Paying for licences nobody uses is annoying. Using licences you never bought is a different problem — one that arrives by letter, with a deadline. Find out where you are exposed before someone else does.
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audit exposure
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estimated to put right
0
issues found
Answer honestly — nobody sees this but you.
1. Your environment
Physical or virtual.
Almost always everyone, including via a line-of-business app.
Connecting to a Windows desktop or app hosted on a server.
Including any bundled with a line-of-business application.
2. Records and control
This section decides how bad an audit would be, more than anything technical. Audits are won with paperwork.
3. Microsoft
Where most SME exposure sits, and where the rules are least intuitive.
4. Everything else
5. What we found
6. If an audit letter arrived tomorrow
What you would need to produce, and roughly in this order.
7. Worth understanding
Most of this is fixable quietly, and cheaply, today
It stops being cheap the moment someone else raises it. Hamilton Group reconciles what you have installed against what you have bought, buys what is genuinely missing, and gives you the register that makes the next audit a morning's work. Book a free licensing review.
Guidance only, and not legal or licensing advice. Software licensing terms are complex, differ between agreement types (CSP, Enterprise Agreement, Open, OEM, retail) and change over time. The rules described here reflect the general position for common Microsoft products at the time of writing and may not apply to your specific agreement. Cost estimates are indicative UK list prices for putting a gap right and exclude VAT — they do not include back-dated charges, loss of discount, or settlement multiples, which can apply where use was unlicensed. Have anything material verified by your reseller or a licensing specialist before you buy, declare, or sign anything.