For whoever owns the software bill
Know what you pay for before the renewal notice arrives
Seat Count is a working reference for people who buy, administer and renew business software: contract checklists, pricing terms in plain words and a calculator for seat waste.
Desk calculator
Seat cost calculator
Enter seats, price and unused seats to see the annual bill and the share spent on idle licenses.
Runs in the page, sends nothing
Start with the problem on your desk
-
A contract is waiting for a signature
The checklist runs through term, renewal, price protection, data return and exit rights in the order they tend to cause trouble.
-
A renewal is coming up
Who to talk to, what to ask for and when to begin, well ahead of the auto-renewal date.
-
You suspect unused seats
A method for setting seats bought against seats in use, and for deciding which idle ones can go.
-
A pricing term means nothing to you
Plain definitions of true-up, overage, committed spend, tiering and the rest of the vocabulary on an order form.
The topic index
- 01
Buying
Shortlists, trials, security reviews and getting a contract you can live with.
- 02
Renewals and pricing
Seat counts, price increases and negotiating a renewal before the deadline.
- 03
Admin and security
Offboarding, single sign-on and keeping access tidy as the team changes.
- 04
Integrations
Connecting tools without a pile of brittle automations.
Where the pages come from
The aim is pages you can check against your own paperwork.
-
Paperwork over promises
We work from contract language, order forms and published help documentation, and say which version we read.
-
Unconfirmed stays unconfirmed
Where terms differ between vendors or are not public, the page says so instead of guessing.
-
Prices only as examples
Vendors change what they charge all the time. We explain how a pricing model works and what to ask, and a number appears only when it is an example or comes from you.