Business

What your software really costs: the subscription bill

Software subscriptions accumulate one at a time and nobody has the total. Taking inventory of fees, per-user licences and duplicated tools almost always produces immediate savings, and above all reveals where cost grows with the company instead of with value.

15 Nov 2025 · 8 min read · updated on 27 Aug 2026

There is an exercise we recommend to every company and that almost nobody has done: take twelve months of company card statements and highlight every charge that is a software subscription. Then add them up.

The resulting number nearly always surprises, for three reasons: nobody had ever calculated it, part of it pays for tools nobody uses any more, and the line grows by itself every time you hire.

Why the total escapes you

Subscriptions don't arrive all at once: they arrive one at a time, each of them reasonable. Thirty euros a month for one tool, forty for another, one more licence because a new person joined. None of those decisions deserves a meeting, which is exactly why the subject never comes up.

The cost is also distributed: some charges sit on the marketing card, others on finance's, others arrive as an annual invoice booked under "services". There is no place where the total is visible, so for everyone the total does not exist.

The inventory, in one afternoon

Extract twelve months of recurring charges from cards and bank account. Look for annual invoices too: they are the ones that hide best.
For each line write three things: annual cost, who actually uses it, what happens if you switch it off tomorrow.
Mark the duplicates. Almost every company pays for two tools doing the same job, because two departments chose separately.
Mark the dormant licences. People who left, trials never cancelled, seats for a finished project.
Sort by annual cost and look at the top five lines: they are worth more than everything else.

The first two categories — duplicates and dormant licences — are immediate savings requiring no strategic decision. In our experience they account for ten to twenty-five per cent of the total.

The fee isn't the price of the software: it's the price of the software multiplied by how much you will grow.The line nobody projects three years out

The cost that grows with you

The interesting part is not what you pay today: it is how that number changes if the company grows thirty per cent. With per-user licensing, software cost grows with headcount even when the value you get stays the same.

Make that projection over three years for the top five lines. In some cases you will find a tool that costs little today becomes, at scale, the largest IT expense you have — and that is the moment to ask whether an alternative exists that is paid once rather than every month per person.

When replacing pays off and when it doesn't

Replacing a tool has a cost that does not appear when comparing two prices: data migration, people's time to learn, the first months of working worse. It has to be counted, otherwise every switch looks worthwhile on paper and isn't in reality.

The practical rule we use:

If the tool is used daily by many people and works, don't touch it to save twenty per cent. The disruption costs more.
If it charges for users who don't use it, the problem isn't the tool: it's the pricing plan. Often one phone call to the vendor is enough.
If it is a duplicate, keep the one people already use, not the one that looks better to you.
If the cost grows with the company without adding value, start evaluating alternatives before the number hurts, not after.

Two questions to ask before the next subscription

First: who cancels it, and how? It sounds trivial, and it is the question that prevents immortal subscriptions. If nobody knows where to cancel, it will never be cancelled.

Second: if one day we stop, what do we take with us? The data in a readable format, or only the memories? It is the same reasoning that applies to any supplier, and it must happen while you still have the power to ask — that is, before signing.

The bank statement exercise costs one afternoon and requires no technical skill. It is the fastest way we know to bring IT into a budget conversation, where it has always belonged anyway.

What is a normal level of spend?

There is no universal figure: it depends heavily on the sector and how much the work relies on software. The useful number is not how you compare with others, but how much of what you spend corresponds to tools genuinely used.

Subscribe or buy?

A subscription pays off when the vendor updates and maintains something you would not want to maintain. It turns against you when it grows with users without adding value. It is an economic choice, not an ideological one: project it over three years and look at the number.

How do we avoid accumulating them again?

A shared list with renewal dates and one person accountable per line, reviewed twice a year. No procedure needed: what is needed is that someone owns the task.

Is our data safe if we cancel?

It depends what the contract says about afterwards. Many services keep data for a period then delete it: export before cancelling, not after, and check the export is readable by another tool.