How to build SaaS licence reclamation

What matters here

• Never reclaim silently. Ask the holder first, because a silent removal produces a ticket and a re-request within days.
• Use last meaningful activity, not last login. An SSO session refresh is not usage.
• Time the whole cycle to the renewal date. Reclaiming after the invoice saves nothing this year.
• Downgrade before you remove. A viewer seat costs less than an editor seat and keeps the person working.
• Report the saving in money, not seats. Finance acts on a figure and ignores a seat count.

Who this is for

You run IT operations or finance systems. Software spend grows every renewal, nobody knows which seats are used, and the reclamation project keeps being deferred.

How it works in practice

The sequence, from a seat going unused to the money coming back.

1. 1

   Seats and last activity are pulled per tool

   From the vendor admin API where one exists, because a licence count without usage is useless.

2. 2

   Activity is judged on meaningful use

   Not an SSO session refresh, which happens whether or not anybody opened the tool.

3. 3

   Reclamation runs on the renewal calendar

   Starting well before the notice date, so the seat count can actually change.

4. 4

   The holder is asked before anything is taken

   With one click to keep it and a reason, which is also the best usage data you will get.

5. 5

   Downgrade is offered before removal

   A viewer seat is cheaper than an editor seat and keeps somebody productive.

6. 6

   The saving is reported in money

   To the budget owner, before the renewal negotiation rather than after it.

Paste these into Claude Code or Codex with the Tray Headless plugin installed. Each stage runs on its own. The systems named in them are the worked example rather than a requirement, and every prompt says so.

Once per project, run /tray-workflows:set-workspace to pick the workspace these build in. Point it at a sandbox first.

1. 1

   First, find out what usage you can actually see

   Some vendors expose it, some do not, and that shapes everything.

   Headless skills build-workflow tray-patterns

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   Use build-workflow. The systems in play are Each vendor admin API,
   Okta, NetSuite, Slack, Workday and Snowflake, or whatever we run in
   those seats. Before you plan anything, tell me which of them are
   already authenticated in the workspace, because I do not want a
   connector stubbed that I have not authenticated.
   
   For each significant SaaS tool, tell me what the vendor admin API
   actually exposes: assigned seats, seat types and prices, and last
   activity per user. That last one is the whole build.
   
   Where a vendor exposes no per-user activity, fall back to SSO sign-in
   events from Okta, and mark those tools as lower confidence. A vendor that
   hides usage data is doing so deliberately and it is worth noting at
   renewal.
   
   Also read the contract: seat count, price per seat type, renewal date and
   notice period. The notice date is what the whole cycle schedules
   against.

2. 2

   Judge on meaningful activity, not logins

   An SSO refresh is not usage.

   Headless skills build-workflow

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   Use build-workflow. Compute per seat: last meaningful activity, activity
   frequency over 90 days, and the seat type and its cost.
   
   Meaningful means something the person did in the tool, not a session
   refresh. An SSO integration frequently records a sign-in whenever a
   browser opens, and counting that as usage makes every seat look active.
   
   Then band them:
   
     Active           used in the last 30 days
     Light            used in 30 to 90 days, and a downgrade candidate
     Dormant          nothing in 90 days
     Never used       assigned and never once opened, which is usually a
                      provisioning default nobody chose
   
   Never used is the easiest money in the exercise and it is almost always
   larger than anybody expects.

3. 3

   Ask before you take anything

   A silent removal produces a ticket and a re-request the same week.

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   For dormant and never-used seats, message the holder before doing
   anything:
   
     Name the tool, when they last used it, and what the seat costs
     Offer one click to keep it, with a short reason
     Offer one click to release it
     Say clearly what happens if they do not reply, and when
   
   Give them two weeks. Copy their manager only at the second reminder.
   
   The reasons people give for keeping a seat are the best usage data you
   will ever collect, and they frequently reveal a tool being used for
   something nobody knew about.
   
   Never reclaim silently. It costs a ticket, a re-request and the
   cooperation you need for the next round.

   "I only use it at quarter end" is the single most common reply, and it is the reason a 90 day window is right and a 30 day one is not.

4. 4

   Downgrade before you remove, and time it to renewal

   Reclaiming after the invoice saves nothing this year.

   Headless skills tray-gotchas

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   Use tray-gotchas, then prefer a downgrade to a removal. A viewer or basic
   seat costs less than a full one and keeps the person working, which is a
   better outcome than a removal followed by a re-request.
   
   Schedule the whole cycle against the renewal:
   
     90 days before notice: run the analysis
     75 days: ask the holders
     60 days: downgrade and reclaim what came back
     45 days: hand the true seat requirement to whoever negotiates
   
   Handle: a leaver whose seat should already have gone through
   offboarding, and if it has not, that is an offboarding failure worth
   reporting; a shared or service account, which should never be reclaimed
   automatically; and a tool where seats cannot be reduced mid-term, where
   the only lever is the renewal itself.

5. 5

   Report the saving in money

   Finance acts on a figure and ignores a seat count.

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   Report per tool and in total: seats assigned, active, light, dormant and
   never used, with the annual cost of each band.
   
   Send the budget owner a number in currency, before the renewal
   negotiation. Two hundred and forty unused seats is an IT observation.
   Ninety thousand a year in unused licences, forty-five days before you
   renegotiate, is a decision.
   
   Also report: seats reclaimed and the saving realised, seats kept after
   being challenged, re-requests within 30 days of a reclamation, and tools
   where usage data is unavailable.
   
   The re-request rate is the honest check on the thresholds. If it is high,
   the dormancy window is too short and you are annoying people to save
   very little.

6. 6

   Test it, then hand the thresholds to IT and finance

   Because the right dormancy window differs per tool.

   Copy

   Run the per-step schema checks and the whole-workflow audit before this
   touches production. Run it read-only for one renewal cycle first,
   reporting what it would reclaim without touching anything.
   
   Then open the same workflow in Tray Build so IT and finance can set the
   dormancy windows per tool and adjust the grace period in the visual
   canvas. A design tool used weekly and a tax tool used twice a year need
   different windows.

What it connects to

Usage lives with the vendor, cost lives in finance, and the decision belongs to a person.

Named systems are the ones most teams run, not the only ones that work. Each is an authentication in your Tray workspace, referenced by name, so the workflow never holds a credential. Where we have a connector page, the name links to it.

Questions people ask

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