Subscription Audit

The subscription audit collects data on SaaS expenses from payment systems and accounting, maps it against team activity, and helps the finance department see the full picture of subscriptions without manual reconciliation. Automation runs in the background and updates the registry on a schedule, leaving the process owner to make decisions rather than do the mechanical work of data collection.

What the subscription audit does

1. Pulls transactions from billing services: Stripe for direct payments, bank APIs or regular CSV exports for the business account, corporate card providers such as Pleo or Brex.
2. Parses emails with invoices from SaaS providers and identifies payments that do not go through standard channels — trial periods, annual subscriptions, one-time license purchases.
3. Reconciles amounts with entries in the accounting system (1С, QuickBooks, Xero) and flags discrepancies for manual review.
4. Merges duplicates by fuzzy matching of vendor name and amount — the same service paid from different cards or accounts collapses into a single registry entry.
5. Requests user activity data (last login, number of active seats, total usage) via the API of services where admin access is available.
6. Generates a summary table: service → monthly cost → number of licenses → active users → next billing date → team owner.
7. Sends an alert in Slack if a new payment appears that does not fall into any known category or exceeds the set threshold.
8. Prepares a monthly report highlighting unused licenses, services that duplicate functionality, and a recommendation to cancel or reduce.

What the subscription audit does NOT do

• Does not cancel subscriptions automatically. The final decision rests with the finance manager or the service owner on the team — the algorithm only highlights candidates.
• Does not replace vendor negotiations on discounts and enterprise terms. The system shows which subscriptions have the highest annual cost and where it makes sense to ask for custom terms at renewal.
• Does not capture subscriptions paid in cash or through employees' personal cards without subsequent reimbursement. Such payments are invisible to billing and require a separate review of the team budget.

The solution gives the finance department a single source of truth on SaaS expenses and moves subscription management from a one-time annual review to a continuous process. After each automated review, the CFO or COO is left with a short action list: what to cancel, whose licenses to reduce, where to ask for a discount at renewal, and which services duplicate each other in functionality.

The subscription audit is built from three layers: connectors to data sources, processing and normalization, reporting and alerting. A low-code platform (a workflow engine or Zapier) acts as the orchestrator — it pulls the billing and accounting APIs, runs the data through normalization, and puts the result into a spreadsheet or dashboard. Full-scale development is not required, so the solution can be assembled by one person with low-code experience over a weekend, given that access credentials are ready.

Data flow

1. A scheduled trigger (once a day or once a week) starts the workflow in the workflow engine.
2. Connectors pull fresh transactions: Stripe API → payments to subscription services, bank APIs or CSV exports → payments from the business account, corporate cards → data via Pleo, Brex, or a similar tool.
3. The email parser looks for messages with the subject «Receipt», «Invoice», «Subscription» in the shared finance@ inbox and extracts amounts, currency, and service name.
4. The normalization layer brings all records to a unified format: vendor, amount in base currency, billing frequency, next payment date, source.
5. Deduplication compares records by fuzzy matching of vendor name and amount — one service paid from different cards is merged into a single row.
6. Enrichment queries the service API (where admin access is available) for the number of active users over the last 30 days.
7. The result is written to Google Sheets, Airtable, or Notion — wherever the finance team finds it convenient to work.
8. A Slack or email alert is triggered in two cases: a new subscription has appeared, and a subscription with activity below the threshold (for example, 0 logins in 60 days).

Implementation steps

1. Catalog all known payment sources: Stripe accounts, bank accounts, corporate cards, personal cards with reimbursement.
2. Open API access or prepare regular CSV exports.
3. Set up a dedicated aggregator mailbox (for example, billing@) and ask the team to forward invoices there.
4. Build the workflow in the workflow engine: one scenario per source, a shared hub for normalization.
5. Define deduplication and vendor name normalization rules (Notion, Notion Labs Inc., notion.so → one record).
6. Connect activity APIs for priority services (Slack, GitHub, Notion, HubSpot provide data via API).
7. Set up a dashboard in Google Sheets or Airtable.
8. Launch alerts to the Slack channel #finance-alerts.
9. Run the audit for the past 12 months to catch annual subscriptions.
10. Agree on the process with the team: the service owner responds to an inactive subscription alert within one week, otherwise the finance manager makes the decision.

Solution components

Once assembled, the system runs autonomously. The finance manager checks the dashboard once a week, handles alerts as they come in, and once a month reviews the cancellation recommendations. Once a quarter it makes sense to check whether new payment sources have appeared and whether API keys for connected services have changed — this takes 15-30 minutes and prevents silent failures.

The subscription audit can be completed over a weekend with access ready. The preparation phase takes longer if payment data is spread across multiple systems.

Access and Data

• API access or CSV exports from payment systems: Stripe, online banking, corporate card provider.
• Admin access to the accounting system for reconciling entries (1С, QuickBooks, Xero — depending on the stack).
• A shared mailbox for invoices or a forwarding rule to an existing mailbox.
• A list of SaaS services with known admins on the team for requesting activity data.

Team

• Finance manager or COO — process owner, approves normalization rules and makes cancellation decisions.
• A technical specialist with low-code experience (workflow engine, Zapier) — assembles the workflow.
• Support from IT or SaaS service owners on the team for issuing API tokens.

Process Readiness

• A decision on which tool will host the subscription registry (Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion).
• A Slack channel or email distribution list for alerts.
• An agreed protocol: who responds to a new subscription alert and within what timeframe.

Timelines

A basic build with two or three payment sources and a registry in Google Sheets — 2–4 weeks of calendar time, including access provisioning and testing. If the company has 30+ SaaS services with fragmented payments and no shared invoice mailbox, timelines extend to 4–6 weeks due to the preparatory work of consolidating sources.