Blog · Costs · Updated · By the FitMySaaS team
SaaS audit checklist for small businesses (2026)
Short answer: A SaaS audit for a small business takes about a day. Find every paid tool (card statements, receipts, your Google or Microsoft admin console), check who actually uses each one (admin activity reports), then decide what to keep, shrink, merge or cancel. The main caveat is timing: many annual plans only shrink at renewal, so audit 60 to 90 days before renewals.
What is a SaaS audit, and how is it different from cutting costs?
A SaaS audit is an inventory. It answers four questions for every tool: what is it, who owns it, who uses it, and when does it renew.
Cutting costs is what you do after the audit. Our guide on how to cut your team's SaaS bill covers those cuts step by step.
Most checklists that rank for this term are written for IT and security teams at large companies. They cover SOC 2 evidence and vendor risk scoring. A 10 to 40 person team needs something lighter: a list you can finish in a day and repeat every quarter.
What do you need before you start?
Gather the sources below first. Each one catches tools the others miss.
| Source | What it finds | What it misses |
|---|---|---|
| Company card and bank statements (last 12 months) | Every tool paid for by card, including yearly charges | Tools paid on a personal card and expensed |
| Expense reports | Tools staff bought themselves | Free tools that hold company data |
| Accounting software vendor list | Invoiced tools and annual contracts | Small monthly card charges filed as "misc" |
| Google Workspace accessed apps list | Apps people signed into with their Google account | Apps that use a separate email and password |
| Each tool's admin or billing page | Seat counts, plan names, renewal dates | Nothing, but you have to log in to each one |
Google's admin help notes that an app can take 24 to 48 hours to show up in the accessed apps list after someone authorizes it. Pull the list a few days after any new tool sign-ups.
The SaaS audit checklist
Work through these in order. Put the answers in one spreadsheet with one row per tool.
Find
- List every recurring charge from 12 months of statements. Twelve months catches yearly renewals that a 30-day view hides.
- Add tools from expense reports and the accounting vendor list.
- Add apps from the Google Workspace accessed apps list or your identity provider.
- Ask each team lead one question: "What do you log into every week that is not on this list?"
Check
- Record the plan name, seat count, billing cycle (monthly or yearly) and renewal date for each tool.
- Record the price per seat from the vendor's pricing page, not from memory. Prices change; HubSpot Sales Hub Professional, for example, lists $90 per seat a month plus a one-time $1,500 onboarding fee (list price, billed yearly, October 2026).
- Pull last-active dates from each admin console (see the table below). Mark anyone inactive for 60 days or more.
- Name one owner per tool. If nobody will own it, that is a strong signal to cancel it.
- Check who has admin rights and remove former staff and contractors.
Decide
- Group tools by job (messages, tasks, docs, CRM, support, scheduling). Flag any job with two or more tools.
- Mark each tool keep, shrink (fewer seats or a lower plan), merge (move its job to another tool) or cancel.
- Put every renewal date, and the last day to change it, in a shared calendar.
Which admin reports show who is actually using a tool?
Most tools you already pay for have a usage view. These are the ones small teams use most.
| Tool | Where to look | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace | Admin console, Users, "Last sign in" column | Approximate last sign-in; Google says data can lag up to 3 days |
| Microsoft 365 | Admin center, Reports, Usage, Microsoft 365 apps, Active users | Last active date per user for Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams, over 7 to 180 days |
| HubSpot | Settings, Users & Teams, Seats tab | Seat assignments and last active dates |
| Slack | Billing is automatic under the Fair Billing Policy | Members who haven't used Slack in over 28 days stop being billed and you get a credit |
Slack is the exception worth knowing: inactive members are credited back automatically, so an idle Slack account usually costs less than an idle seat elsewhere. HubSpot is the opposite. Its help page says unassigning a seat does not stop billing; you also have to remove the unassigned seat, and the change applies from the next billing period.
How often should a small business run a SaaS audit?
Do a full audit once a year and a short check every quarter. The quarterly check only needs steps 1, 7 and 12: new charges, inactive users and upcoming renewals.
Also run the short check whenever someone leaves. Offboarding is where idle seats start. A person who leaves keeps a paid seat in every tool they used until someone removes it.
What should you do with the results?
Start with the tools that renew soonest, not the most expensive ones. A cut you make three days after an annual renewal usually saves nothing until next year. Google Workspace's Annual/Fixed-Term Plan, for example, keeps your payment the same after you remove licenses until the contract renews.
Then look at the jobs with more than one tool. Two task tools or two places for docs cost money and split information. The software consolidation guide explains how to decide which one stays.
To keep track between audits, use a software license tracking spreadsheet with renewal dates and notice periods.
When one system makes more sense
If the audit shows four or five tools doing small parts of one workflow, and each is used for only a few features, merging them can beat trimming seats. Run your list through the free SaaS cost calculator to see what those tools cost at list price. FitMySaaS builds one system with only the features your team uses and runs it for a fixed monthly fee, and we will tell you if keeping your current tools is cheaper.
Questions
How long does a SaaS audit take for a small business?
For a 10 to 40 person team, the first audit usually takes a day, most of it spent logging into admin consoles. Repeat checks take an hour or two once the spreadsheet exists.
Do you need SaaS management software to do an audit?
Not at this size. Card statements, your Google or Microsoft admin console and one spreadsheet cover most small teams. Dedicated tools start to pay off when you have hundreds of apps or a separate IT team.
What is the difference between a SaaS audit and a software license audit?
A software license audit is often run by a vendor to check that you are not using more installs than you paid for. A SaaS audit is your own review of what you pay for and use.
What counts as an inactive user?
Pick one rule and apply it to every tool. Sixty days without a sign-in is a practical threshold for a small team; Slack uses 28 days for its own billing credits.