you'll get from a 90-minute audit

Identified underused platforms with measurable usage metrics.
Immediate monthly and annual savings estimates you can present to leadership.
Clear next actions: cancel, pause, downgrade, negotiate, or consolidate.
Repeatable checklist and scoring model you can run monthly or per renewal cycle.

The 90-minute, repeatable audit template (minute-by-minute)

Run this audit with one operations lead, one finance rep, and one technical/IT person. Use a shared Google Sheet or Excel file pre-populated with the column headers below.

Minutes 0–10: Quick setup and scope
- Open your centralized subscription list (expense system, procurement log, or bank card export).
- Confirm scope: all vendor subscriptions > $50/month and any vendor tied to critical workflows.
- Define the output: a prioritized list of 10 vendors to action within 7 days.
Minutes 10–30: Data collection — fast pulls
- Pull last 12 months of spend per vendor (credit card feeds, AP, expense reports).
- Export active user / seat counts from SSO reports (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace).
- Grab basic contract metadata: renewal date, auto-renew clause, termination penalty, and seat terms.
Minutes 30–60: Usage and ROI analysis
- Calculate Adoption Rate = active users / licensed seats.
- Calculate Cost per Active User (CPU) = monthly cost / active users.
- Flag low-usage thresholds: Adoption Rate < 30% OR CPU > 4x median CPU across tools.
- Identify clear overlap: two or more tools solving the same problem (e.g., three analytics tools, two task managers).
Minutes 60–80: Quick vendor scoring & decision
- Apply a simple weighted score to each vendor (detailed below) to rank action urgency.
- Decide immediate action per vendor: Cancel at renewal, Pause/Reduce seats, Consolidate, or Negotiate.
- Estimate monthly and annual savings per decision (templates for formulas below).
Minutes 80–90: Assign owners and schedule follow-up
- Assign owner, target date, and escalation step for each action.
- Export a one-page summary for finance and leadership showing projected savings and risk level.

What data fields to include in your spreadsheet

Create a sheet with the following columns. This is the core of the audit — keep it simple so the team can complete it in 90 minutes.

Vendor
Monthly cost
Annual cost
Licensed seats
Active users (30/90-day active)
Adoption Rate (formula)
Cost per Active User (CPU) (formula)
Primary use case
Overlap candidates (other vendors)
Renewal date
Auto-renew (Y/N)
Contract termination penalty
Security/compliance rating (low/med/high)
Weighted action score (formula below)
Recommended action
Estimated monthly savings
Owner
Due date

Sample formulas

Use these to automate ranking and savings estimates:

Adoption Rate = Active users / Licensed seats
CPU = Monthly cost / Active users
Estimated Monthly Savings = If Cancel → Monthly cost. If Reduce seats → (Reduction % × Monthly cost). If Consolidate → conservatively estimate 50% of redundant vendor cost.

Vendor scoring model: a repeatable rubric

Use a weighted score from 0–100 to prioritize action. Weights reflect cost, usage, overlap, and risk.

Cost weight (30%): normalized on monthly cost (higher cost → higher score).
Usage weight (30%): inverse of Adoption Rate (lower adoption → higher score).
Overlap weight (20%): number of overlapping tools for same use case.
Renewal/Auto-renew weight (10%): auto-renewers and near-term renewals score higher.
Security/Risk weight (10%): high risk increases urgency (but may reduce ability to cancel).

Example: Vendor A — monthly $2,000 (cost score 80), Adoption Rate 16% (usage score 85), overlap with 2 tools (score 40), renewal in 10 days (score 100). Weighted sum → action score ~70 → immediate action: pause/renegotiate.

Practical thresholds & red flags for underused subscriptions

Adoption Rate < 30% — strong candidate to cancel or pause.
Active users < 5 — consider seat-based or team-level consolidation.
CPU > 3× median CPU across platforms — investigate ROI.
Duplicate functionality discovered — prioritize consolidation.
Auto-renew within 30 days — treat as urgent.

Calculating monthly and annual savings — examples

Concrete examples make it easy to demonstrate impact in leadership meetings.

Example A — Straight cancellation

Vendor X — $1,500/month, 50 seats but only 6 active users (Adoption = 12%). Decision: Cancel at next available termination date.

Estimated monthly savings = $1,500
Estimated annual savings = $1,500 × 12 = $18,000
Considerations: check termination penalty. If 1-month notice required, savings are immediate the next billing cycle.

Example B — Seat reduction

Vendor Y — $5,000/month for 100 seats, 60 active users (Adoption = 60%). You can reduce to 65 seats and keep buffer for growth.

Seats reduced: 35 seats (35% reduction) → monthly savings = 0.35 × $5,000 = $1,750
Annual savings = $1,750 × 12 = $21,000

Example C — Consolidation

Team uses Tool A ($2,000/mo) and Tool B ($1,000/mo) for similar workflows. Consolidate onto Tool A with negotiated discount of 20% for combined seats.

