The Vendor Audit: Killing Your Software Stack Line by Line
Almost every operating company we have looked inside is paying for software nobody uses. Not through carelessness — through accumulation. A tool gets added for a project, the project ends, the card keeps getting charged, and it never surfaces because no single line is large enough to notice.
The fix is an afternoon of unglamorous work.
- Start from the card statement, never from memory or a spreadsheet someone maintains.
- Sort by annual cost, then by last meaningful use — the gap between them is the finding.
- Every tool needs a named owner. Unowned tools are always cancelled.
- Cancel first, reinstate if someone screams. Nobody screams for most of them.
- Re-run it every renewal cycle, because the stack regrows quietly.
Step one: the real list
Pull twelve months of card and bank statements and write down every recurring software charge. Not the list in your head, and not the vendor list finance maintains — the actual charges. Annualise everything so a 49-dollar monthly tool shows up as 588 dollars a year, which is how it should have been evaluated all along.
Expect surprises. There are almost always two tools doing the same job, at least one subscription belonging to someone who left, and something billing annually that nobody remembers approving.
Step two: four questions per line
| Question | If the answer is bad |
|---|---|
| Who is the named owner? | No owner means cancel. This resolves more lines than anything else. |
| When did someone last do real work in it? | Over ninety days means cancel or downgrade. |
| Whose data is inside it? | If the data is yours and the tool only displays it, it is a build candidate. |
| What breaks if we stop tomorrow? | If the honest answer is nothing, that is your answer. |
The question is never "is this tool good." It is "would we buy this today, at this price, knowing what we now know." Most renewals would not survive being treated as new purchases.
Step three: sort into four piles
Kill. No owner, no recent use, nothing breaks. Cancel today.
Downgrade. Real but light usage. You are almost certainly on a tier sized for a company you are not. Seat counts especially drift upward and never drift back.
Replace. Thin workflow over data you already own, few users, specific logic. This is the build pile — see our buy-vs-build test before committing.
Keep. Systems of record, regulated software, anything absorbing liability. Keep these and stop apologising for the cost.
Step four: negotiate the keepers
Two questions move real money. Ask what happens to the invoice if usage halves — the answer tells you whether you are on a model that rewards efficiency. And ask for annual pricing in exchange for a shorter term rather than a longer one; vendors will trade discount for commitment, and the commitment is the expensive half.
Be genuinely willing to leave. It is the only leverage that has ever worked.
- No tool without a named human owner.
- Every renewal is a new purchase decision, not a formality.
- Annualise every price before judging it.
- Re-run the whole audit twice a year.
LAMPWORK operating playbook. Companion to "Software in Freefall" and "The Buy-vs-Build Line Moved."
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