You don't need a month-long project to find out where your SaaS money is going. A useful SaaS audit takes one focused afternoon: list every tool, record what it really costs, check what actually gets used, and decide what to do with each one. That is enough to surface the obvious waste, which for most teams is a meaningful share of the bill.
This guide walks through that afternoon, step by step. By the end you'll have a clear inventory, a real spend number, and a short list of cuts you can make this week.
What you'll need
- Access to expense reports and company card statements
- Your single sign-on (SSO) or identity provider logs, if you have them
- Admin access to your main tools (to check seats and usage)
- A spreadsheet, or the free SaaS Spend Audit Template linked at the end
- About two to three uninterrupted hours
Step 1: Gather your spending sources
Start by pulling every place software gets paid for. That means expense reports, company card statements, your accounting system, and any app store or vendor invoices. If you use SSO, export the list of connected apps too. The goal is to catch everything, including the tools bought quietly by a single team, which is where a surprising amount of spend hides.
Pro tip: Card statements catch the subscriptions that never went through procurement. Don't skip them.
Step 2: List every tool in one place
Put every tool into a single list, one row per tool. Capture the name, the team or owner, and what it's used for. Aim for completeness over neatness here. You can clean it up later, but you can only cut waste you can actually see.
Step 3: Record the real annual cost
For each tool, write down the annual cost, not the monthly one. Monthly figures are easy to wave away; annual numbers are not. Note the plan tier and the number of seats you pay for while you're there. Add it all up to get your starting total. This is the number most teams have never seen in one place.
Step 4: Check what actually gets used
Now compare what you pay for against what you use. For each tool, check active logins and, where you can, feature usage. Flag any tool with seats that have been dark for 60 to 90 days, and any tool sitting on a tier far above what the team touches.
Watch out: A tool can show "active" because one person logs in weekly while ten paid seats sit idle. Look at seat-level usage, not just whether the tool is used at all.
Step 5: Group tools by job and flag overlaps
Re-sort your list by the job each tool does, not by its name. Two tools that both store customer notes, two that both send email, a tracker that duplicates your chat tool: overlaps jump out the moment you group this way. Mark every pair where one job is being paid for twice.
Step 6: Map your integrations and workarounds
Note how your tools connect. List any paid connectors or automation platforms, and any manual workarounds where someone moves data by hand each week. This glue has a real cost, in subscription fees and in time, and it usually points to tools that could be consolidated.
Step 7: Give every tool a verdict
Go down your list and assign each tool one of five outcomes:
- Keep if it's used and well-priced.
- Downgrade if you're on too high a tier or too many seats.
- Consolidate if it overlaps with another tool you'll standardize on.
- Cancel if it's unused or abandoned.
- Replace or build if several tools and a connector are approximating one workflow.
Tally your waste and act on the easy wins
Add up the annual cost of everything marked downgrade, consolidate, or cancel. That total is your recoverable waste. Start with cancellations, since they need no migration and return money immediately, then work through downgrades and consolidations. Anything marked "replace or build" goes into a longer-term plan.
That's the whole audit. One afternoon, a clear number, and a short list of cuts.
Go deeper: The Real Cost of Your SaaS Stack: A Complete Guide and 9 SaaS Tools You're Probably Overpaying For.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I audit my SaaS stack?
At least once a year, and ideally each quarter. A quick quarterly check on new tools and upcoming renewals keeps waste from creeping back.
What's the fastest part of a SaaS audit to act on?
Cancellations. Unused tools and idle seats can be dropped immediately with no migration, so that's where the quickest savings come from.
What if I don't have SSO logs?
You can still audit from expense reports, card statements, and admin consoles. SSO logs make the usage step faster, but they're not required.
Should I cancel or consolidate overlapping tools?
Cancel anything clearly unused. Where two overlapping tools are both in use, pick one to standardize on and consolidate onto it.
Ready to run yours?
Grab the to do this in one sitting. It has the columns, the verdict options, and a built-in total so you can see your recoverable waste as you go.