Combined cost today = $3,000
Post-consolidation cost = $2,000 × 0.8 = $1,600
Monthly savings = $1,400; annual = $16,800

Negotiation levers and scripts (what to say)

When a vendor is borderline or critical but expensive, use these tactics:

Ask for seat-based resizing and temporary pauses during teams' low seasons.
Request a consolidation discount when moving multiple teams or tools onto one vendor.
Leverage renewal windows — threaten to move to a competitor if you’re within 60 days of renewal.
Offer a 12–24 month commitment in exchange for lower per-seat pricing.

Suggested opening: “We’d like to consolidate our stack and are evaluating renewal options. If we commit 200 seats for 12 months, what pricing flexibility do you have?”

Integrations, security and the hidden costs to include

Don’t stop at license fees. Your audit should capture hidden costs that amplify the true price of a tool:

Integration maintenance (hours per month × developer hourly rate).
SSO and admin overhead.
Data transfer or storage fees.
Compliance certification or auditing costs.

Include these in the weighted cost score to avoid underestimating the benefit of consolidation.

Operationalizing the audit: governance and cadence

An ad-hoc audit is useful, but lasting savings require governance:

Monthly mini-audit: a 30-minute version of this process focused on renewals and card charges over $500.
Quarterly deep-dive: a full 90-minute audit before major budget cycles.
Central procurement & SSO gate: no new SaaS subscriptions without SSO integration and central approval.
Shadow IT detection: use card feed monitoring and expense policy enforcement to catch tools bought on corporate cards.

Case study — real-world example (anonymized)

In late 2025, a mid-sized B2B company ran this 90-minute audit. They found 12 vendors with Adoption Rate < 25% accounting for $18,200/month in recurring fees. Using the scoring model, they prioritized 4 cancellations, 3 seat reductions, and 2 consolidations. Within 45 days they realized $27,400 in annualized savings just through seat reductions and cancelled auto-renewals. They also reduced integration overhead by decommissioning 2 low-value APIs.

Lessons learned: start with data you can access immediately (card feeds + SSO logs), focus on renewals and auto-renewers, and keep stakeholders aligned with short, clear owner assignments.

Tools and scripts to speed the audit

To move faster, pair manual checks with lightweight automation:

Expense and card feed aggregation (expense management platforms).
SSO reports for active user counts (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace).
Contract tracker (simple CRM or a dedicated procurement spreadsheet).
Budgeting dashboard to reflect savings in cash flow forecasts.

If you have a cloud-native finance platform that ingests bank, card, and subscription data, you can compress minutes 10–30 into 5–10 minutes.

Common pushbacks and how to handle them

“We need it for compliance.” — Validate with IT/security; if true, keep but negotiate seat limits or archive inactive accounts.
“Teams will revolt.” — Use a phased approach: communicate benefits, preserve admin-level access, and offer training on consolidated tools.
“We can’t pull usage quickly.” — Default to seat reduction and pause requests when adoption is unknown; require vendors to provide usage reports as a condition for renewal.

Advanced strategies for 2026 and beyond

As tools proliferate, advanced teams are adopting these practices:

Usage-based contracting: Move from flat-seat pricing to consumption-based models where possible.
Platform consolidation with AI hubs: Favor platforms that offer extensible AI tooling over single-purpose AI widgets.
Real-time cost observability: Tie SaaS spend to projects and teams in your financial tooling so managers see the impact daily.
Vendor rationalization playbooks: Maintain a living matrix of allowable vendors per use case to limit choice proliferation.

Actionable takeaways — run your first 90-minute audit this week

Block 90 minutes and gather one finance, one ops, and one IT participant.
Use the spreadsheet fields and formulas above — prioritize by the weighted score.
Target a top-10 prioritized list and assign owners with 7-day deadlines.
Report expected monthly and annual savings to leadership — include hidden costs and integration overhead.

Final checklist before you end the session

Top 10 vendors reviewed and scored
Owner and due date assigned for each recommended action
Savings estimated and added to cash flow forecast
Next mini-audit scheduled

Wrap-up and next steps

Underused subscriptions are one of the fastest levers to improve operating margins and clean up operational complexity. By using this 90-minute audit template, ops teams can quickly surface savings, reduce subscription churn, and create a governance cadence that prevents future stack bloat. This approach is pragmatic for 2026’s crowded SaaS market: short, data-driven, and repeatable.

Ready to run the audit? Download our free 90-minute SaaS Audit spreadsheet template, pre-built formulas, and vendor scoring sheet — or book a 15-minute setup call with the budge.cloud team to run your first audit together and show guaranteed near-term savings.

budge

Contributor

Senior editor and content strategist. Writing about technology, design, and the future of digital media. Follow along for deep dives into the industry's moving parts.