Ghost subscriptions: how to regain control of your recurring expenses

Each month, thousands of euros evaporate in companies in the form of forgotten, redundant or unused SaaS subscriptions. CRM, marketing tools, cloud licenses: these recurring expenses, often invisible, disorganize cash flow forecasts and widen budgets.

A systemic problem

The generalization of decentralized purchases has exploded the number of suppliers by entity or department. Result: duplicates, an absence of visibility, and a “Subscription Sprawl” effect.
A VERTICE study estimates that 30 % of paid SaaS licenses are not actively used in European tech SMEs.

Of the forgotten subscription to the risk of rupture

Some consequences go beyond simple waste. An unrepected subscription to a critical service (domain name, cloud, customer platform) can lead to a break in activity.
This is the case of a British company which saw its site suspended 24 hours after the expiration of its field, due to the lack of automated alert. A preventable flaw.

5 concrete measures to regain control

1. Centralize the management of SaaS subscriptions

Create a single inventory, consolidated by the Finance or IT department, by integrating all the tools used.

2. Remove duplicates

Audit the tools used by team. Two marketing services with two newsletter tools? Unified, this also makes it possible to negotiate downwards.

3. Categize subscriptions

By team, use or criticality. Objective: filter faster, prioritize vital tools and differ secondary.

4. Automate payments monitoring

Tools like Payhawk, Spendesk or Tropic automatically detect recurring payments, categorize expenses, and alert in the event of a variation.

5. impose governance rules

Validate any new subscription via a budgetary workflow, set a commitment threshold, and impose quarterly journals.

Solutions to remedy it?

To help you better monitor and manage the applications used by your employees, different solutions are available to you. Starting with Beamy a French solution which makes it possible to observe the uses, the duplicates or even to identify new more efficient solutions but also to redirect your employees to the applications validated by your SI and safety teams (another aspect of this subject that we will approach in our Zero Trust Zone section). You also have Zylo, a solution that is complete enough to control your entire fleet and ensure the Saas Spend Management. Finally Zluri a more cybersecurity oriented solution and IT management.

Why it matters

In a context of pressure on the margins, controlling recurring expenses is an immediate lever for cash flow. It is neither frugality nor microgestion. It is a fine, often neglected piloting, which can generate up to 10 % annual savings on software stations.