Seat audit checklist for AI tools

Most companies that pay for AI seats bought them in small pieces: a team plan here, a few expensed subscriptions there, an AI add-on that appeared on an existing SaaS invoice. Nobody ever saw the whole list. This checklist gets you that list in an afternoon, flags the seats nobody uses and the ones that overlap, and gives you a rule for what to do with each.

Block four hours. You need admin access (or someone who has it) for each AI tool on a team plan, read access to card statements and the accounting ledger, and a current employee list from whoever runs HR or payroll.

Hour 1: pull the exports

Gather everything before you start judging anything. Save each export into one folder named with today's date.

• Card statements, last 3 months. Search for the AI vendors you know about, then for words like "AI", "GPT", "assistant", "copilot", "transcribe" and "notes". Small recurring charges are the ones that hide.
• Expense reports, last 3 months. Filter by software or subscriptions category. Personal AI subscriptions that staff expense show up here and nowhere else.
• Accounting ledger, software accounts, last 3 months. This catches anything paid by invoice through accounts payable.
• Member list from each AI tool's admin console. For every tool on a team or business plan, export the list of members with name, email, role, date added and, where the console shows it, last active date. If the console has a usage or analytics page, screenshot or export it too.
• Identity provider records. From Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra, Okta or whichever system handles your sign-ins, export which users are assigned to each AI app and their recent sign-in activity for that app. This is your fallback when a vendor console doesn't show last active dates.
• Current staff list, plus everyone who left in the last six months and any contractors with company accounts.
• AI line items on existing SaaS invoices. Open the latest invoice from your CRM, office suite, project tool, video call tool and help desk. Look for line items labelled AI, assistant, copilot or similar that are priced per user.
• API billing pages. For any developer platform account (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS, Azure), note the last three months of usage charges and who owns the account. API spend isn't seats, but it belongs on the same list so nothing gets missed.

Hour 2: build one list

Put every paid seat on one sheet, one row per person per tool. Use these columns:

Column	What goes in it
Person	Full name
Email	The email the seat is registered to
Tool	Product name and plan
Billing source	Company plan, expensed, company card, bundled in another invoice
Monthly cost	Per-seat cost, monthly equivalent if billed annually
Date added	From the admin console
Last active	From the console, or the identity provider if the console doesn't show it
On staff list	Yes / No
Flag	Idle, never activated, leaver, duplicate, or blank
Decision	Keep, downgrade, reassign, cancel

Match people across tools by email first, then by name. Expect a few people to use a personal email for an expensed subscription; ask them.

Hour 3: flag idle and duplicate seats

What counts as idle

Use a fixed rule so the conversation is about the rule, not about individuals.

• Leaver: the person isn't on the current staff list. Flag every one; there is no case for keeping these.
• Never activated: seat assigned more than 14 days ago and no sign-in recorded.
• Idle: no sign-in or activity in the last 30 days.
• Light: active in the last 30 days, but on a higher tier than their use needs (for example, a premium plan used a couple of times a month for short questions).

Before you mark someone idle, check for:

• Parental or medical leave, or a sabbatical. Mark these "hold" with a return date.
• Seasonal or project roles where use is lumpy (year-end finance, a pitch team between pitches).
• A last-active field that only tracks one surface. Some consoles record web use but not desktop or mobile use. If someone tells you they use it daily and the console says otherwise, check the identity provider log before deciding.

What counts as a duplicate

• Personal plus company: someone expenses a personal subscription to a tool the company already gives them a seat in.
• Two workspaces of the same tool: a department opened its own team plan on a separate card. You pay two minimums and two admin overheads.
• Same job, two tools: a person holds seats in two general chat assistants, two meeting notetakers, or two code assistants. Sometimes this is deliberate (a developer comparing code assistants for a month). Most of the time it is a leftover trial.
• Add-on overlap: an AI add-on inside an existing SaaS tool does the same job as a standalone tool, such as call summaries in your video tool and a separate notetaker.

Two chat assistants for the same person is not automatically waste. Some teams rely on one for writing and another for long documents. The test: can the person name a weekly task they do in each one? If they can only name a task for one, it's a duplicate.

Hour 4: decide downgrade, reassign or cancel

Work down the flagged rows and apply this table.

Situation	Decision
Leaver	Cancel the seat. If the team plan has a minimum seat count, reassign the seat to someone on the waiting list instead.
Never activated, 14+ days	Ask the person once. No reply in 5 working days: cancel.
Idle 30+ days, no hold reason	Cancel, or reassign to someone who asked for access.
Light user on a premium tier	Downgrade to the cheaper tier or a free plan if one covers what they do.
Personal plus company	Stop reimbursing the personal subscription; keep the company seat.
Two workspaces of the same tool	Merge into one workspace at renewal; keep the one with more history and admin controls.
Same job, two tools, one used	Cancel the unused one.
Same job, two tools, both used weekly	Keep both for now; flag for the next renewal review.
Add-on overlap	Keep whichever the team uses; remove the other at its next billing date.

Downgrade when the person uses the tool at least weekly but doesn't need the higher tier's features or limits. Cancel when there's no use, or the use is covered by another tool the company already pays for. Reassign when a team plan has a seat minimum or an annual commitment you can't reduce mid-term, and someone else is waiting for access.

Before you remove anything

• Check the contract. Annual plans often don't refund removed seats mid-term. If so, removing the seat now frees it for reassignment but saves nothing until renewal. Note the renewal date and the notice period.
• Check when the saving lands. Some vendors credit removed seats on the next invoice, some at the end of the billing period. Record the date you expect the lower charge so you can confirm it.
• Tell people first. Send one message to everyone losing a seat: what is changing, the date, and how to ask for access back. Give at least five working days.
• Move shared work. Removing a user can remove their conversations, custom assistants, shared projects or saved prompts from the workspace. Ask them to export or transfer anything the team relies on.
• Check for API keys or integrations created under that person's account before closing it.
• Turn off expense reimbursement for cancelled personal subscriptions so they don't come back next month.

What you have at the end

A single sheet listing every AI seat the company pays for, who holds it, when it was last used, and a decision for each flagged row. Add up the monthly cost of every row marked cancel or downgrade: that's your monthly saving, and the date column tells you when it starts.

Repeat the audit every quarter. The second time takes about an hour because the list already exists. If you want a running list instead of a quarterly one, turn this sheet into a spend register with owners and renewal dates.

Do it with Merit AC: if you'd rather hand this off, the AI Spend Audit service runs the same audit on your exports and returns the decision list.