Microsoft 365 License Audit and Optimization
A fixed-price, one-week audit of every Microsoft 365 license in your tenant against evidence of actual use. IT Partner inventories each subscription down to the service-plan level, cross-references it with Microsoft's usage reporting via Microsoft Graph, finds duplicate and overlapping add-ons, models a right-sized plan mix across Business Premium, E3, and E5, checks whether nonprofit or education pricing applies to you, and delivers a written savings plan with the exact switch mechanics for every line — what to reassign, downgrade, or cancel, and when. We never promise a percentage in advance: savings are found in your tenant's evidence, then quantified line by line before you change anything. If you then have us implement the plan, the $1,950 audit fee is credited in full toward that implementation engagement.
What this engagement is
Microsoft 365 spend grows quietly. People leave and their licenses stay assigned. Add-ons bought to solve one problem duplicate features a suite you already own includes. A plan mix chosen years ago no longer matches how anyone actually works. The admin center shows you what you are paying for — it does not show you what is being used, and it will never volunteer that an add-on is redundant. We wrote up the recurring patterns in how most companies overpay on Microsoft 365 and how to run a license audit yourself; this service is the engineer-led version of that work, done on your tenant with your evidence. The audit is evidence-based and read-only. We inventory every subscription and every assigned license at the service-plan level — the layer beneath the SKU, where hidden duplication actually lives — then pull per-user usage evidence from Microsoft 365 usage reporting through Microsoft Graph: who signs in, which workloads each person actually touches, and which expensive capabilities sit idle. On top of that we model a right-sized mix across Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, and E5 with real costed alternatives for each user population, and we check whether your organization qualifies for Microsoft's nonprofit or education pricing programs — eligibility for those is Microsoft's decision, but knowing whether to apply is part of an honest cost picture. What you receive is a savings plan you can execute: each recommendation carries the evidence behind it, the monthly delta, and the switch mechanics — including which changes take effect immediately and which wait for a New Commerce Experience commitment term to reach its renewal date. Implementing the plan is a separate, fast follow-on engagement, and you are free to execute it yourself, with us, or not at all: the plan is yours either way. If you do choose us, the audit fee is credited in full toward the implementation engagement, so the audit is not a cost stacked on top of the fix. We deliberately publish no savings percentage on this page — a number promised before the evidence exists is marketing, not auditing.
Success criteria
What you receive
How the work unfolds
We agree the scope in writing and you grant read-only reporting access (Global Reader and Reports Reader roles are sufficient). Nothing in this engagement writes to your tenant.
Every subscription, license assignment, and service plan is exported and reconciled against your billing — including licenses held but never assigned.
Per-user activity is pulled from Microsoft 365 usage reporting through Microsoft Graph. If your tenant has Microsoft's report privacy setting enabled (usernames anonymized), we ask you to disable it for the collection window or accept aggregate-level findings — your choice, documented either way.
Assignments are cross-referenced with usage, service-plan overlaps are mapped, and the right-sizing model is built against Microsoft's current published pricing.
Findings become a written, line-by-line plan with switch mechanics and effective dates against your renewal calendar — including which reductions must wait for an NCE term end.
We present the findings, answer questions, and — only if you want it — quote the follow-on implementation as a separate engagement, with the audit fee credited in full toward it.
Prerequisites
Who does what
IT Partner
- Collect the license inventory and usage evidence through read-only access only.
- Reconcile assignments against billing and identify unassigned, unused, duplicate, and mis-tiered licenses.
- Build the right-sizing model against Microsoft's current published pricing.
- Assess nonprofit / education program applicability honestly — including telling you when you do not qualify.
- Deliver the written savings plan and walk you through it.
- Treat all collected data as confidential and delete it on request after the engagement.
Your team
- Grant the read-only reporting access and decide the anonymization question.
- Provide billing visibility and renewal dates for subscriptions not purchased through us.
- Answer analysis questions about user populations, roles, and departures.
- Review the savings plan and decide which lines to act on — nothing changes in your tenant during this engagement.
What's not included
Limitations & technical notes
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from the Free Tenant Optimizer Scan?
