CC · Core Concepts
Licences
Tracking subscriptions and renewal reminders.
5 min read
Licences covers software licensing of both shapes: subscriptions that renew on a monthly or annual cycle, and perpetual licences you own outright with an optional maintenance end date. Each licence can carry a seat count and a list of what's consuming those seats. If you've connected Microsoft 365, your Microsoft licences sync in automatically with their seat counts and their start and renewal dates — Microsoft doesn't report prices, so add the cost yourself (a licence's cost is its price for all seats per month or year; the form takes it per seat and saves the total); everything else you add manually.
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Open Licences
The list shows name, status, cost, the next renewal (or maintenance end) date, and how many of the available seats are consumed. Tabs split All, Active and Cancelled / Ended; filter by billing model (Subscription or Perpetual) and by tag, and search by name, vendor or tag.
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Add a licence
Add Licence opens a full-page form. Required: name and billing model — plus a term (Monthly or Annual) and a billing start date for a subscription, and any custom field your organisation has made required. Cost, vendor, seats and licence key are optional, and seats go to people unless you switch them to devices. A licence's cost is what the whole licence costs per month or year — all seats together, the number every spend and recoverable figure divides by the seat count. With a seat count you can type the price per seat instead (what a CSP invoice shows) and AssetSort saves the total, showing it as you type; Enter the total instead switches back. A new licence starts as Active. You don't enter the renewal date: AssetSort works it out from the start date and term and shows you the next billing date before you save. With Auto-renew on (the default) it moves to the next cycle by itself.
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Assign seats to people — or to devices
Every licence consumes its seats through exactly one lane, set by "Seats are assigned to": People (per-user seats) or Devices (per-machine seats). Assign seats straight away in the form's Assignment section — it warns you if you pick more people than you have seats — or later from the licence's Assignments tab. Switching a licence between people and devices removes the other lane's assignments when you save. For a licence you track by hand, the consumed-seat number is counted from that list, so it can't drift; a Microsoft licence shows Microsoft's own count. Microsoft licences pick their own lane automatically — device-based SKUs such as shared-PC Office licences go to devices, everything else to people — and that choice is owned by the sync.
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Renew, cancel or reactivate
A licence's page header carries the actions that fit its state: Renew, Reactivate, Mark renewed (only once a licence is Overdue), Cancel licence and Edit licence. Its tabs are Overview, Assignments, Documents and History. On the Licences list, Bulk Actions offers Renew Selected, Move Selected, Cancel Selected and Delete Selected. On a Microsoft 365 licence, the page header doesn't offer Cancel, Renew, Reactivate or Mark renewed, and in its ⋯ menu on the Licences list they're greyed out as managed by Microsoft 365; Delete stays greyed out until the licence has ended in Microsoft 365. Its name, seats, status, people assignments and billing dates are locked, while cost, term, notes and documents stay editable — set the cost and term yourself so it counts towards spend. Enter it per seat (the seat count is Microsoft's) and the total for all seats is saved; if Microsoft later adds seats, revisit the cost, as the saved total doesn't grow by itself.