Almost every licence review finds the same pair of problems: paying for seats nobody uses, while running something critical on a licence that does not cover it.
Almost every licence review we run finds the same two problems in the same organisation, which surprises people who expect them to be opposites.
Seats nobody uses
Licences assigned to staff who left months ago. Users on a premium tier who only need email. Two departments who each bought the same tool without knowing. None of it appears anywhere obvious, because the renewal invoice looks like last year's and gets approved on that basis.
The sign-in activity report is where this becomes visible. Any account that has not been used in ninety days is either a leaver nobody removed or a licence nobody needs, and both are billing you monthly.
And at the same time, a genuine gap
The same organisation is frequently running something important on a licence that does not cover the way it is actually being used — a server accessed by more users than the licence permits, a design tool on a personal subscription being used commercially, software installed beyond its entitlement.
This one surfaces during an audit rather than on an invoice, and the remedy is backdated licensing plus a penalty rather than a quiet correction. A gap you find is a purchase order; a gap an auditor finds is a negotiation.
Why both exist together
They share a cause: nobody owns licensing. It is bought by whoever needs the tool, renewed automatically, and never reconciled against actual usage. The organisation grows and the estate drifts in both directions at once.
What academic and non-profit pricing is worth
Educational institutions and registered non-profits frequently qualify for pricing well below commercial rates, and equally frequently are not claiming it — either nobody checked, or the entitlement was set up years ago and never revisited as the institution grew.
Eligibility rules differ by vendor and depend on how the software is used. It is worth verifying properly, because claiming a discount you do not qualify for creates exactly the exposure a review exists to remove.
Open source is not exempt
Open-source licences carry obligations too. Some prohibit particular commercial uses, some require attribution, and a few have terms that surprise businesses embedding them in a product. Smaller exposure than commercial licensing, but not zero.
What it costs to find out
A licence inventory is a modest fixed engagement and typically pays for itself out of the first renewal. That is not a promise — it depends entirely on how much drift has accumulated — but it is the pattern we see most often in organisations that have grown without anyone owning this.
For a licence review and renewal calendar, see our software licensing and compliance service in Kerala.
Audits usually find the same two things: subscriptions nobody uses, and licences assigned to people who left. Our software licensing service in Kerala covers the review, and Microsoft 365 licensing covers the subscription most businesses hold the most of.