Software licence and subscription renewal register
Problem
Software licences and SaaS subscriptions get bought by whichever team needs them, on a card, through a reseller, sometimes bundled into a wider contract. The renewal date and the seat count sit in an inbox, a vendor portal login only one person remembers, or a spreadsheet tab nobody has opened since the licence was first signed. IT finds out a renewal happened, at a higher rate or with more seats than needed, when finance queries the invoice. A licence can also quietly expire and lock out a department mid-project, because the person who signed it left eighteen months ago and nobody moved ownership across. Nobody can produce a current list of what is licensed, to whom, and when it next falls due.
Product idea
A register of every software licence and subscription in use, one row per licence, holding vendor, licence type, seat count against seats actually assigned, renewal date, auto-renewal terms, contract owner and the department paying for it. Renewals due within a configurable window surface on a dashboard and trigger an escalation to the named owner, then to a fallback if the owner does not respond. Each entry carries space for the evidence a renewal decision needs: the last invoice, the usage count, the notice period, so a decision to renew, renegotiate or cancel is not made from memory. It does not manage the purchase itself and does not touch payment. It tells someone, with enough notice, that a decision is due.
Who it is for
Head of IT and information security officers who need a current picture of what is licensed, and the service desk staff who field the calls when a licence lapses without warning.
Possible first version
A manually maintained register covering licence name, vendor, owner, department, seat count, renewal date, auto-renewal flag and notice period, with CSV import to seed it from existing spreadsheets. A dashboard grouped by days until renewal, an email escalation to the named owner at fixed intervals before the date, and a fallback escalation if unacknowledged. Evidence fields are free text and file attachment rather than pulled in automatically. Out of scope for version one: no billing or procurement system integration, no automatic discovery of licences in use, and no single sign-on usage data. Those stay manual entry until the register proves useful.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 4-6 week first release
- Roles involved
- Head of IT, Information security officer, Service desk lead
- Relevant to
- Professional club, League office, Federation / governing body, Venue & stadium operator
- Systems in play
- Spreadsheets, Finance and ERP system, Identity and access management
- Product framing
- Manage compliance
Questions we get asked
What do we need to have ready before this is any use to us?
A list of the licences and subscriptions you already know about, however incomplete, imported from whatever spreadsheet or inbox currently holds it. That seed list is usually wrong in places, missing an owner or a stale renewal date, but it is enough to start. The register gets more accurate as renewals actually happen and entries get corrected in the moment, not from a one-off audit. Waiting for a complete inventory before starting is the reason most of these efforts never begin.
We already track this in a spreadsheet that mostly works. Why change?
A spreadsheet works until the person who maintains it is away, or leaves, or simply forgets to check it that month. This does not claim to hold better data than a spreadsheet, only that it is nobody's sole responsibility to remember to open it: renewals due soon surface on their own and chase the named owner rather than waiting for someone to look. If your spreadsheet is already checked reliably every week, this adds little.
Does this replace our finance or procurement system?
No. It does not raise purchase orders, process payment or hold full contract terms, only what is needed to flag a renewal. Your finance and procurement system stays the record for spend and payment history. This sits earlier in the process, as the thing that tells a named person a decision is coming in time to renegotiate, cut seats or cancel, rather than the first notice arriving as an invoice already paid.
Who ends up owning this day to day, and what does it cost them?
Ownership usually sits with whoever runs IT operations, because they are best placed to know who actually owns a given licence day to day. The ongoing cost is keeping the register current: adding a licence when one is bought, updating the owner when someone leaves, closing an entry when a subscription is cancelled. If nobody does that housekeeping, the register drifts out of date at roughly the same rate the spreadsheet it replaced did.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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