How to audit your software subscriptions in an afternoon

Small businesses rarely decide to have 30 subscriptions. They pick them up one at a time: a free trial that rolled over, a tool a freelancer set up, two apps that do the same job because two people chose them. An audit takes an afternoon. The results usually pay for that afternoon many times over. Not only in money, but in fewer logins, fewer places for data to go stale, and accounts you actually control.

This is the same process we start our tech-stack work with. You can do it without us.

What you’ll end up with

• One register of every tool: what it does, what it costs, who owns it, who uses it and when it renews
• A decision for each tool: keep, cut, merge, downgrade or renegotiate
• A renewal calendar, so nothing auto-renews by surprise again
• Every important account owned by the company, not a person

The template has all of this set up.

Step 1: Find every subscription (about 60 minutes)

No single place lists everything. Check all three of these:

1. Card and bank statements, last 12 months. Annual plans only show up once a year, so 12 months matters. Export the statements for every card used for business, including personal cards someone expensed.

2. Email receipts. In Gmail, search all mailboxes that might receive bills, for example:

subject:(receipt OR invoice OR subscription OR renewal) newer_than:1y

Repeat with words like billing and payment, and with the names of tools you already know about. newer_than:1y and OR are standard Gmail search operators.

3. Apps connected to your company accounts. If you use Google Workspace, an admin can see the third-party apps that have accessed company data under Security → Access and data control → API controls → Manage App Access, and download the list as a CSV. This catches tools people signed up for with “Sign in with Google” that never appear on a company card.

Then ask each team member one question: “What do you log in to for work that we haven’t listed?”

Step 2: Record the facts for each tool (about 60 minutes)

For each tool, record:

Step 3: Decide what to do with each tool (about 45 minutes)

Use these rules in order. Stop at the first one that applies.

1. Nobody has used it in 90 days → cut. Export the data first (step 5).
2. Another tool you already pay for does the same job well enough → merge. Pick the one with the data and the users, and move the rest across.
3. You pay for more seats than are used → downgrade the seat count.
4. You pay for a tier whose extra features nobody uses → downgrade the plan.
5. It’s used, it’s needed and it’s expensive → renegotiate. Ask about annual billing, non-profit or startup programmes, or a smaller plan. Vendors would rather keep you on a cheaper plan than lose you.
6. Otherwise → keep.

Typical overlaps to look for:

• two email marketing tools
• a CRM and a spreadsheet that both hold leads
• several file storage services
• separate e-signature, scheduling and form tools when your suite already includes them
• two video call tools

Step 4: Fix ownership and access (about 30 minutes)

This step protects the business. It matters more than the money.

• Login email: move every business-critical tool to a company email address, ideally a shared role address like admin@ or accounts@, not one person’s name.
• Two admins: every important tool should have at least two admins, so one person leaving doesn’t lock you out.
• Billing: move charges to a company card.
• Domain, website, analytics, ads and CRM come first. They’re the hardest to recover if a freelancer or ex-employee holds them.

Step 5: Cancel safely

Before you cancel anything:

1. Export the data (contacts, files, history) into a format you can open without the tool, such as CSV.
2. Check what depends on it. A form on your website, an automation or an integration may stop working.
3. Check the cancellation terms. Some annual plans can’t be refunded mid-term. In that case, switch off auto-renew now and put the end date in your calendar.
4. Remove saved cards after the final invoice.

Step 6: Keep it tidy

• Put every renewal date into a shared calendar with a reminder 30 days before.
• Agree one rule: no new tool without adding it to the register, with an owner and a renewal date.
• Repeat the audit every quarter. After the first time, it takes under an hour.

A note on VAT for UAE businesses

Many subscriptions are billed by foreign companies without UAE VAT on the invoice. If your business is VAT-registered, imported services can fall under the reverse charge mechanism, where you account for the VAT yourself on your return. How it applies depends on your situation, so give your accountant the register’s list of foreign suppliers. It saves them time too. Registration itself is mandatory above AED 375,000 of taxable supplies a year.

What to do with the savings

Cutting tools is only half the value. The other half is connecting the ones you keep, so information flows between them instead of being copied by hand. Your website form can feed your CRM, and your store can feed your accounting. For the CRM part, see HubSpot vs Zoho vs Pipedrive.

Frequently asked questions

How often should we audit subscriptions?

Do a full audit once, then a short review every quarter. Check before any big annual renewal, and whenever someone joins or leaves the team.

Should we use a SaaS management tool instead?

For most small businesses, a well-kept spreadsheet is enough. Dedicated tools make sense with dozens of employees and frequent sign-ups, and they’re themselves another subscription to audit.

What if a freelancer or ex-employee owns an account?

Ask them to add a company address as an admin, then transfer ownership. If they won’t, contact the vendor’s support with proof you’re the paying customer (invoices, payment records). That’s slow, which is why fixing ownership now matters.