The question nobody wants to answer honestly
Every software asset management vendor will tell you that spreadsheets don't work. They'll show you horror stories about version control nightmares and outdated data. And every budget-conscious manager will tell you that a free spreadsheet does the same thing as a tool that costs thousands. They're both partially right, which makes this an annoying question to answer.
I'm going to try anyway. We sell a SAM tool ourselves, so I have an obvious bias here. But I also genuinely believe that for some companies, a spreadsheet is the better choice. The honest answer depends on where you are, how big your team is, and how many SaaS tools you're actually managing.
When a spreadsheet works just fine
If you have fewer than 30 SaaS subscriptions and a team of under 50 people, a spreadsheet will probably serve you well. At that scale, one person can reasonably keep track of what you're paying for, who has access, and when renewals come up. You don't need automation when the whole picture fits in your head.
A good SaaS tracking spreadsheet needs columns for the tool name, the owner, monthly cost, number of seats, renewal date, and a notes field. That's it. Nothing fancy. Update it when someone joins or leaves, review it monthly, and you've got a working system. I've seen companies run this way for years without issues.
The spreadsheet approach also wins on flexibility. You can track whatever you want, however you want. No tool is going to have every field you need for every situation. A spreadsheet bends to fit your process. A Microsoft Excel file or a Google Sheet, either works. The tool doesn't matter as much as the habit of keeping it updated.
And let's be real about cost. A spreadsheet is free. If your SaaS spend is $5,000 a month and a SAM tool costs $500 a month, you need that tool to find more than $500 in savings every month just to break even. At smaller scales, the math often doesn't work out.
When a spreadsheet starts falling apart
The problems creep in gradually. At first, one person owns the spreadsheet and keeps it accurate. Then they go on vacation and nobody updates it for two weeks. Then a new tool gets added but nobody tells the spreadsheet owner. Then someone changes the formatting and breaks the formulas. Then you realize the renewal date for a major contract was wrong and you missed the cancellation window by a month.
Scale is the real killer. Once you're past 50 or so SaaS tools, the manual work of keeping a spreadsheet accurate becomes a real burden. You're logging into admin panels for dozens of tools to check user counts. You're cross-referencing wiht HR to see who left and what access they had. You're chasing down department heads to find out if anyone still uses that analytics platform. It turns into a part-time job.
There's also the staleness problem. A spreadsheet is only as good as its last update. The moment it's saved, it starts going stale. Someone gets added to Zendesk but the spreadsheet doesn't reflect it. Someone leaves and their seats in four different tools don't get flagged. The data drifts further from reality every day, and teh decisions you make based on that data get worse.
According to SNS Insider research on the software asset management market, the growth of SAM tools is being driven largely by companies that outgrew their manual tracking processes. It's a common pattern. The spreadsheet works until it doesn't, and by the time you realize it's not working, you've usually already wasted a meaningful amount of money.
What SAM tools actually give you
The core value of a proper SAM tool is automation. Instead of manually checking who logged into Zendesk last month, the tool pulls that data automatically. Instead of remembering to check renewal dates, you get alerts. Instead of asking around about whether anyone still uses a particular tool, you can see the usage data directly.
The MarketsandMarkets analysis of this market segment shows that companies using SAM tools typically recover 20% to 30% of their software spend in the first year. That's a big number. But it's also an average, and averages can be misleading. A company spending $200,000 a year on SaaS will definately see different results than one spending $20,000.
The best SAM tools integrate directly with your SaaS platforms. They connect to your Zendesk instance, your CRM, your productivity suite, and pull real usage data. That's fundamentally different from a spreadsheet where someone types in what they think the numbers are. Live data versus remembered data. There's no comparison in terms of accuracy.
Our honest take
We built LicenseTrim to solve one specific piece of this puzzle, finding unused Zendesk seats. We didn't build a giant platform that tries to do everything because we think the "do everything" approach is how you end up with bloated software that costs a fortune and takes months to set up.
Here's what I'd actually recommend. If you're small, use a spreadsheet. Seriously. Don't let anyone sell you something you don't need yet. Keep it simple, review it regularly, and save your money for when you actually have a scaling problem.
If you're medium-sized and starting to feel the pain of manual tracking, start with focused tools that solve specific problems rather than buying an enterprise SAM platform. If your biggest line item is Zendesk, a tool that monitors just Zendesk will give you faster ROI than a platform that tries to monitor everything but takes six weeks to configure.
If you're large and managing hundreds of tools across thousands of employees, yes, you probably need a proper SAM platform. At that scale, the spreadsheet hasn't worked for a while, and the cost of a good tool pays for itself many times over.
The wrong answer is doing nothing. Whether you choose a spreadsheet or a tool, the act of paying attention to your SaaS spend is what saves the money. Pick the approach that you'll actually stick with, and start there.