Resource · Worksheet

The licensing self assessment worksheet.

Before you negotiate a renewal or respond to an audit, you need an honest read on where your own estate actually stands, and most organizations have never done one. This worksheet is the buyer side self assessment we run at the start of an engagement, structured as a set of checks you can work through with your own team. You cannot negotiate a position you have not measured.

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Why run it The worksheet Reading the result Get the file

Why run a self assessment

Every renewal and every audit is ultimately a contest over one question: what do you actually have, and what are you actually using. The party that can answer it precisely controls the conversation. Most enterprises walk into a renewal with the account team holding better data on their estate than they hold themselves, and that asymmetry is worth real money to the seller.

The worksheet is the first step toward closing that gap. It is a structured walk through the areas where entitlement, deployment, and risk most often diverge, designed so you surface your own exposures and your own unclaimed value before anyone else does. It is the same diagnostic that opens the practice's self assessment engagements.

The worksheet

Work through each item with the team that holds the detail. Each is a check to confirm, not a question to guess at. The printable version expands every line with the evidence to gather.

Section 1 · Entitlement baseline
Locate every active Microsoft agreement and enrollment
Confirm you can produce the current contract documents, not a summary or a memory of them.
Build a clean entitlement record
A single reconciled list of what you are licensed for, by product and quantity, across all agreements.
Confirm Software Assurance status by product
Many rights you depend on, including mobility and hybrid benefit, require active coverage.
Section 2 · Deployment versus consumption
Measure actual deployment against entitlement
The gap in either direction is the start of an effective license position.
Identify shelfware
Licenses paid for and not used are the fastest savings ahead of a renewal. See shelfware identification.
Test E5 utilization against the premium
Confirm the population assigned E5 actually uses what the premium pays for. See E3 versus E5.
Section 3 · Risk and exposure
Review virtualization and server counting
A recurring source of audit exposure. See virtualization counting.
Check CAL coverage and basis
Confirm user versus device CALs are correct for your workforce. See user versus device CALs.
Map indirect and multiplexed access
Confirm end users are licensed where access routes through middle layers.
Section 4 · Position and timing
Confirm your renewal date and the runway to it
Preparation that starts twelve months out is a negotiation. Three months out is an acceptance.
Establish peer concession context
Know the range comparable enterprises are actually signing before you set a target.
Identify unclaimed value
Hybrid benefit, downgrade rights, and mobility entitlements you have paid for and not used.
The honest test

If the account team can describe your estate more accurately than you can, the negotiation has already moved in their direction.

Reading the result

An item you cannot confirm with evidence is not a neutral result. It is an open exposure or an unclaimed right, and it is exactly what surfaces at the worst moment in a renewal or a review. The value of the worksheet is not the checks you pass. It is the gaps it forces into the open while you still have time to close them.

Worked through honestly, the worksheet gives you a defensible baseline, a list of savings to pursue, and a risk register to act on. From there the path is either to remediate internally or to bring in support for the renewal or audit that prompted the exercise.

Get the file

Enter a corporate email below and the worksheet arrives as a printable PDF with every line expanded into the evidence to gather. No sales sequence is attached.

Gated resource · Opens on submit

Open the Licensing self assessment worksheet.

Tell us who you are and the full worksheet opens immediately in your browser. No wait and no email attachment. We ask for a corporate identity because the buyer side method inside is shared with practitioners, not crawlers.

Opens immediately in your browser. Use a corporate email; personal and freemail addresses are not accepted. We do not share your address and there is no sales sequence attached.

A worksheet finds the gaps. An engagement closes them.

The worksheet shows you where you stand. We run the full assessment, reconstruct your effective license position, and turn it into a renewal or audit posture. Two analyst calls, no pitch.