You pay for 8,742 Microsoft seats across 6 subscriptions — 632 were never given to anyone.

counted from Contoso's illustrative records · seats, never people

Each subscription’s seats given out, against the seats bought.

The move

Hand out the spares you already own before anyone buys more.

Take it to your meeting

The deckThe License Report as PowerPoint — one slide per question. This question as a PDFThe sheet, ready to print or save. ListenThis answer, read aloud.

Bought — the seats you are billed for.

Never given to anyone — bought minus assigned: fully paid, still on the shelf.

← Cover 2 · What is waiting for a user — and where? →

Question 1 · What do we already own?

You pay for 8,742 Microsoft seats. 632 of them were never given to anyone.

Stop re-buying a seat type you already own spares of.See who is waiting

How we counted this

what a procurement total is · what is left out

Read from your Microsoft subscription list under one consent. A subscription’s bought and assigned counts are procurement totals — seats, never people — so this page is safe to project in any room.

counted Procurement totals read from your Microsoft subscription list — a SKU's bought and assigned counts are seats, never people. Free and trial subscriptions are left out: an unbought seat is not money. The bar above puts the same two totals on one scale: seats in somebody's hands, and seats that are unassigned.

So what: most organizations answer this from a spreadsheet somebody last touched at the previous renewal. This is your live subscription list, read from Microsoft, in the order that matters — the subscriptions with the most seats waiting for a user, first.

You can now decide: you can state your true license estate in one sentence, and you can stop buying a seat type you already own spares of.

Defined: Subscription (SKU) — one purchasable Microsoft product line, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot or Power BI Pro. Bought — the seats you are billed for. Assigned — the seats handed to a named person in your directory. Unassigned — bought minus assigned: fully paid, still on the shelf. Grace — Microsoft’s roughly 30-day window after a subscription lapses, during which the seats still work.

See every subscription you pay for

bought · assigned · unassigned

Fig 2 · Every paid Microsoft subscription you hold — most seats waiting for a user first
Subscription	Bought	Assigned	Unassigned	Handed out
Microsoft 365 Copilot Microsoft_365_Copilot	4,200	4,040	160	96%
Power BI Pro POWER_BI_PRO	1,050	900	150	86%
Visio Plan 2 VISIOCLIENT	242	120	122	50%
Dyn365 DYN365	600	520	80	87%
Microsoft 365 E5 SPE_E5	2,500	2,440	60	98%
Project Plan 3 PROJECTPROFESSIONAL	150	90	60	60%