Software Asset Management: How to Control Licences, Costs and Renewals

Almost every licensing conversation with a new client starts the same way. Someone asks: “How many licences do we actually have?”

Finance knows what the company paid. IT has a rough idea of what is installed. Nobody can put the two side by side. This is the gap where companies fall into trouble.

It usually shows up in one of three ways. A vendor audit finds more installations than licences, and the company pays a back-licensing bill it never planned for. A renewal comes in, and the company signs for the same number of seats again, because nobody can show that a third of them have not been used in months. Or a security review finds software no one approved, and no one owns.

None of these start as big problems. They start as a spreadsheet that has not been updated since the last renewal.

Software asset management (SAM) is how we close it. In practice, we pull the software inventory, licence entitlements, usage data, contracts and renewal dates into one software asset register.

What brings companies to software asset management

Two events make software asset management and software licence management a priority: a vendor audit and a renewal.

Audit readiness. An audit asks one question: does the company use what it is entitled to use? The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) addresses this with a dedicated family of standards, ISO/IEC 19770. It helps IT teams manage assets, including software, through defined processes: recording entitlements, tracking deployments and reconciling the two. Companies that work this way know their compliance position before the auditor calls, not after.

Cost control at renewal. Software spend is decided at renewal, and most renewals happen on autopilot. Contracts roll over at the same volume, licence models no longer match how teams work, and subscriptions bought by individual departments never reach IT. Software licence management turns each renewal into a decision based on data, not on last year’s invoice.

For the wider view of IT asset data and CMDB in Jira, see our article [назва статті з посиланням]. This article focuses on software: what software asset management is, what it brings to the business, how to make it work and what to look for in software asset management software.

What software asset management covers

This section sets out the basics: what SAM includes, how it relates to IT asset management, and which terms matter when you talk to vendors, auditors or your own IT team. With these in place, the rest of the article and any SAM proposal you receive will be easier to assess.

Software asset management vs IT asset management

If you are researching IT asset management, you are in the right place. Below, we explain why it’s worth to separate IT asset management from software asset management (SAM), and what that split gives your business.

IT asset management (ITAM) covers everything a company owns and depends on, from laptops and servers to cloud services and software. Most companies still struggle to see all of it. According to an annual industry survey of more than 500 IT asset management professionals, only 43% of large organisations have complete visibility across their technology stack.

Software asset management (SAM) is the part of ITAM that deals with exactly this: software and licences.

Treating SAM as its own discipline helps you:

• Make better decisions. You see which software is used, by whom and at what cost, before you buy more or cancel.
• Get budgets approved faster. Finance gets clear numbers per product and per cost centre, not a single IT line.
• Prepare for audits. Entitlements and deployments are already reconciled when a vendor asks for proof.
• Plan renewals. Contracts are reviewed on time, with usage data in hand.
• Assign clear ownership. Every product has someone responsible for its cost and its use.

SAM does not work on its own. A licence record is only useful when it is linked to the device it runs on, the person who uses it and the service it supports. In Jira Service Management, these links live in Assets, the CMDB where hardware, software and services sit in one place.

To learn how Assets in Jira Service Management works as a CMDB, and how to structure asset data, permissions and dependencies across your teams, read our article.

What is a software asset register?

A software asset register is the single record of every software product your company pays for or depends on.

For each product, a useful register records:

• Product and vendor: name, version and edition.
• Licence model: per user, per device, per core or subscription.
• Entitlements: how many licences were purchased and under which contract.
• Deployment and usage: where the software is installed and how many licences are actually in use.
• Owners: a business owner who approves the spend and a technical owner who manages the product.
• Cost and cost centre: what the product costs and which budget pays for it.
• Contract and renewal dates: including the notice period for cancelling or changing volumes.

With this data in one place, you can compare what you bought with what you use, see which renewals are coming up and answer an audit request without a search through email and spreadsheets.

A register only has value if it stays current. Spreadsheets fall out of date the moment someone joins, leaves or installs a new tool. That is why companies move the register into SAM software or their service management platform. In Jira Service Management, this role is covered by Assets, a flexible database for hardware, software and other company assets. Assets is available in Service Collection Standard, Premium and Enterprise plans.

