The hidden cost of software stack: companies waste up to 30% of their budget

Every month, like clockwork, another tool gets added. Every quarter, there’s at least one surprise invoice. 

Sound familiar?

It happens everywhere. Software is easier than ever to buy, and harder than ever to manage. 

Finance loses visibility. IT ends up chasing requests, renewals, and logins. The stack keeps growing. Costs slip through the cracks. Ownership is scattered.

The problem isn’t the technology. It’s how it’s managed.

Up to 30% of software spend gets wasted every year. And it hides in the details: inactive licences, duplicated tools, unreviewed renewals.

In this article, we’ll look at where waste accumulates, why it’s so hard to spot, and how some companies have already started cutting it.

With real examples, real numbers, and practical actions you can take right away.

The real numbers behind software spend

One in three.

That’s the share of SaaS tools that stay active without actually being used.

How does that happen?

Every team buys its own tools. The stack grows. Requests pile up. But everything runs through Slack threads, shared cards, informal approvals, and Excel. And something always slips through.

For an average company, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of euros wasted every year, not by mistake, but through a lack of visibility and control.

This isn’t just a budget issue. It’s a control issue. When Finance can’t see every expense, and IT doesn’t have time to track every inactive login, no one has the full picture.

And without a centralised system, it’s impossible to know:

• what’s active
• who’s actually using it
• when it renews
• whether it’s still needed

When there’s no governance, Finance and IT spend more time fixing than planning.

Why so much software goes to waste

It doesn’t take much.

One licence left active. A duplicated tool. A plan left untouched for just one more month — that turns into years. Each decision seems harmless. But across dozens of tools, the impact adds up.

The catch? It doesn’t happen all at once. Software overhead builds slowly, until it becomes structural.

Here are the usual suspects:

• Unused licences. Whether it’s employees who leave the company or tools assigned but never used, no one notices, and the tool stays active.
• Duplicated tools. Two different teams buy similar products for the same job. No coordination. No consolidation.
• Oversized plans. Thirty seats bought at a discount. No one ever downsized the plan, even now, at full price.
• Unmonitored auto-renewals. Most SaaS contracts renew automatically. Without alerts, without owners, and without reviews, they can cause real damage.

Software often enters the company out of necessity, usually in a rush. But without a shared process, it leads to a spiral of hidden costs.

WithLess data shows that over 50% of companies don’t know how many tools are currently active. And one in three is paying for tools that haven’t been used in the past 90 days.

These aren’t one-offs. They’re the symptom of a model that no longer works.

Where to start: 4 actions you can take today (almost) for free

If you don’t yet have a software governance system in place, you can still get started. Four simple actions help you see what’s really going on and cut what’s not needed.

For each one, you’ll find three things:

• What to do, step by step, even just using a spreadsheet
• How much time it realistically takes if done manually
• Our take, based on what we’ve seen with dozens of companies

That’s a practical starting point. And while these actions work, how you do them makes all the difference.

1. Run an audit

Pull together a single spreadsheet listing all active subscriptions: tool name, cost centre, owner (if there is one), and next renewal date. Often, the audit alone will uncover forgotten spend or unused licences.

Time required: 10–15 hours

You’ll need to gather data from cards, contracts, emails, dashboards, and team input, then consolidate everything. If owner info or expiry dates are missing, the effort doubles.

Our take. We love and hate Excel. It’s great for getting started, then quickly becomes a massive time drain (we’ve written about this before).

2. Find your quick wins

Cancel licences that are clearly unused or duplicated. Focus on those with high recurring costs, zero usage, or tools doing the same job.

Time required: 5–8 hours

You’ll need to analyse audit data, compare tools, get validation from teams, and start cancellation processes. Every decision takes at least one back-and-forth.

Our take. Another task that’s better off automated. It all depends on your stack size: if you’ve got 40+ tools, you can audit once manually, but after that, you’ll lose days every month trying to keep up.

3. Track renewals

Log renewal dates in team calendars. Set alerts a week in advance. It’s the simplest way to avoid passive renewals.

Tempo stimato: 3–5 ore (iniziale) + manutenzione mensile

Inserimento manuale nei calendari, impostazione reminder, comunicazione con i responsabili.

Cosa ne pensiamo noi di WithLess

C’è solo un piccolo problema: chi ha accesso a questi calendari? E se l’owner va in vacanza? Ancora una volta è una questione di visibilità e controllo. Finché il team è piccolo ce la fai anche, ma quando scali non puoi permetterti di fare questi task a mano.

Time required: 3–5 hours (initial) + monthly maintenance 

You’ll need to enter dates manually, set up reminders, and communicate across teams.

