Top 10 SaaS Tools Draining Your Budget – and What to Do Now

Software subscription costs are quietly eating into margins – and the impact is growing.

Zylo’s 2025 SaaS Management Index reveals that 75% of purchases occur through employee expenses or direct supplier payments, putting Finance out of the loop until the money’s already spent.

These low-dollar, department-level buys rarely raise flags individually, but collectively they create a significant, often overlooked drag on margins.

Top 10 Most Expensed SaaS Tools in 2025

What’s quietly draining your software budget? Zylo’s data shows that employees frequently expense training, development, and AI-powered tools — costs that often fly under Finance’s radar.

Software Tools That Slip Through Finance Controls

These aren’t fringe tools either. They’re among the most commonly expensed cloud-based apps today and should be the first place Finance teams look when targeting cost control. Here are the top 10:

1. Udemy – popular for employee training and development
2. ChatGPT – AI-powered assistance and productivity
3. Canva – design and content creation
4. Kudoboard – employee recognition and engagement
5. CliftonStrengths – talent assessment and development
6. LinkedIn – professional networking and learning
7. OpenAI API – powering AI applications internally
8. Grammarly – writing and communication support
9. Adobe Acrobat – document management and editing
10. Kahoot – interactive training and team engagement

Why This List Should Concern Finance

These tools show how software spend is shifting away from large enterprise platforms toward AI-native, training and productivity apps being expensed directly by employees.

These software expenses, unchecked and decentralized, create big budget leaks. Finance teams should take a closer look at whether these applications are delivering measurable value or contributing to unnecessary spend.

Hidden SaaS Costs Lurking Behind Your Invoices

Individually, SaaS invoices tend to look harmless. In aggregate, they tell a different story.

Bundled services, feature creep (adding unused extras over time) and vendor escalators (automatic price hikes) are hidden software cost drivers that quietly expand over time. What appears to be a clean line item can mask margin erosion at scale.

Common SaaS Spend Blind Spots Finance Overlooks

License fees are easy to track, but they’re rarely the full story. Most tools come with hidden operational costs that don’t show up on invoices, including:

• Integration costs: Custom workflows and developer time can add up fast.
• Support plans: Often priced separately and quietly auto-renewed.
• Compliance and security reviews: Internal labor even for low-risk tools.
• Low adoption impact: Shifts cost from financial to functional — wasted time, lost productivity, duplicated effort across teams.

These costs escape the general ledger (GL), but they still hit the business. Finance leaders need better visibility to manage them effectively.

How Department-Level Purchases Create Visibility Gaps

When teams buy software in silos, spend visibility breaks down – and Finance loses control of the numbers.

Teams often solve the same problem with different vendors, which leads to tool sprawl and a growing pile of unused licenses.

Basic usage data often overlooks hidden SaaS expenses like integration costs, support fees, and productivity losses. A tool might show steady logins but deliver little value if it overlaps with something already in place or if it has no connection to business outcomes. Without visibility into ownership or performance, Finance is stuck managing spend that it cannot justify. That opens the door to reporting risk.

How Finance Lost SaaS Oversight — and How to Get It Back

As SaaS adoption exploded, processes didn’t keep pace. Business units moved quickly, IT teams were stretched thin, and Finance often saw invoices only after contracts were signed. 

Without centralized oversight, purchases became fragmented, and so did accountability. 

Regaining control requires putting in place structures that align all stakeholders before spending occurs.

How We Got Here

The rapid pace of business growth pushed teams to adopt tools on their own terms. 

IT’s limited bandwidth meant less oversight and fewer standardized processes. Meanwhile, Finance was often out of the loop until invoices landed, by which point options to negotiate or consolidate had passed.

This decentralized approach fractured visibility and ownership, creating pockets of SaaS spend scattered across the organization. Without a clear owner for each tool, costs ballooned unnoticed and inefficient contracts slipped through.

The Fix: Create a Centralized SaaS Governance Framework

To gain control over escalating costs, it helps to put clear policies in place that improve transparency and encourage collaboration throughout the vendor lifecycle.