The free scan is a read-only automated pass that flags licensing waste, dormant accounts, and configuration drift, with a costed list of fixable issues — it tells you whether there is a problem worth chasing. This audit is the engineer-led deep dive: per-user usage evidence, service-plan-level overlap analysis, a right-sizing model across plan tiers, an eligibility check, and a savings plan with switch mechanics and dates. Honest guidance: start with the scan. If it does not surface enough to justify $1,950, we will say so.
Will you guarantee how much we save?
No — and we would distrust anyone who does before seeing your tenant. Savings claims made in advance of evidence are marketing. What we commit to is the method: every license mapped to usage, every overlap named, every recommendation costed against Microsoft's published pricing, and every line of the plan carrying its own monthly delta so you can total it yourself.
Is the audit read-only?
Yes. Global Reader and Reports Reader roles are sufficient, nothing writes to your tenant, and no mailbox or file content is ever read — the audit works from license assignments, usage reports, and billing data. You can revoke access the moment the engagement ends, and we confirm removal.
We buy our licenses through another CSP, or directly from Microsoft. Can you still audit us?
Yes. The audit needs reporting access and billing visibility, not a billing relationship with us. If you later want us to implement the plan and handle licensing, moving Microsoft 365 billing between CSP partners is a billing-side change under Microsoft's documented transfer process — no tenant migration, no downtime, data and configuration untouched.
Do we have to buy licenses from you afterward?
No. The savings plan is yours regardless of who executes it — yourself, your current provider, or us. There is no lock-in in either direction: even clients who do move billing to us can move it away again under Microsoft's own CSP transfer workflow. When clients do buy through us, subscriptions are sold at Microsoft's published list prices — our margin comes from Microsoft, not from a markup on you.
What does a duplicate add-on actually look like?
The classic pattern: a standalone add-on purchased to solve one problem — say, Microsoft Entra ID P1 or a Defender plan — assigned to users whose suite already includes that same service plan. At SKU level the two purchases look unrelated; at service-plan level they collide, and you are paying twice for one capability. Our overlap matrix works at the service-plan level precisely because that is the only layer where this is visible.
We are mid-term on annual NCE commitments. Is the audit pointless until renewal?
No — it is most valuable before renewal. Reductions to committed annual subscriptions generally take effect at term end under Microsoft's New Commerce Experience rules, so the plan includes a renewal calendar that dates every change. Auditing a month before a big renewal is the single best-timed spend in Microsoft licensing; auditing after it locks the waste in for another year.
Could we qualify for nonprofit or education pricing?
The audit includes an honest assessment of whether Microsoft's nonprofit or education programs plausibly apply to your organization and what registering involves. Eligibility itself is validated and decided by Microsoft — we never guarantee approval. If you are a nonprofit already certain of your status, our nonprofit grant setup and migration service handles the registration and transition end to end.
What do we actually receive, and in what format?
A license inventory workbook, a usage-evidence report, the overlap matrix, the right-sizing model, the eligibility assessment, the renewal calendar, and the written savings plan — delivered as working files you keep, not a slide deck summary. Plus the walkthrough call with the engineer who did the analysis, not an account manager reading from it.
Does the audit cover our Azure spend too?
No — Azure consumption optimization is a different discipline with different tooling, and pretending one audit covers both shortchanges each. We offer a separate Azure performance and cost optimization assessment; the two pair well but are scoped and priced independently.
Who does the work, and what happens with our data?
A licensing-focused engineer, working under written scope with read-only access. Collected inventory and usage data is treated as confidential, used only for this engagement, and deleted on request once you have accepted delivery.
What happens after the walkthrough?
You decide. Some clients execute the plan internally with the mechanics we documented. Others have us implement it as a follow-on engagement — quoted separately, fixed-price, in writing — and in that case the $1,950 audit fee is credited in full toward the implementation engagement. There is no obligation either way: if you execute the plan yourself, you have paid for the audit and nothing more.
Is the audit fee credited if we have you implement the plan?
Yes. When the audit is followed by an IT Partner implementation engagement — the reassignments, downgrades, cancellations, and plan switches from the savings plan — the $1,950 audit fee is credited in full toward that engagement's quoted price. The credit applies to the implementation work; your Microsoft subscriptions themselves stay at Microsoft's published list prices, as always.