Most organisations we review are paying for somewhere between ten and thirty per cent more Microsoft 365 than they're using. That's not carelessness. Licences get added the moment someone joins, because the alternative is a new starter who can't work. Removing them is nobody's job, and there's no deadline forcing the question.
The result is a bill that only ever goes one way. The tidy-up is genuinely straightforward, and it's one of the few pieces of IT work that pays for itself before the next invoice.
Licences for people who left
The most common finding, and the easiest to fix. Accounts get disabled when someone leaves, or converted to a shared mailbox, but the licence carries on being paid for because disabling an account doesn't cancel anything.
Compare your list of licensed users against your payroll list. Anything on one and not the other needs a decision: keep the mailbox as a shared one, which doesn't need a licence, or remove it. Do that monthly and the problem never comes back.
Everyone on the same plan whether they need it or not
It's simpler to buy one plan for the whole organisation, and simplicity is worth something. But if a third of your people are warehouse, retail or site staff who use email on a phone and nothing else, they're on a plan built for someone who lives in Excel and Teams all day.
- Frontline plans exist for exactly this and cost a fraction of the standard ones.
- The higher tiers are worth paying for when you're using the security and compliance features in them - and a waste when you aren't.
- Check whether you're eligible for charity or education pricing. Plenty of organisations are and never applied.
The question isn't "what's the cheapest plan?" It's "which of these features are we actually using?" Downgrading away from something you rely on costs more than it saves.
Paying twice for the same job
This is where the larger numbers usually hide. A separate video conferencing subscription alongside Teams. A file sharing service alongside SharePoint and OneDrive. A standalone signature or form-signing tool, an extra security add-on, a project tracker - several of which are included in the Microsoft plan you're already paying for.
Being included isn't the same as being right. Sometimes the third-party tool is genuinely better and people prefer it, and that's a fair reason to keep it. But it should be a decision someone made recently, not a renewal that's been rolling over since 2021.
Annual renewals nobody diarised
Annual commitments are cheaper per user, which is why most organisations are on them. The trade-off is that you can't reduce the count mid-term, so if you grew during the year and then shrank, you're locked in until renewal. Knowing your renewal date is worth more than any negotiation tactic. Put a reminder in the calendar six weeks before it, and do the review then rather than a fortnight after it auto-renewed.
Storage that quietly grew
SharePoint and OneDrive storage comes with an allowance that grows per user. Exceed it and you buy more, at a price that adds up quickly. Before doing that, it's worth looking at what's in there - project sites from closed work, video files nobody's opened since the recording, several copies of the same shared drive migrated at different times. Deleting old content is cheaper than renting space for it indefinitely.
How to run the review
- Export the list of assigned licences and compare it with your current staff list.
- Sort by last sign-in. Anyone who hasn't signed in for ninety days is worth a question.
- List every subscription the organisation pays for, including ones bought by individual departments on a card.
- Cross off anything duplicated by what's already in your Microsoft plan.
- Note the renewal date for each and put the reminders in a shared calendar.
That's an afternoon's work for most organisations and it usually finds something. The savings tend to be modest per line and meaningful in total - and more usefully, you end up with a clear picture of what you're buying and why.
Spending less isn't always the goal
Sometimes the right outcome of a licensing review is to spend the same money differently: move the savings from unused licences into the security features in a plan you're already half-paying for, or into a backup for Microsoft 365 that you don't currently have. We'd rather tell you that honestly than hand you a smaller number and leave a gap behind it.