According to the Flexera 2026 State of ITAM Report, only 36% of organizations say they have complete visibility into what technology they have installed, contracted, and paying for — the other 64% see only part of the picture. That blind spot is exactly where the unused software license lives: the subscription that keeps charging the company's card month after month, without anyone having decided to keep it running.
This isn't fraud or bad faith. It's the natural result of a bill that adds up dozens of programs, each with its own plan, its own automatic renewal, and — more often than not — no clear owner inside the company. When nobody has the job of checking what's being paid for, the bill only grows.
For whoever approves the budget, the question always arrives the same way: why did the software bill go up again, when the company didn't hire anyone new or buy a new system? The answer, most of the time, is scattered across accounts of people who already left, plans bigger than needed, and tools bought at different times to solve the same problem.
What keeps getting paid for with nobody using it
The most common case is also the easiest to understand: an employee leaves the company, the laptop is returned, the badge is cancelled — and the mailbox stays active, with the Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) license still being charged every month, because properly offboarding an account takes several steps. Microsoft's own documentation lays the process out in seven steps: block sign-in, save the mailbox content, give another person access to the files, and only then remove or delete the license.
Once the license is removed, the person's email, contacts, and calendar are kept for 30 days before being deleted for good — plenty of time for someone to decide what to do with them. The rule itself isn't the problem: the problem is that, without an offboarding routine that runs through IT, nobody gets to that last step. The license outlives the person, month after month.
Another common source of waste is the wrong plan: the company buys the most complete package — with meeting recording, advanced automation, more storage — for everyone, when half the team only uses email and a text editor. The price gap between the basic plan and the full plan, multiplied across dozens of accounts, is money going out every month for a feature nobody ever opened.
The third pattern is the duplicate tool: the sales team subscribes to one video meeting program, the support team subscribes to another, and nobody noticed the company already paid for a third one bundled into the Microsoft 365 package it already had. According to Zylo's 2026 SaaS Management Index, organizations continue to uncover unused seats, overlapping tools, and pricier plans than needed — each one eating into the budget without delivering anything extra.
The backdrop makes it worse: 43% of the organizations surveyed by Flexera said wasted spend on software subscriptions increased compared to the year before. Over the same period, according to Zylo's index, 61% of organizations reported cutting other projects because of unplanned subscription cost increases. The forgotten license of someone who already left usually isn't the company's biggest expense — but it's the easiest one to cut, because it doesn't take anything away from anyone still working there.
Why the usual approach doesn't fix it
The usual way of handling this is letting each department buy what it needs and reviewing everything once a year, when the contract is up for renewal. It works while the company is small. Once the number of programs passes a dozen, nobody remembers anymore why that tool was bought, who asked for it, or whether anyone still uses it.
Most subscription contracts renew on their own, with no warning. Without someone responsible for reviewing the list before renewal, the company only finds out it paid again when the money has already left the bank. Cancelling afterward usually means waiting for the entire next cycle — another month, sometimes another year, of a license that shouldn't exist anymore.
The most common response to a new problem — buying yet another tool — also has a cost. Without a single person looking at the whole picture, each department solves its own problem its own way, and the company ends up with three programs doing the same thing, none of them ever switched off.
What has to be in place
An environment where licenses are actually managed relies on simple routines, not on remembering to check later.
An inventory of everything the company has under contract. A single list of every subscription program, who uses it, what it costs, and when it renews — without this, nobody knows what's being paid for, only that the bill arrived again.
A usage report reviewed on a regular basis. The Microsoft 365 admin center itself shows, in its usage reports, who uses each service to the fullest and who barely uses it — and might not need the license anymore, according to Microsoft's own documentation.
IT offboarding built into the employee exit process. When someone leaves, the license is removed or reassigned the same day — not months later, when someone notices the account is still active.
One person deciding the plan for each employee. Not everyone needs the most complete package; the right plan is the one that covers what the role actually requires, no more and no less.
A check before every automatic renewal. The list of programs gets reviewed before the contract renews on its own, not after the money has already left the bank.
This is how Skills IT works: with an inventory of what's under contract, usage reports reviewed regularly, and licenses switched off the same day an employee leaves.
What changes when licenses are managed
The gain shows up on the invoice, but not only there. A company that reviews what it pays for software gets a predictable number every month, instead of a surprise at every contract renewal.
Reusing a departed employee's license, instead of buying a new one, already generates real savings for 43% of organizations.
78% of the organizations surveyed by Flexera already have a team or person specifically watching technology spend — a sign that this check-up stopped being a forgotten task and became a real routine. Among those who reassign a departed employee's license to someone else instead of buying a new one, 43% report real savings, per the same report.
Less visible than the money saved, but just as important, is what comes next: whoever approves the budget stops approving in the dark. A renewal arrives with the right question attached — who uses this, and how much? — instead of being signed again just because it was signed last year.
The time saved counts too: less time for IT staff trying to remember why a program exists, and more time reviewing what actually matters for the business.
A checklist to get started
Before approving the next contract renewal, it's worth going through this checklist:
- Ask for the full list of subscription programs the company pays for today. If a single list doesn't exist, that's the first gap to close.
- Compare the number of licenses purchased against the number of people actually active. The gap between those two numbers is usually exactly the wasted amount.
- Confirm whether the employee exit process includes removing the license the same day. If the answer is "only when someone remembers," that's the process to fix first.
- Ask who decides the plan for each person today. Without a clear owner, the default becomes buying the most complete plan for everyone.
- Mark the renewal date for every subscription contract. Reviewing before the deadline avoids paying again for something that should have been cancelled already.
