Software costs drift: a seat added here, a plan upgraded there, a renewal that stepped up. A short review every month catches each change while it can still be undone. This is the routine, written so one person with the books open can finish it in under an hour and leave a note behind instead of a new spreadsheet.
Run it afterward · guide 5 of 5 · Reviewed Oct 25, 2026
Start from the vendor export for the month. Each check below ends in a decision or a date, not a list to keep.
Any vendor that was not in last month's export. Find out who bought it and whether it is approved, as in the approval policy.
Any vendor whose unit price rose, using the price-increase check.
Two vendors doing one job. The suite guide says how to test a consolidation before you count the saving.
Any renewal whose notice window opens in the next sixty days, from your renewal calendar.
Seats paid for against people who signed in, for the two or three largest tools, as in cutting unused seats.
For each finding, write one line: the vendor, what changed, the next step and the date it has to happen by. Send it to whoever approves spend. If a finding has no next step, it is not a finding yet.
The calculators turn a finding into a yearly figure from your own numbers: billing cadence, unused seats and renewal uplift.
Once a quarter, run the full audit checklist and look at what the monthly review cannot: tools bought outside the books, accounts left behind after people left, and the largest platforms. The offboarding guide covers the accounts.
Send us the export and see which lines are worth a second look.