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FAQ
Straight answers.
Everything a careful founder or CFO asks before handing over a single statement: the guarantee, the security, the scope, and the timeline.
No Savings, No Fee
5 questionsThe guarantee.
How does the “no savings, no fee” model actually work?
We audit your software stack and surface every dollar of recoverable waste. Our fee is a percentage of the savings we actually deliver in the first year. If the audit finds nothing, or you choose not to act on what we find, there is no invoice. The downside risk is entirely ours.
What counts as a saving?
A saving is any verifiable reduction against your current run-rate: cancelling duplicate or unused tools, removing ghost and over-provisioned seats, downgrading tiers you've outgrown, eliminating billing errors and hidden fees, and negotiated price cuts on contracts you keep. Every saving is documented line by line against the bill you were paying before we started.
Do you take referral fees or kickbacks from vendors?
Never. We take no commissions, referral fees, or kickbacks from any software vendor. Our only incentive is the savings on your bill, which is what keeps our advice honest about whether to keep, cut, or switch a tool.
What happens if you don't find any savings?
Then you owe us nothing. No flat fee, no minimum, no charge for our time. That is the guarantee end to end.
How is your fee calculated, and when do I pay it?
Our fee is an agreed percentage of the savings we confirm in the first year, invoiced only after you've approved them and started realizing them. We never invoice against unrealized or projected savings, only what actually shows up on your bill.
Security & Privacy
5 questionsHow your data is handled.
What data do you actually need to run an audit?
Billing and spend data: invoices, subscription statements, card and expense exports, and a list of the tools in use. We do not need access to the contents inside your applications, including customer records, source code, documents, or product data. The audit is about the bill, not the work the software does.
How is my data accessed and protected during an audit?
Access is read-only and on your terms: exported billing statements or scoped read-only access to finance tooling, never admin credentials to production systems. Data is transferred over encrypted channels, stored in access-controlled systems limited to your audit team, encrypted at rest, and minimized to only what the audit requires. We are glad to sign your NDA before any data changes hands.
Will you ever need admin access to our internal systems?
No. We work from read-only billing data and statements. We never need admin credentials, production access, or the ability to make changes inside your tools.
Do you sign an NDA before reviewing our data?
Yes, as standard. We are glad to sign yours, or use ours, before any data changes hands.
What happens to our data after the audit is complete?
Data is retained only as long as needed to support the findings and any negotiation in progress, then deleted on a fixed schedule. We do not sell, share, or repurpose your billing data for any other client or use.
Scope
5 questionsWhat's covered, including Shadow AI.
Which tools and categories do you audit?
Your entire software stack: SaaS subscriptions, cloud and infrastructure spend, productivity and collaboration tools, security and dev tooling, and the long tail of niche apps. Anything billed as recurring software, across every team and not just the ones procurement knows about, is in scope, including shadow IT bought on personal cards.
What is Shadow AI and how do you find it?
Shadow AI is AI spend that finance can't see: ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Cursor and the rest, bought per person or per team on personal and corporate cards with no central visibility. We treat AI as its own category, reconcile it across expense reports and card statements, and surface duplicate subscriptions, untracked per-seat licenses, and API token costs with no per-person owner.
Do you audit infrastructure and cloud spend, or just SaaS subscriptions?
Both. Cloud and infrastructure spend, productivity and collaboration tools, security and dev tooling, and AI subscriptions and API usage are all in scope alongside traditional SaaS.
What about tools bought on personal credit cards instead of company accounts?
Those are exactly the charges that hide best, and exactly what we look for. Personal-card software and AI subscriptions get reconciled against expense reports so they are no longer invisible to finance.
Will you recommend new tools, or only cut what we already have?
We cut, we don't add. We are not selling a platform or earning anything from a new tool you adopt. Our only job is to make the stack you already have leaner.
Timeline & Results
5 questionsHow long it takes, and what you get.
How long does the SaaS audit take?
The core audit typically runs about two weeks from the moment we have your billing data. Larger or more fragmented stacks can take a little longer, but you will have a clear timeline up front and the process is light on your team's time.
When do I actually see savings?
You will see the full list of recoverable savings at the end of the two-week audit, line by line with receipts. Immediate wins, like cancelling duplicates, removing ghost seats, and fixing billing errors, can be realized right away. Savings that depend on contract negotiations land as those renewals and renegotiations close.
How much can I expect to save?
A thorough audit typically removes around 30% of a bloated software budget. Across three recent Saaspartan audits, clients recovered over $490,000 combined, from duplicate AI seats, ghost licenses, silent renewals, and tier creep.
How much of my team's time does this take?
Very little. Most of the work happens on our side once we have access to your billing data. Expect a short kickoff call and a final review call, with light email back-and-forth in between.
What happens after the audit report is delivered?
You get a clear, line-by-line report of what to cancel, downgrade, or renegotiate, and the dollar value of each. You decide what to act on. For anything you approve, we handle cancellations and negotiations on your behalf and confirm the savings before we invoice.