Microsoft 365 and Windows
Business plans, licences assigned to people rather than machines, order in shared accounts, and making sure a new hire does not automatically mean the most expensive package.
A server is bought once and you can see it in the cabinet. Licences renew in the background, get added with every new person and almost never disappear when somebody leaves. After three years nobody in the company can answer two simple questions: what exactly are we paying for each month, and what would we produce if the maker asked for a list. This page is about getting both answers straight.
We keep this apart from neighbouring subjects so nothing has to be looked up twice. Licences that surface with virtualisation and server systems are covered on servers for companies, those that appear around databases and trade systems under deployments, and plan pricing on Microsoft 365. Here we deal with running the licences themselves: what is held, what the contracts say and whether it all adds up. The industry where this mess grows fastest is software companies, because every team there adds its own set of tools.
Three things turn up in almost every first review. None of them is anybody being careless, only the result of nobody running the licences day to day.
An employee leaves, the account is disabled or perhaps not, and the licence still renews. In a company of forty that can be several entries, meaning a few thousand zloty a year for mailboxes nobody signs into.
Sales bought their own messenger, production its own cloud drive, and both are already inside the suite the company pays for anyway. Taken one at a time the invoices are small enough that nobody questions them.
A tool bought on the managing directors card, or by somebody who changed roles long ago, renewing automatically to a private mailbox. When cancellation is attempted it turns out nobody has access to the billing panel.
We do not start by replacing tools but by taking stock. We set the invoices against the list of accounts, and only then does it become clear what duplicates the suite, what never gets signed into and what can be switched off without changing how anybody works. That stage usually pays for itself before anybody changes supplier. With Adobe licences this census pays off especially well, because seats are named and those left by people who have gone usually keep on billing.
Microsoft now sells through the CSP model, and that model sets the rules in most companies. Three of them cause surprises again and again.
Seats can be reduced, or a subscription cancelled, only within seven days of purchase, renewal or adding licences. After that it is paid for to the end of the term, even where the mistake was one click too many.
Seats can be added at any time but not taken away. On an annual commitment, five people leaving in March does not lower the bill until the anniversary, so seat counts have to be planned around the minimum headcount rather than the target one.
Since 4 May 2026 a subscription that reaches the end of its term without being explicitly cancelled does not quietly lapse. It moves to a paid extended term and keeps billing monthly with a three per cent uplift, or as much as twenty three for products with no monthly plan.
Hence our rule on billing terms: monthly costs around twenty per cent more than annual and only makes sense where headcount genuinely moves, for instance with seasonal work. We buy the permanent core on an annual term and the fluctuation monthly. Renewal dates are watched on our side, and we remind you before the window opens rather than after it shuts.
A licence audit is not a tax inspection and does not begin with a knock at the door. It begins with an ordinary letter asking for a list, which has to be answered.
Installed copies set against entitlements held, versions and editions, and for server software also the counting method, meaning cores, users and indirect access through another application. A discrepancy in any of these counts as a shortfall.
Missing licences have to be bought, this time without a discount and usually at list price, and the maker may claim payment for the period of use. On top comes the time your people spend gathering documents, which nobody counts and which is often the larger cost.
The commonest misunderstanding runs: we have the invoices, so we are clean. The proof is the licence document together with the terms on which it was granted, not the record of payment. With hardware sold with a system included it also matters whether the licence was tied to a motherboard that has since been replaced.
We do this in the opposite order from most firms: first establish the facts for your own purposes, calmly and with no outside deadline, then fill the gaps. When the letter arrives, the answer is ready. A wider review of the whole environment runs as an IT audit, with licences as one of its chapters.
This is a subject where money is easily saved and just as easily lost. Two judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union settled it, and the limits are worth knowing.
In UsedSoft against Oracle in 2012 (C-128/11) it was held that the first sale of a perpetual licence exhausts the right to distribute that copy further, including where the program was downloaded from the internet. A clause in the licence forbidding resale does not change that.
The licence has to be perpetual and bought outright, and the seller is obliged to make their own copy unusable. A multi seat pack may not be split so that only some seats are resold, so an offer of twenty out of a pack of fifty is a warning sign.
