Analyze your SaaS spend

Analyzing your SaaS spend data can give you a better understanding of your SaaS usage and help you to identify cost savings. 

By importing spend data into Trelica, you can:

  • Uncover apps that your organization is paying for, including those coming out of other department's budgets or which are being expensed by employees.
  • Prioritize apps that should be actively managed based on the amount they are costing you.
  • Report on expenditure over time or by category of app.
  • Identify opportunities to reduce spend by consolidating licenses into a single contract or moving expensed costs to a purchase order.
  • Compare actual spend to expected license or contract costs. 

Spend data, licenses and contracts

You can import both spend data and license or contract details into Trelica.

  • Spend data refers to payments made.
  • Contracts and licenses provide information about planned expenditure together with additional details, such as the price per seat, number of seats and renewal terms.

We recommend starting with spend data because it is usually stored in a finance system and available to import with relatively little effort. Although contract and license information is useful (particularly if you want to use Trelica to optimize app licenses or manage renewals), collecting this information is not always easy.

Before importing spend data, ensure that the relevant currencies are enabled from Admin > Settings > Currencies.

Import spend data 

You can import spend data into Trelica automatically by setting up an integration to your finance system. Alternatively, you can import spend data manually by uploading a spreadsheet. 

When you start importing spend data, Trelica tries to map each transaction to the apps in your inventory. The finance system is listed as a data source for the app and the transactions relating to the app are listed on the app's Spend tab. 

If Trelica identifies any apps that are being paid for which are not already in your inventory, Trelica adds the app to your inventory with a status of "New" so that you can review it. 

You can filter the Apps inventory by the amount you've spent on each app in the last 12 months. This is useful when prioritizing apps that should be actively managed by your IT team. 

For more information about importing spend data automatically, see Connect to a finance system. For information about adding spend data manually, see Import spend data manually.

Expensed and invoiced spend

While your main IT spend may be invoiced centrally through your finance department, it's common for smaller amounts to be paid for by employees and claimed back as expenses. This type of spend may include personal productivity tools and low-cost or team-specific apps.

You can analyze the split between invoiced and expensed spend in Trelica. This can help you identify opportunities to consolidate spend into a centrally invoiced contract for potential bulk savings and easier administration. 

To start comparing invoiced spend against expensed spend, enable the feature from Settings > Spend > Show spend as Expensed or Invoiced. Then import spend data via an integration with your finance system or manually from a spreadsheet and specify whether transactions should be categorized as invoiced or expensed spend. 

If you have both a finance system and an expense management system, you can either:

  • Integrate Trelica with each system directly. If you also import your expense data into your finance system, ensure you exclude the expense account codes from the finance system integration. If expense account codes are not excluded, the data will be imported twice - once from your expense management system and once from your finance system. 
  • Integrate Trelica with your finance system only, and import expense data into your finance system. When you connect to your finance system, specify the account codes that identify expenses. If you connected to a finance system before enabling this feature, edit the integration settings to ensure the account codes are mapped correctly. 

Spend dashboard

The Spend dashboard provides several interactive charts to help you understand your SaaS spend and prioritize next steps.

  • Total spend: Your SaaS spend broken down by month. Click Analyse spend to open the Spend Insight report and explore this data further.
  • Highest spend by category: Spend data broken down by app category. Select a category to view all apps of that type that you're currently paying for. If multiple apps provide the same functionality, you may want to standardize on a preferred app.
  • Top applications: Apps ordered by spend. For high cost apps, consider adding contract and license details so that you can compare actual spend to expected costs and manage renewals proactively. You may also want to consider setting up an optimization workflow to automatically revoke or downgrade unused app licenses

Spend dashboard.png

If you have enabled expensed and invoiced spend, then the dashboard also displays:

  • Top expensed apps - Apps with the highest value of expensed spend or the most expense transactions. Consider moving these apps to a centrally invoiced contract for potential bulk savings and better oversight.
  • Overlapping expenses - Apps being both invoiced and expensed. Consider incorporating these expenses into the existing contract for potential savings, access to upgraded licenses and easier administration.

Spend dashboard expensed spend.png

Spend reports

The Reports list contains additional reports to help you analyze your spend data further:

  • Cost center report: Spend per app broken down by cost center, together with the total spend per cost center. You can specify the cost center for transactions when you connect Trelica to a finance system or import spend data manually.
  • Savings tracker: The number and nominal value of licenses reclaimed or freed-up by Trelica actions related to offboarding and license optimization. For more information, see Using the Savings tracker to stay on top of savings.
  • Spend by app: The spend or contract value of each app. You can break the data down by different reporting periods. This report is limited to the first 100 rows.
  • Spend by app owner: The spend or contract value of all apps "owned" by individuals in your organization. We recommend assigning an owner to each of your managed apps. This report is limited to the first 100 rows. 
  • Spend by app status: The spend or contract value of all apps broken down by status. This report is limited to the first 100 rows. For more information about app statuses, see Managed apps.

To pin a report to the top of the Reports list, click the star icon.

Next steps

To start analyzing your SaaS spend, connect Trelica to your finance system

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