Automate·Intermediate·20 min·Updated Sep 30, 2026

Track software license allocation and usage

Analyze license usage data to surface underused or over-allocated software licenses before the next renewal.

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Good fit for

Microsoft 365

Excel

Works With

Claude

Copilot

Prerequisites

A license allocation and usage export from your software asset management or identity system

Business Outcome

Lower software spend by right-sizing license counts to actual usage before renewal, instead of auto-renewing at last year's count.

Workflow Overview

Pick whichever of these AI tools you have — they're alternatives, not a sequence.

Excel

Claude

Copilot

Copilot works differently from the others: with a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license it's built right into the app above, no copy-pasting needed. Without a license, use it the same way as ChatGPT or Claude — in its own chat window.

Step 1: Pull allocation and usage into one viewExcel

Use XLOOKUP to pull each user's last-login and usage-frequency data onto the same row as their license allocation, combined into one Excel Table — allocation data alone tells you who has a license, not who's actually using it, and the gap between those two is the entire point of this workflow.

Step 2: Ask Copilot to surface the outliersCopilotClaude

Have it identify licenses assigned but unused over a defined window, and departments or teams whose active usage is closing in on their license cap.

Prompt idea:

Using this license allocation and usage export, flag every license assigned to a user with zero logins in the past 60 days, and flag any team whose active usage is above 90% of their allocated license count.

Step 3: Verify before reclaiming anythingExcel

Check with the license owner or the user's manager before reclaiming a license — a user on extended leave or in a role that uses the tool infrequently but critically shouldn't get silently cut off.

Step 4: Feed the findings into the renewal decisionExcel

Use the confirmed underused and over-allocated lists to right-size the license count ahead of the next renewal cycle, rather than defaulting to the prior year's number.

Check the work

Confirm the "zero usage" window used matches what's actually meaningful for that tool — some tools are used quarterly, not daily.
Check with the affected team before reclaiming any license flagged as underused.
Reconcile the over-allocation flags against actual license cap numbers from the vendor contract, not an assumed number.

Source: Microsoft Copilot Scenario Library — IT (2026)

Expected Outcome

A list of licenses flagged as underused (candidates to reclaim) or over-allocated (candidates to true up), with the specific usage data behind each flag.

Is AI actually needed here?

Both flags in step 2 are explicit numeric rules — zero logins in 60 days, usage above 90% of allocation. That's exactly what a spreadsheet formula is for, not a reason to open an AI chat.

Non-AI alternative: A Power Query transformation or Excel formula flags the same licenses deterministically, and refreshes automatically against each new export.