How to Audit Your SaaS Stack and Cut Costs by 30%

The average business with 50–200 employees pays for 40–60 SaaS tools at any given time. Studies consistently show that 30–40% of those tools are either unused, duplicated by another tool in the stack, or so underutilised they deliver no measurable value.

This is not a startup problem. It's a scaling problem. You buy tools when teams need them, procurement doesn't always talk to finance, and renewals happen automatically. Three years in, you're paying R80,000 a month for software half your company has forgotten exists.

Here's the process we use to help businesses identify and eliminate waste — without disrupting the tools teams actually depend on.

Step 1: Build a complete inventory

Most businesses don't know what they're paying for. Start by pulling every SaaS charge from your company credit cards and bank statements for the last 3 months. Cross-reference with your finance system. You'll find tools people signed up for on personal cards that get expensed monthly.

For each tool, capture: tool name, monthly cost, who owns it (the person who signed up), how many seats, and what category it falls into (CRM, communication, analytics, project management, etc.).

Step 2: Score utilisation per tool

For every tool in your inventory, score it from 1 to 5 on three dimensions: frequency of use (how often does the team actually log in?), coverage (what percentage of licensed seats are active?), and replaceability (is another tool in your stack doing the same job?).

Any tool scoring below 2 on average is a candidate for cancellation. Any tool scoring below 3 on replaceability when you have a duplicate is an immediate cut.

Step 3: Identify category overlaps

Common overlaps we find in almost every audit: two project management tools (usually Jira + ClickUp or Monday + Asana), two communication tools (Slack + Microsoft Teams), two CRMs (HubSpot free tier + Pipedrive), and two video conferencing tools (Zoom + Google Meet).

Pick one in each category and cancel the other. The savings are immediate.

Step 4: Renegotiate before renewing

Most SaaS vendors will offer a 15–30% discount if you threaten to cancel at renewal. Even tools you intend to keep are worth renegotiating. The script is simple: "We're reviewing our stack before renewal and comparing costs with alternatives. Can you offer us a better rate for an annual commitment?"

This alone saves most companies 10–15% of their total SaaS spend without cancelling anything.

Step 5: Set a renewal calendar

The reason audits are needed in the first place is that renewals happen on autopilot. Set a calendar reminder 60 days before every annual SaaS renewal. That's enough time to evaluate, negotiate, or cancel without being locked in for another year.

The VektorIndex SaaS Stack Audit Template includes a Notion database and Excel spreadsheet pre-built for this process — with the scoring framework, overlap detector, and negotiation email templates included.