Our take. Just one tiny detail: who has access to those calendars? And what if the owner is on holiday? Once again, it’s a visibility issue. You might manage this while the team’s small, but as you scale, manual tasks won’t scale with you.

4. Involve your teams

Ask each manager which tools are actually being used. It helps validate spend — and starts to build shared ownership.

Il che è fondamentale, ma sarebbe meglio farlo con una base condivisa. Il rischio di vedere dati non allineati e parziali è molto molto alto.

Time required: 4–6 hours

Send surveys, collect answers, compare with audit data, and align insights. In our experience, the data is often partial or contradictory.

Our take. It’s a vital step, but it works better with a shared source of truth. Otherwise, expect gaps, overlaps, and misalignment across teams.

None of these steps requires a complex system. But together, they do one thing: they help you take back control.

Or 30 minutes, WithLess

Putting your software stack in order takes time. The audit alone can cost you days, not counting follow-ups, updates, or monthly overhead.

Or you could take 30 minutes to see a smarter way.

In the demo, we’ll show you exactly how WithLess works:

how to centralise your stack, costs, and renewals

• how to centralise your stack, costs, and renewals
• how to spot waste before it renews
• how to simplify everything you’re doing manually today

It’s a clear, no-pressure preview. So you can decide if it’s worth doing for real.

📅 Book 30 minutes with us. It’s worth more than a day in Excel.

Three best practices for cutting software waste

Every company has its own story. But the ones that actually reduce software costs have one thing in common: they don’t wait for the problem to blow up. They act early.

In this section, you’ll find three clear examples of how to get it right. Three companies, different in size and sector, but with the same goal: bringing order to their software stack and taking back control.

And the results speak for themselves: less waste, more time, better oversight. Here’s how they did it.

Centralising the stack and payments

When Smartness started scaling fast, their software management couldn’t keep up.  More teams, more tools, more contracts, but no central oversight.

The Finance team found themselves chasing invoices, seeing unused licences renew automatically, and managing vendors through endless emails and spreadsheets. It was clear: they needed control. And they needed it now.

WithLess, they:

• centralised the management of over 150 active subscriptions‍
• assigned clear owners to every tool‍
• tracked every payment with vendor-specific virtual cards
• automatically synced invoices with their ERP

The impact was immediate. In just one year, Smartness saved over €50,000 in software spend and eliminated more than 200 hours of manual admin work.

Today, Finance and IT work from a single shared dashboard. Every tool has an owner. Every renewal is flagged in advance. And every euro is tracked at the source.

Enabling distributed control

Qomodo is a fast-growing fintech. And like many agile companies, tech spend scaled up long before any real process was in place.

The trade-off was obvious: centralise payments and risk slowing things down, or decentralise and lose control.

Neither was an option. Each team had its own needs, but Finance and IT still had to know what was being bought, by whom, and under what terms.

They found the balance, WithLess:

• issued vendor cards for every software purchase
• set smart limits and policies by team and vendor
• automated the matching between invoices, payments and contracts‍
• configured alerts for renewals, anomalies and duplicates

In just a few months, Qomodo blocked over 100 unapproved transactions, reached 98% automated reconciliation on monthly spend, and reclaimed more than 30 hours a month that Finance used to spend on manual checks.

Building shared visibility and distributed ownership

Unobravo is scaling across Europe, which means more locations, more teams, more complexity. Every new tool was brought in to support that growth. But behind each licence was an unanswered question: do we actually need this?

The priority was clear: restore visibility and ownership across a growing stack that was becoming harder to manage.

WithLess, they:

• mapped the entire software stack in a shared dashboard across IT, Finance and Business
• assigned specific owners to every subscription
• activated proactive alerts for renewals and underused tools
• consolidated contracts and simplified vendor management
• used the expert buyer service to renegotiate critical contracts

After 12 months, the results speak for themselves:

• 20+ tools canceled or consolidated, cutting duplication and spend
• €500,000 saved
• 100+ hours saved across renewals, negotiations and supplier management

And the value wasn’t just financial (though €500K is hard to ignore). Today, every team is accountable for the tools they use. Renewals don’t slip through the cracks. Finance, IT and business leads make decisions based on real data.

Unobravo turned SaaS management from a reactive chore into a strategic lever.

Every wasted euro is a strategic risk

Software is one of the quietest – and most underestimated – cost lines in any company. 

And that’s because, yes, it’s about spend. But it’s also about control.

Companies that tackled the problem in a structured way have recovered up to 15% of their software budget. Not through blanket cuts. Through visibility, ownership, and smarter processes.

Software management is no longer just a technical issue. It’s a financial lever. And you can activate it now.

📘 Download the full guide to learn how to reduce waste and build a system that actually works – or let us do the heavy lifting and book a demo to see how WithLess works.