---
title: Licenses
description: Find the Microsoft 365 seats you're paying for and nobody uses - unassigned units, licenses on guests, and subscriptions drifting toward a bad renewal.
icon: Key
---

# Licenses

The Licenses screen answers a question most organizations can't answer without a spreadsheet exercise: **"What are we paying Microsoft for that nobody is using?"** License spend grows by default - people leave, projects end, trials convert - and the units keep billing. This screen turns the license inventory into a reclamation list.

## What You Can Achieve

<Cards>
  <Card
    title="Reclaim units you already bought"
    description="For every SKU, see purchased vs. assigned vs. available units side by side. Unassigned units are budget sitting idle - reallocate them before buying more."
  />
  <Card
    title="Find licenses on the wrong identities"
    description="External and guest users holding paid seats, and licenses assigned to accounts that no longer sign in. Each one is a subscription working for nobody."
  />
  <Card
    title="Walk into renewals with numbers"
    description="Status flags show which subscriptions are active, in warning, or suspended - so renewal negotiations start from real utilization, not the vendor's proposal."
  />
  <Card
    title="Automate the cleanup"
    description="Select licenses and run automation workflows against them, turning a quarterly true-up ritual into a continuous process."
  />
</Cards>

## The License List

Each row shows a subscription plan with its **status**, the **users** holding it (external users broken out), and the unit math that drives cost: **all units** purchased, **used units** assigned, and **available units** unassigned. The **applies to** column distinguishes user licensing from device licensing.

Sort by **available units** to get an instant savings shortlist, or by **external users** to review why guests hold paid seats at all.

## Investigative Patterns

<Callout type="info">
  **The renewal prep**: sort by **available units** descending, then review each
  SKU's external-user count. In most tenants this ten-minute pass finds enough
  idle and misassigned units to change the renewal conversation.
</Callout>

Licenses tell you what's _assigned_; activity tells you what's _used_. Cross-reference license holders against user activity and sign-in history to find paid seats on dormant accounts - then reclaim the license as part of the same offboarding automation that revokes the account's access.