Software licence management: the core of SAM

A software asset register tells a company what it has. Software licence management tells it whether that is the right amount. It answers the questions that cost money: are we covered if the vendor audits us, which licences are we paying for but not using, and how many do we actually need at the next renewal.

That is why it sits at the centre of software asset management. Inventory, contracts and lifecycle data all feed into one result: the company’s licence position. If it is accurate, audits and renewals become routine. If it is wrong, both turn into surprises.

How Jira Service Management handles software licence management

The approach below relies on Assets and Assets Data Manager. Assets Data Manager is included in Jira Service Management Premium and Enterprise. On Standard, the same result is possible with other data import methods, and Softgile sets these up for clients who are not ready to upgrade.

Software licence management compares two lists. The first is what the company is entitled to use. The second is what is installed and used. In Jira Service Management, both lists live in Assets, the CMDB built into the platform. Each licence is stored as a record with its product, licence model, quantity, cost and renewal date. Each record is linked to the users and devices it is assigned to, and to the contract it came from.

Finding unused licences

Jira Service Management has no single “find unused licences” button. The check is built from asset data, filters and automation rules, and a partner sets it up around the company’s own sources and licence models. Once it is in place, it catches three types of waste:

• Assigned to someone who has left. When the HR system or identity provider marks a user as inactive, every licence linked to that user is flagged for return.
• Assigned but not used. Usage signals, such as the last sign-in date from the identity provider, show licences that have not been opened for weeks or months. For Atlassian products, the same check uses the last active date in Atlassian Administration.
• Bought but never assigned. The difference between the quantity in the contract and the number of assignments in Assets shows licences sitting on the shelf.

When a licence matches one of these conditions, an automation rule opens a request to the owner: confirm the licence is still needed, or release it. A released licence goes back into the pool for the next request. The company stops buying new seats while unused ones sit idle.

Finding duplicates

They usually appear when the same asset arrives from several sources: a laptop from Discovery and from device management, or a user from the HR system and from the identity provider under a slightly different name. Assets Data Manager matches these records, keeps the most reliable value for each attribute and merges them into one.

The same logic applies to subscriptions. When two departments buy the same tool separately, the merged view shows two contracts for one product. This is the first step towards consolidating them at the next renewal.

How to succeed at software asset management?

Most SAM projects do not fail because of the tool. They fail because the data goes stale a few months after launch. Companies that get lasting value from SAM build a complete software inventory, keep it current through everyday processes and check it on a fixed schedule.

Start with a complete software inventory

Every SAM decision depends on the software inventory.

The first full software inventory is the hardest one. It means combining data from discovery tools, device management, the identity provider and finance records, then removing duplicates so each product appears once. After that, the job is to keep it current, not to rebuild it.

Build SAM into existing ITSM processes

SAM that runs as a separate project needs separate people to keep it alive. SAM built into everyday IT processes keeps itself up to date.

In practice, every process that changes software should also update the software inventory:

• Software requests. A request for a new tool first checks for a free licence in the pool before anyone buys a new one.
• Onboarding and offboarding. A new employee gets licences assigned to their record. A leaving employee’s licences go back to the pool on their last day.
• Change management. An upgrade or a new installation updates the asset record as part of the change, not after it.
• Procurement. A new contract creates the entitlement record when it is signed.

When these processes run in Jira Service Management, the software inventory stays current because people keep doing their normal work.

Review regularly

A quarterly usage review is enough for most companies. It answers three questions:

• Which licences have not been used in the last 90 days?
• Which products are close to their entitled quantity, or over it?
• Which contracts renew in the next two quarters, and what does usage say about the right volume?

Over a year, four short reviews give a company a much stronger position than one large audit preparation.

Not sure where your software inventory stands? Softgile runs a software inventory assessment and shows your current licence position. Contact us: info@softgile.com.

Closing thoughts

You now have the full picture: what software asset management covers, how it differs from ITAM, what a software asset register should hold, how licence management works in Jira Service Management and what keeps SAM running after launch.

Understanding the method is the first step. Each company’s starting point is different: some have a usable inventory and need processes, others are starting from spreadsheets a year out of date.

If you plan to get your software assets in order, talk to Softgile. We will review where your data stands today, show your current licence position and propose the shortest path to a working SAM process in Jira Service Management.

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