If you’re responsible for agreeing supplier contracts at any level in your organisation, you’ll be familiar with that sinking feeling when a cheery and unexpected email arrives from a supplier: ‘Thanks for choosing to renew your subscription with XYZ!’.
What follows is, usually, a fruitless attack plan to roll-back the renewal.
- Step 1 – Check if it has actually renewed. Log on to the supplier portal (possibly after resetting the password) to check the renewal date, only to find that the renewal’s already taken place and funds deducted.
- Step 2 – Check if there’s a grace period for refunds? Usually not, there’s typically a no-refund policy stated clearly in the T&Cs.
- Step 3 – Complain to support. If you get past the AI bot, you may get a pseudo-sympathetic response like this, real-world, example from my past… “Hi Chris! We understand that it’s important to you to have control over your subscription renewals, and advanced notices to remind you about your subscription with us. We’ve duly taken note of your feedback on this, and we’ll do our best to keep it in consideration to improve the user experience when it comes to managing their subscriptions.”
Unfortunately the structure of most technical agreements, across all sizes of suppliers, is geared towards auto-renewal. Some are better than others, but most will happily deduct your monthly or annual premium without any advance notice.
The solution? Good subscription management
- Create, and maintain, a subscription log. All subscriptions, renewals, IT contracts should be entered in there. Ensure that the renewal date, the notification terms, and an advance reminder date (to give time to review) are all set correctly. Review the log monthly.
- Ensure you have a strong procurement policy, with clear delegation of responsibility.
- Control the finances. All corporate credit cards, preferably ones you can turn on and off easily, should be tightly managed and regularly reviewed. Cross-reference the statements with your subscription log to ensure you’ve not missed any running subscriptions.
- Create, and maintain, a subscription mailbox to receive all billing notifications. Most suppliers support additional billing email notifications.
The system in which you create the subscription log is not so important. Sharepoint list? Ok. Notion database? Ok. Even Excel will do the job. The important thing is to ensure it’s accessible, updated, and reviewed regularly.
I’m Chris, and have been working in IT management for over 20 years. This is part of an ongoing series of practical IT tips for business owners. If you found it useful, follow me on LinkedIn for updates. And if subscription sprawl is something you’re wrestling with, I’m happy to take a look at how your business manages it – message me directly or drop me an email via my website.
