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The CAD Manager's Annual License Audit Checklist: 12 Field Checks That Pay for Themselves

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The CAD Manager's Annual License Audit Checklist

Twelve checks — from ghost seats to vendor telemetry — that pay for the hour they take. Built from auditing how 170+ CAD tools handle licensing.

The annual license audit is the least glamorous hour in CAD management and the highest-ROI one. Vendors count on inertia; this checklist is the antidote. Run it 60-90 days before your renewal dates.

1. Seats and Usage

  1. Reconcile license counts vs. active users. Pull login logs (FLEXlm/NLM administrators: lmutil lmstat output over a representative week) and compare against billed seats. Ghost seats from departed employees are the #1 finding — expect 5-15% of total.
  2. Measure utilization. If peak concurrent use is under ~60% of licensed seats, floating-license conversion or seat reduction is on the table.
  3. Check borrowed licenses. License borrowing that nobody returned holds seats hostage. lmstat shows BORROW rows; expired borrows sometimes need vendor-side cleanup.
  4. Audit shared/departmental accounts. They violate most license agreements and hide true usage.

2. Money and Contract Terms

  1. Map each product to its renewal date and notice window. Auto-renewal notice periods of 30-60 days are where leverage dies. Calendar them now.
  2. Compare this year's quote against last year's line by line. Per-seat uplifts and tier migrations get quietly applied. A 7% "adjustment" compounds.
  3. Re-verify entitlements against what's deployed. You're entitled to what the contract says, not what the vendor's portal implies. Keep the contracts.
  4. Price the alternatives while you still have leverage. Renewal season is the only time discounts exist. (Our index shows the perpetual-license camp is bigger than vendors imply — 46 tools in ours).

3. Compliance and Environment Hygiene

  1. Rebuild the license server options file against the current org chart. EXCLUDE departed users, RESERVE for teams that need guaranteed access, TIMEOUTALL to reclaim idle sessions (the classic overnight-seat-hog fix).
  2. Verify offline/home-use provisions in writing. They vary wildly per vendor and are the most common accidental violation.
  3. Update the software inventory against end-of-support dates. Running two versions behind is a security and file-compatibility liability with a known cost.
  4. Document everything in one place. Renewal dates, license counts, admin contacts, options files. The audit exists so the next person (or future you) doesn't rebuild it from invoices.

The One-Hour Version

If that's all the time exists for: ghost seats (1), utilization (2), renewal calendar (5), and the options file rebuild (9). Those four catch most of the money.

We track licensing models — subscription, perpetual, hybrid, network options — across 170+ CAD tools at CADGuide.tools. Explore the Interactive CAD Comparison Directory to evaluate alternatives, or use our free Engineering Toolbox to streamline drawing inspections without software overhead. Free, no signup required.

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