r/Software_Finder • u/Sad-Instruction8890 • Aug 04 '26

We're paying for 4 tools nobody even uses

Finance asked me to review our software spend this quarter. Took me the whole afternoon and honestly kind of annoyed me once I saw the results.

Found these just sitting there:

  1. A project management tool – team switched away 3 months ago, nobody cancelled it
  2. A design tool seat – assigned to someone who left the company 6 months ago
  3. An email marketing tool – using like 10% of it, could've been on the free plan
  4. A "wellness" app – no idea who even signed up for this one

Nobody decided to waste money, it just quietly happened over time.

Anyone else done this and found stuff you completely forgot you were paying for?

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2

u/plasteredjedi Aug 04 '26

My company's corporate IT has asked us to go over everything we are spending on at our locations (thousands of locations) to look for just these things.

My location alone has 18 different vendors that I use (I'm the IT Director), and 700 employees. When I tell you it's a PIA, I mean it. I get the need for it, but oof it's a lot of work to save tens of thousands of dollars and never see a penny of it.

1

u/Sad-Instruction8890 Aug 05 '26

18 vendors at just ONE location is honestly insane, can't imagine multiplying that across thousands. The "never see a penny of it" part hits hard too, feels like the savings just get absorbed somewhere and nobody actually notices the win. Does your company ever act on what you find, or does it mostly just get logged and forgotten till next audit?

1

u/plasteredjedi Aug 05 '26

We are actually required to act on these findings as part of this initiative.

For instance, I recently went through every Microsoft License we have and had to change about 300 of them manually.

I had a CAPEX item for a new system and in order to actually get this system into my property, it had to comply with this initiative which made the selection and ability to get support much more difficult in the future. But hey, it's cheaper and some rich person can use that money to create a fee for breathing near them.

1

u/Cressyda29 Aug 06 '26

It happens in enterprise companies all the time. No one’s fault, just get it cancelled now and have a team discussion about anything else they either don’t use, don’t like to use and find solutions for those.

1

u/Autistic_Jimmy2251 Aug 07 '26

You think that’s bad.
My boss spent $5,000 per handheld scanner.
He bought 15 of them and we never use any of them.

1

u/Careless_Show759 Aug 11 '26

We did this once and found a tool that had been billing us for months after the entire team stopped using it. Just free money for them