A software audit is simply a stocktake of the tools your business pays for and what each one is really doing for you. You do not need any technical knowledge to run one. Work through the six steps below with a spreadsheet open, and you will finish with a clear picture of your yearly spend and a shortlist of things to cancel.
1. Find every subscription you pay for
Most owners underestimate their software count by half. Work from your bank and card statements, not from memory.
- Export the last 12 months of business card and bank transactions.
- Search for recurring charges, app stores and payment processors.
- Check who owns each account and which email it is tied to.
- Note the renewal date and whether it bills monthly or yearly.
2. Write down the true yearly cost
Monthly numbers look small. Yearly numbers are the ones that change decisions.
- Multiply every monthly plan by twelve.
- Add per-seat charges for people who no longer work with you.
- Include add-ons, storage upgrades and transaction fees.
- Total it once, in one place, so the real figure is visible.
3. Group your tools by job, not by brand
Overlap hides behind different names. Sorting by the job each tool does exposes duplicates fast.
- Create categories: customers, email, payments, files, projects, scheduling, forms.
- Place each tool in exactly one category.
- Highlight any category holding two or more paid tools.
- Ask whether one of them could do both jobs.
4. Score how much each tool is actually used
Paying for software nobody opens is the most common form of waste.
- Mark each tool as daily, weekly, monthly or rarely.
- Check active user counts in each tool's admin settings.
- Flag anything bought for a project that has since finished.
- Cancel or downgrade anything in the rarely column.
5. List the manual work between your tools
Copying data by hand is a cost too, just one that shows up as time instead of money.
- Write down every place you retype the same information twice.
- Note how long each task takes each week.
- Check whether the two tools already offer a native connection.
- Prioritise the task that costs the most hours per month.
6. Decide, then set renewal reminders
An audit only saves money when the cancellations actually happen.
- For each tool choose: keep, downgrade, replace or cancel.
- Cancel before the next renewal date, not after.
- Move annual plans onto the same renewal month where possible.
- Diary a short repeat of this checklist in six months.
What good looks like when you finish
You should be able to say, out loud, how much your business spends on software each year, which two tools overlap, and which three subscriptions are going first. Most small businesses that run this checklist honestly find between fifteen and thirty percent of their software spend is duplicated, unused or on the wrong plan.
Prefer this done automatically?
The free audit walks you through the same questions and returns a plain English report with your yearly spend, duplicate tools and a 30/60/90 day plan.