Resources
Definitions for the vocabulary of wasted software spend, written from the general ledger rather than from the IT side, because the ledger is the one place all of it is visible at once.
A recurring charge for a tool nobody uses anymore. It keeps billing because the card or the ACH mandate is still authorized and nobody remembers who set it up. A ledger cannot see logins, so it cannot prove a tool is unused. What it can show is the pattern that usually goes with one: a tool still charging after a newer tool in the same category arrived, or a per-seat bill that has not changed in months.
Software your company pays for that a corporate card tool structurally cannot see, because the money never moves across its card. It is paid by ACH transfer, paper check, bill pay, an annual invoice, or a reimbursed personal card instead.
A subscription's cost rising over time through increases small enough that none of them prompts a review. Each one clears the same approval the original charge did, so the tool is never re-evaluated at its new price.
Paying two or more vendors for the same capability at the same time. It is rarely a decision anybody made; it is the residue of teams buying independently, of a migration that was never finished, and of trials that converted quietly.
Software a team buys and uses without going through IT or finance. Nobody is hiding anything as a rule: someone needed a tool, expensed it, and the purchase never reached a system that tracks purchases.
The accumulation of software subscriptions past the point where anybody can list them from memory. The count grows because adding a tool is easy and removing one is nobody's job.
The notice period before an auto-renewing contract locks in another term. Miss it and the renewal is owed in full, whether or not the tool gets used, which makes the window itself the thing worth tracking.
Any charge that repeats on a steady cadence, whether or not it is software. Insurance premiums, telecom lines, utilities, memberships, and merchant or processor fees all behave the same way in a ledger, and all drift for the same reasons.
AI tool subscriptions bought by individuals or teams outside any procurement or IT process: a ChatGPT seat on a personal card and expensed, a team plan on the company card, an annual invoice for seats nobody added to the software budget. It is shadow IT with a faster purchase loop and vendors that change price and tiers more often.