Subscriptions, because there is no sale of a perpetual copy to pass on, so second hand Microsoft 365 simply does not exist. The Ranks judgment of 2016 (C-166/15) also settled that where the original medium has been lost, the back-up copy may not be handed to a buyer without the makers consent.
To be clear: we do not trade in second hand licences and have no interest in them. We only say when they are worth considering and what to demand from a seller, meaning the original purchase documents, a statement that the copy was removed and confirmation that the pack was not split. If a seller cannot provide that, the price stops mattering, because in an audit it is you who answers for legality.
We buy them for clients alongside the rest of the support and watch the dates, but each of these areas counts entitlements its own way.
Business plans, licences assigned to people rather than machines, order in shared accounts, and making sure a new hire does not automatically mean the most expensive package.
Windows Server and software counted by cores, where the cost is decided by the hardware underneath rather than by the number of people at desks.
The hardest group, because this is where indirect access appears: a user who has never seen the database and still needs a licence, because they reach it through another application.
Protection for workstations and servers plus firewall services billed yearly. Here a gap in protection usually comes from a missed renewal rather than from the price.
Request and documentation systems where the price jumps once a user threshold is crossed, so the tenth person can cost more than the nine before them.
A system supplied with a computer is cheaper but stays tied to that machine for good. It does not move to a replacement, which is worth knowing before the purchase rather than after.
What we do not do: we are not a law firm and do not issue legal opinions, and a dispute with a maker needs an intellectual property lawyer rather than an IT person. We answer for the facts, the documentation and for the numbers adding up. That is usually enough, because most licence trouble comes from disorder rather than from a dispute over interpretation.
Four steps, the first of them free and ending in a document that stays with you whatever happens next.
We collect invoices, billing panels and the list of accounts, then set them against what is actually installed and used. The result is a table showing how many licences you hold, how many you consume and where the two part company.
We split the discrepancies into two columns: overpayments to recover and shortfalls to close. Each entry carries an amount and the date of the next window for changes, because that decides whether a saving lands this month or in a year.
We move licences under one company account, align the renewal dates and switch off whatever duplicates the suite. Surplus comes off at the first window available, while shortfalls are closed straight away rather than left as open risk.
A new person gets a licence along with the account, a departing one loses it the same day, and before every renewal we check the state and ask whether anything has changed. Once a year we run a full review, because after twelve months something has always crept in.
The pages that come back when licences and software costs are discussed.
We will not quote a percentage, because it depends purely on how much disorder has built up rather than on the size of the company. We have seen environments run impeccably with nothing to cut, and others where a third of the seats had no user. That is why the first review is free and ends with a figure rather than a promise.
Above all do not send data back straight away, because whatever you send once stays on the table. First we establish your own picture of the facts, check what you actually hold, and only then prepare the answer. Where there are shortfalls it is usually better to come forward with a proposal to close them than to wait for the other sides calculation.
With perpetual licences yes, and it accords with EU law, provided the seller has stopped using them and the pack was not split. With subscriptions no, because there is nothing to resell. We do not trade in them ourselves, but we will check the paperwork behind an offer before you spend the money, because in an inspection the buyer carries the responsibility.
Because in the CSP model seats come down only within the seven day window after purchase or renewal, and outside it not until the next renewal. That is the makers rule rather than our margin, and it applies at every reseller alike. So with seasonal staffing we split the licences into a permanent core on an annual term and a variable part on monthly.
A system bought together with a computer is tied to that particular machine and does not move to the next one when it is replaced. Licences bought separately, in the business edition, usually can be moved. The price difference at purchase is often small, and at the hardware refresh three years later it turns into real money.
As a matter of legality no, because a perpetual licence does not expire when support ends. The trouble is security, since a program without fixes sits in the environment as an open door, and compatibility with newer systems. We base the decision on whether the application touches the internet and personal data.
No, and we do not make it a condition of working together. Some clients buy directly from the maker or already have a supplier, and we simply keep the register and watch the dates. If you do buy through us, you see the purchase price and our margin separately, because with licences a hidden commission is the quickest way to lose trust.
The first meeting takes 30 minutes and commits you to nothing. We will tell you straight whether we can help and what we would propose.
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