A review of what you are licensed for against what is actually used — reclaiming unused seats, right-sizing plans and removing add-ons a better base plan includes.
Why licensing drifts
Nobody sets out to overspend on Microsoft 365. It happens because licences are assigned constantly and reviewed almost never.
Someone joins, they get a licence. Someone leaves, their account is disabled — which stops them signing in and does nothing to the billing. A team needs a shared address, so someone creates a user account for it rather than a shared mailbox. A security requirement comes up, so a third-party product is purchased without anyone checking whether a different base plan includes it.
Each decision is reasonable in isolation. Two years of them produces a bill nobody can explain.
What a review finds
Licences on departed staff. The most common single item, and often the largest. Disabling an account does not release its licence.
Over-specified plans. Everyone on the same plan regardless of role. Warehouse, retail and field staff who need email and Teams on a phone are frequently licensed identically to office knowledge workers.
Paid licences on shared mailboxes. info@, accounts@, admin@ set up as full user accounts. Shared mailboxes are free up to a generous size.
Duplicate spend. A business on Business Standard paying separately for mobile device management, advanced email security, or backup — where Business Premium would have included the first two for less than the combined total.
Legacy plans. Subscriptions from earlier product generations still running alongside current ones, occasionally for people who have both.
The Standard versus Premium question
This is the single most consequential licensing decision for most Australian small businesses, and it is worth stating plainly.
Business Standard gives you the productivity applications. Business Premium adds the security and management layer — Intune for device management and compliance, conditional access for identity protection, and advanced email protection.
Businesses on Standard that have bought third-party tooling to fill those gaps are usually paying more in total, managing more products, and getting a less coherent result than Premium would have provided. It is worth modelling before your next renewal.
Timing matters
Licence changes interact with your billing cycle and any annual commitment. Reducing seat count mid-term on an annual commitment generally is not possible, so the review is most valuable shortly before a renewal date rather than shortly after one.
We record renewal dates as part of the review, so the next decision happens with time to consider it rather than as a notification that something has already renewed.
Our position on selling you licences
We can supply licences and many clients prefer a single point of contact for support and billing. You are equally free to buy direct.
Worth saying: an IT provider whose licensing advice consistently increases what you buy from them has an obvious conflict. Our reviews document the reasoning either way, and they frequently recommend spending less — reclaiming seats and consolidating plans are the two most common outcomes.