• Centralize SaaS vendor management within a comprehensive SaaS governance framework to ensure full contract visibility across all business units and prevent software spend leakage.
• Implement a formal SaaS contract approval process that mandates renewal reviews 60 to 90 days before contracts expire. This early review window allows Finance and stakeholders to assess value, renegotiate terms, or explore alternatives.
• Establish cross-functional approval flows involving Finance, IT, and Legal for all new SaaS purchases. This ensures every contract aligns with budget, security, and compliance requirements before any commitments are made.

SaaS Audit Framework: Reduce Waste, Boost ROI

Unchecked subscription spending grows fast. A clear, repeatable audit process helps finance teams spot waste and make smarter decisions without getting lost in data.

5-Step SaaS Audit Framework for Cost Visibility

Follow these five steps to audit your stack effectively and make informed decisions:

1. Consolidate all SaaS-related spend data from accounts payable, expense reports, and corporate cards. This gives you a complete view of what is being paid for.
   
2. Map each tool to its respective department, function, and internal owner. Clear ownership is critical to understanding value and accountability.
   
3. Identify overlapping tools and licenses with little or no usage. These often represent unnecessary expenses.
   
4. Compare the number of licenses purchased with actual login or usage data. This highlights inefficiencies and wasted spend.
   
5. Assign each tool a status: Cut, Keep, or Consolidate based on its usage and strategic importance. This ensures decisions are grounded in data and business priorities.

Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Software Rationalization Scorecard

A scorecard brings clarity to SaaS management by consolidating key information in one place. Include details such as tool name, business owner, cost, usage metrics, renewal date, and strategic importance.

Build a simple decision matrix within the scorecard that supports quarterly reviews and guides actionable steps. This keeps the focus on continuous optimization and helps avoid unnecessary renewals or overlaps.

SaaS Rationalization Strategy: Cut, Keep or Consolidate

Effective rationalization depends on clear criteria that protect budgets and align with business goals. A SaaS rationalization strategy helps reduce spend, improve license utilization, and align tools with business priorities.

Cut

• Eliminate SaaS apps with little or no adoption that drain budget without delivering measurable ROI.
• Target one-off purchases duplicating existing core systems – these add complexity and waste spend.
• Remove any tools lacking clear, measurable return on investment. If a tool can’t prove its value, it’s a liability.

Keep

• Prioritize platforms that directly support revenue, compliance, or customer delivery -they’re essential to operations.
• Retain tools with strong usage, clear ROI, and active internal champions – these justify ongoing investment.

Consolidate

• Identify overlapping tools serving similar functions across teams or departments -consolidate to reduce complexity and costs.
• Focus on scalable solutions that can replace multiple niche tools with a single, efficient platform.
• Consolidation streamlines vendor management, improves workflows, and gives Finance better leverage for contract negotiations.

What Great SaaS Oversight Looks Like

Effective SaaS management requires treating it as a distinct financial category with dedicated tracking and accountability. This approach enables smarter spending and stronger alignment with business goals.

Strategic Finance in Action

SaaS spend is tracked separately and reported on a monthly basis, ensuring ongoing visibility.

Budgeting reflects actual usage and holds teams accountable for their consumption.

Finance drives SaaS renewal strategies, vendor performance evaluations, and develops business cases that align software investments with corporate financial goals.

Software Subscriptions Aren’t the Problem – Lack of Oversight Is

Finance’s role isn’t to block spending, but to insist on clarity and measurable value for every dollar spent. SaaS should enable growth and efficiency, not quietly drain resources.

But without oversight, decentralized purchasing and overlapping tools lead to waste that’s hard to see and even harder to stop. The issue isn’t the tools themselves, but the absence of clear controls, ownership and performance accountability.

Next Step for Finance: SaaS Renewal Review Checklist

Don’t let renewals catch you off guard. Use this checklist to keep SaaS spend in check and streamline your renewal process.

• Tool name and internal owner
• Annual cost
• Last usage review
• License count versus actual users
• Business case justification
• Next renewal date
• Recommended action: Cut, Keep or Consolidate