Summary. Most teams overpay for SaaS by 20–30% because nobody owns the audit. Here is the 5-minute checklist that surfaces the single tool you should cancel today. Run it monthly. Compounds fast.
Tools needed: A spreadsheet, your last credit card statement (or the company's expense tool), 5 minutes.
The problem
Subscriptions accrue silently. Someone tries Loom, picks the $15/mo seat, never cancels. A year later there are 14 of those. Doing a "full audit" feels overwhelming so it never happens. The trick is to audit ONE category per session, find ONE win.
Step-by-step (the 5-minute audit)
- List all SaaS. Pull the last 90 days of card charges. Filter to recurring subscriptions. (Most expense tools — Ramp, Brex, Mercury — have a "Subscriptions" view.)
- Sort by monthly cost descending. Look at only the top 10 — they make up 80% of your spend.
- Score each one with this 1-line question: "If a competitor offered this exact tool free tomorrow, would the team switch?" If yes, you are paying for switching cost, not the tool. No means it is a keeper.
- Pick the highest-cost YES. That is the candidate.
- Apply the cancel test: ask the seat owner "What would break if we cancelled this on Monday?" Three answers possible:
- "Nothing" — cancel today.
- "X workflow" — find a free or built-in alternative for X (usually exists in Notion, Airtable, Google Workspace, or Slack).
- "Critical revenue impact" — keep, but renegotiate at renewal. SaaS sales reps will give 20–30% off to avoid churn.
Expected outcome
Most teams find $50–$300/mo to cancel on the first run. Recurring monthly. Six months in you have shaved $1.5k–$5k of run-rate without touching anyone's actual workflow.
Gotchas
- Annual contracts hide the savings until renewal. Note the renewal date and set a calendar reminder 30 days before — that is your renegotiation window.
- Do not cancel a tool the night before a launch. Wait two weeks.
- If a tool is shared (one seat, multiple people), cancel it last — those have the highest hidden value.
Time to run: 5 min/month. Estimated savings: $50–$300/mo per audit cycle.