--- title: "Software savings how-to guides" description: "Step-by-step guides to find, cut and replace software spend." canonical: "https://lopifi.com/savings/how-to" --- # Software savings how-to guides > Step-by-step guides to find, cut and replace software spend. Source: https://lopifi.com/savings/how-to Part of: Lopifi — US GAAP books on autopilot, checked by a CPA (https://lopifi.com) --- ## Find the spend Pull the software lines out of your books, cards and expense claims, and see what each costs. - [Find it in QuickBooks Online](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/find-software-in-quickbooks): Run the vendor-totals report in QuickBooks Online, export it, and see every software line ranked by cost, in minutes and without connecting anything. - [Find it in Xero](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/find-software-in-xero): Use Xero's expenses-by-contact reporting to total spend by supplier, export it, and rank your software lines. No connection; nothing leaves your browser. - [How connecting will work](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/connect-quickbooks-xero): What the planned QuickBooks Online and Xero connection reads, what it never changes, how you revoke it, and the no-connection route that works today. - [How we get paid](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/how-we-get-paid): How a saving is counted: a free audit, then a share of the license saving we verify against your own bills, net of what the replacement costs to run. - [The audit checklist](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/software-spend-audit-checklist): Pull twelve months of vendor spend, rank it, and find annual charges, duplicates, seat creep and owners. A checklist you can finish in an afternoon. - [Forgotten card subscriptions](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/find-card-subscriptions-you-forgot): Find software charges hidden behind processor names on your card or bank feed: read descriptors, set bank rules, and know who to ask about unknowns. - [Software bought on personal cards](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/find-software-your-team-paid-for-themselves): Surface software bought on personal cards, reimbursed on expense claims or signed up for free: where to look in your books, admin consoles and inboxes. ## Cut and negotiate Renewals, seats, billing cadence and contract terms: pay less for what you keep. - [Cancelling without penalties](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/cancel-without-penalties): How to end a software subscription cleanly: find the term and notice window, cancel in writing, export your data, and avoid paying for an unused year. - [Consolidating into one suite](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/consolidate-into-one-suite): Find overlapping jobs across your tools and check what the suite you already pay for includes, using only the published plan pages, before buying more. - [Annual vs monthly billing](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/annual-vs-monthly-software-billing): Annual plans cost the same cash up front but hit the books monthly. How a prepaid plan is booked, what it does to runway, and when monthly pays off. - [Cutting unused seats](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/cut-unused-seats): Find inactive seats in your admin consoles, downgrade roles, and understand true-downs, per-seat versus usage billing, and mid-term credits. - [Negotiating a renewal](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/negotiate-a-saas-renewal): Build a renewal calendar from your books, bring usage evidence, right-size first, and ask for the terms and billing flexibility that matter. - [Contract terms to check](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/saas-contract-terms-to-check): Read the renewal, price, exit, seat, uptime and data clauses of a SaaS contract in the order that protects cash, and know what to ask the vendor to change. ## Move and replace Switch, self-host or build, and get your data out before the old tool goes. - [Dropbox migration, in depth](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/dropbox-migration): A start-to-finish plan for leaving Dropbox: inventory, destination, pilot, copy and verify, shared links, cutover, cancellation and how the books treat it. - [Open-source licenses for founders](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/open-source-licenses): MIT, Apache, MPL, GPL and AGPL in plain English for founders who run open-source software instead of paying a license, and what each asks you to do. - [Offboarding SaaS accounts](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/offboard-saas-accounts): Remove a leaver's seats, shared logins and SSO access in order, keep their data with an owner, and put the freed licenses to work or cancel them. - [Export before you cancel](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/export-your-data-before-canceling-software): A checklist for exporting your data before you cancel a software subscription: what to pull, how to check it is complete, and what to keep for the books. - [Run self-hosted software safely](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/run-self-hosted-software-safely): The operating checklist for running self-hosted software at a small company: backups, restore tests, updates, access, exposure, monitoring, when to quit. - [The honest math of self-hosting](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/self-hosting-honest-math): A formula for the real yearly cost of running open-source software yourself, a worked sample, and when you should not self-host. - [Build a small internal tool](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/build-a-small-internal-tool): When one narrow job justifies a custom build, how to scope it to two screens, review AI-written code, and what to ask your CPA. ## Run it afterward Keep the list short afterward: a register, an approval rule, a booking routine and a lean stack. - [Vendor register and renewal calendar](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/vendor-register-and-renewal-calendar): The fields a vendor register needs, how to seed it from your QuickBooks or Xero vendor list, and a monthly review that catches renewals early. - [Software approval policy](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/software-approval-policy): A one-page software approval policy a ten-person company can adopt: who may buy, card and trial rules, an owner per tool, and a checklist. - [Founder ops stack](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/founder-ops-stack-for-ten-people): The ten jobs a small team needs software for, the questions to settle for each, and where to go next in our app pages and guides. - [Record subscriptions in the books](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/record-software-subscriptions-quickbooks-xero): Which account to use, how to book an annual plan as a prepaid expense and release it monthly, and how to clean card-feed payees in QuickBooks and Xero.