Introduction
Most M365 tenants we walk into have at least one of these five licensing issues, and a handful have all five. Each one is a five-minute fix once you know where to look.
1. Paying for Business Premium for users who only need Apps for Business
Business Premium bundles Defender, Intune, conditional access. If a user is shared-mailbox-only or doesn't sign in interactively, that's £18.10/user/month wasted.
2. Visio Plan 2 on auto-assignment
Visio Plan 2 quietly auto-applies to admin templates in some tenant configurations. Every new user gets it. We've seen up to 40 users with unused £12.30/month assignments.
3. Power BI Pro instead of E5
E5 includes Power BI Pro. If you've upgraded users to E5 but kept the per-user Power BI Pro SKU, you're double-paying.
4. Project Plan 3 across the whole tenant
Project Plan 3 is £24.40/month per user. We've seen entire engineering teams with it because the wrong group was assigned a year ago.
5. Unused Teams Phone Standard licences
When a user with Teams Phone leaves, the licence often isn't reclaimed. Pure waste.
What it adds up to
In a 50-seat tenant, we typically find £6,000-£12,000/year of unused licensing. The audit pays for itself in month one.