Does this sound like you?
Someone left the team months ago. Their licences are still running. A tool you trialled converted to paid and you didn’t notice until it hit the statement. You’re paying for three project management tools because three different people picked three different solutions — and nobody cancelled the others.
Your AI stack has doubled in the last year. Half of it overlaps. A quarter of it nobody logs into anymore.
This is exactly how SaaS companies generate $300B+ in revenue every year. Unused seats. Forgotten renewals. Subscriptions that outlive the people who signed up for them. You are almost certainly part of that number — not because you’re careless, but because nobody built a system to catch it.
Your accountant sees the charges. Your team sees the tools. Nobody sees the full picture.
There’s no one person who knows what’s running, who’s using it, and what stopped being useful six months ago. That gap is where the waste lives — and it compounds every single month until someone actually looks.
The average business with a $5,000 monthly software spend is wasting between $750 and $1,250 every single month on tools that are either unused, duplicated, or running for people who aren’t there anymore. That’s $9,000 to $15,000 a year. Not from one bad decision. From 20 small ones nobody ever went back to fix.
This is not a money problem. It’s a visibility problem.
When you can’t see your stack clearly, you can’t manage it. And when nobody owns it, everyone adds to it — and nobody removes anything.
The fix isn’t complicated. But it does require a system.
Most businesses treat their software like a utility bill — they pay it, they don’t question it, and they only look at it when it gets uncomfortable. That’s how waste compounds.
The businesses that stay lean have a different habit. They check their stack on three timelines: annually, quarterly, and monthly. Each one does a different job.
Start here.
This is your early warning system. It’s not a full audit. It’s five questions you ask yourself at the start of each month to catch anything that just happened.
Ask yourself:
Did anyone join or leave the team this month? If yes — have their licences been actioned?
Did any free trials convert to paid? Check your credit card statement for new recurring charges.
Are there any tools we added in the last 30 days that we’re not actually using yet?
Did anything renew that we’d forgotten about? (Look at your bank statement — not your memory.)
Is there anything we’re paying for this month that we didn’t use once?
That’s it. Ten minutes. One coffee. You’re not trying to fix everything — you’re just making sure nothing new is bleeding.
Set a recurring calendar reminder on the first Monday of every month. Call it “Stack Check.” Do it before you open anything else.
Don’t want to remember to do this yourself? The Less Tools Check-In sends you these five questions every month — automatically. Free. [Sign up here →]
Once every three months, go deeper. This is where you catch the drift — the slow accumulation of tools that made sense at the time but no longer fit how the business actually works.
Work through these in order:
1. Pull your full subscription list Export from your accounting software or bank statement. Every recurring charge. Every tool. No exceptions. The number you find is usually 30–40% higher than what you think it is.
2. Apply the Cost-Per-Active-User test For each tool: Monthly Cost ÷ Number of Active Users in the last 30 days = Cost Per Active User.
Under $10 and mission-critical → keep it
Between $10–$50 with inconsistent usage → evaluate
Over $50 or no active users in 60 days → cut it
3. Check for duplicates Are you paying for two tools that do the same job? Project management, communication, file storage, video — these are the categories where duplicates hide. Pick one. Cancel the other.
4. Review seat counts For every tool with seat-based pricing: how many seats are you paying for vs how many people actively log in? The gap between those two numbers is money you’re giving away.
5. Check your annual plans List every subscription on an annual plan with its renewal date. Set a reminder 30 days before each one so you have time to decide before it auto-renews.
The quarterly review takes about an hour if your records are clean. The first time you do it, it’ll take longer — because you’ll find things that surprise you.
Want these prompts sent to you automatically every quarter? The Less Tools Check-In does exactly that — free.
Once a year — ideally before your financial year end or whenever you do business planning — you do the full thing.
This is not a quick check. This is a proper, structured audit of your entire stack. It goes places the monthly and quarterly reviews don’t reach: ghost accounts, shared passwords, tools nobody can even log into anymore, licences at the wrong tier, AI tools that got added and never integrated into anyone’s actual workflow.
The annual audit is what the Less Tools CheckUp is built for.
The CheckUp is a self-guided, three-phase audit framework. It’s a PDF you download and work through at your own pace — no consultant required, no calls, no waiting.
Phase 1 — Foundation Map your email, hosting, and devices. This is the spine everything else sits on. If it’s messy here, everything built on top of it is messy too.
Phase 2 — Financial Pull Export your subscriptions. See what you’re actually paying for — not what you think you’re paying for. Your bank statement always knows more than your memory does.
Phase 3 — Tool Inventory Map every tool. Who owns it. Who uses it. Who can get in. This is where the ghost accounts surface — the seats still running for people who left, the shared logins nobody can remember, the annual plans sitting on a cancelled card that somehow keeps charging.
At the end of each phase, you have a clear list of quick wins to act on immediately.
When you buy the CheckUp, you get:
The CheckUp PDF — your step-by-step audit guide through all three phases
The SaaS Spend Tracker — plug in your subscriptions, see your monthly equivalent spend instantly
The Tool Inventory Spreadsheet — map every tool, owner, and access status in one place
The Red Flag Guide — exactly what to cut, downgrade, or consolidate first
Instant download. Work through it at your own pace.
“$252/month in inactive Microsoft 365 accounts. Found in Phase 3 in under an hour.”
“An Adobe Creative Cloud licence running for 14 months after the person left.”
“Three project management tools running simultaneously — Asana, Monday, and Notion — because three different project managers had three different preferences. Nobody cancelled the others.”
The average business finds between $400–$1,500 in monthly waste on their first CheckUp.
At $55 — it pays for itself before you finish Phase 2.
Your investment: $55 Average monthly waste found: $800+ Payback period: Before you finish the audit.
The CheckUp is for founders and ops leads at $2M–$10M businesses who:
Haven’t done a proper tech audit in 12+ months
Know they’re probably overpaying but don’t know exactly where
Want to fix it themselves without hiring a consultant
This is not for you if you want someone else to do it. That’s our Done-For-You Audit — a full-service engagement where we go in, audit everything, and hand you the findings and action plan. Learn More here →
If you’re not ready for the full annual audit yet — start with the habit.
Subscribe to the Less Tools Check-In: a free recurring email that lands in your inbox monthly with 5 quick questions to ask yourself, and quarterly with the full review prompts above.
Free. No tools required. Just the habit of looking — so problems don’t compound quietly in the background.
[Subscribe to the Less Tools Check-In →]
Because the businesses that stay lean aren’t doing less work.
They’re just paying attention more consistently.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.