Nudge Security surfaces the data you need to find waste, consolidate overlap, and make informed decisions about what to keep, cut, or renegotiate.
Prerequisites: Complete the Start Here setup guides first. You'll want to make sure your approval statuses are in place and you've enabled your spend analysis through your spend settings under Settings > Spend.
Day 1: What you can do right now
What to do | Where to do it | Why it matters |
Review the Spend dashboard | Dashboards > Spend | See estimated SaaS spend across your organization, broken down by app, category, and trend - including historical spend data discovered automatically from emailed invoices and receipts. The dashboard highlights cost consolidation opportunities like unapproved paid accounts, paid apps with single users, and apps with overlapping functionality. |
Disable spend analysis for irrelevant apps | Individual app records | Nudge Security analyzes spend for every discovered app by default, but not every app is relevant - payroll or accounting apps that surface non-SaaS invoices, personal signups, or apps managed through a separate procurement process can add noise to your Spend dashboard. Disable spend analysis on an app-by-app basis to focus on what matters in the Spend dashboard. |
Identify redundant apps | Apps (Category filter) | Filter by category to spot overlapping tools - multiple project management apps, multiple design tools, multiple video conferencing tools, etc. |
Check for unused or low-activity apps | Apps (Last Account Activity filter) | Apps with no activity in 6–12+ months are prime candidates for cancellation or license reduction. |
Enable the App Directory | Settings > App Directory | A self-service directory where employees can discover and request access to approved apps - reducing the temptation to sign up for unapproved (and often paid) alternatives. |
What's next: Build on your foundation
Find redundant apps and duplicate instances
Redundancy is one of the fastest wins. When multiple teams independently adopt tools that do the same thing - three different project management apps, two different e-signature tools - you're paying for overlap.
The Spend dashboard includes a Possibly redundant apps module that does the heavy lifting for you. It identifies apps in the same category that have overlapping users and shows them side by side - the most popular app on the left, similar apps on the right, with spend totals for each. This gives you a clear picture of where consolidation would save the most money without you having to filter and compare manually.
When you click into a specific app, the bottom of the Summary page shows an Apps similar to [app] visualization - a bubble chart that maps similar apps by number of active accounts and user overlap. The "Shared accounts" column tells you how many users have accounts on both the app you're looking at and the similar app.
High overlap means consolidation is straightforward - users are already comfortable with one tool and could drop the other. Low overlap might mean different teams chose different tools for the same purpose, which is a conversation to have before making a decision.
Once you've identified redundancy:
Decide which app to standardize on and mark it as Approved.
Mark the others as Not Permitted and set up redirect rules to point people toward the approved tool.
Nudge users of the not-permitted apps to migrate. Over time, you can work with technical contacts to decommission the redundant tools.
Redundancy isn't just different apps in the same category, it's also duplicate instances of the same app. Nudge Security discovers multiple instances (e.g., marketing.slack.com and engineering.slack.com, or separate Jira tenants for different teams) and displays them in the Instances tab on each app's overview page. Each instance shows which accounts are associated with it. Shadow tenants are a common source of hidden spend - teams spin up their own instance without realizing the organization already has one, and each instance carries its own billing.
Identify unused licenses
Not every account represents an active user. Look for:
Apps with low activity - use the Last Account Activity filter to find apps where most accounts have been idle for months.
Accounts with no recent login - within individual app records, look at account-level activity to spot people who haven't used a tool recently but may still have a paid seat.
For a systematic approach to finding and removing unused accounts - including bulk auditing across multiple apps and delegating removal to technical contacts - see Clean up abandoned accounts. The abandoned accounts playbook lets you audit usage at scale, collect responses from account holders, and hand off cleanup to app admins.
Set up the App Directory
The App Directory gives your employees a curated catalog of approved apps they can browse and request access to. It's a carrot to go with the stick of not-permitted rules.
When people can easily find and request approved tools, they're less likely to go looking for alternatives on their own - which means fewer surprise subscriptions and less redundant spend.
Go to Configuring and Using the App Directory to learn more about configuring which apps appear in the app directory, who can request access, and what the request workflow looks like.
Automate renewal reminders
You can create a rule to automatically nudge billing contacts when an app's renewal date is approaching - so nobody gets caught off guard by an auto-renewal they didn't review. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see Nudge billing contacts and notify your team of upcoming renewals.
Track and forecast spend
The Spend dashboard shows trends over time, so you can measure the impact of consolidation efforts. As you eliminate redundant apps and reclaim unused licenses, you should see spend flatten or decline relative to headcount growth.
Nudge Security discovers up to two years of historical SaaS spend automatically from emailed invoices and receipts - no manual data entry required. You can compare historical spend against budgeted amounts and projected costs to create more accurate forecasts that account for growing SaaS adoption. For each app, you can see average cost per user, renewal date, and billing frequency - useful context when deciding whether to consolidate, renegotiate, or cut.
To make sure your spend data is as accurate as possible, check Settings > Spend and add any mailboxes that regularly receive invoices but aren't associated with app users (e.g., ap@yourcompany.com or procurement@yourcompany.com).
Key features for this use case
Feature | Where to find it | What it does |
Spend dashboard | Dashboards > Spend | Up to two years of historical SaaS spend, cost consolidation insights, spend forecasting, and trend analysis by app, category, and over time. |
Possibly redundant apps | Dashboards > Spend | Identifies apps in the same category with overlapping users, showing the most popular app alongside similar apps and total spend on each. |
Apps similar to [app] | Apps > individual records > Summary tab | Bubble chart showing similar apps by account count and user overlap — helps assess how easy consolidation would be. |
App Inventory filters | Apps | Filter by category, activity, and approval status to find redundancy and waste. |
App instances | Apps > individual records > Instances tab | Discover duplicate instances of the same app (shadow tenants), with account-level visibility into who's using each instance. |
App Directory | Settings > App Directory | Self-service catalog of approved apps for employees to browse and request. |
Account activity data | Individual app records | Account-level activity details showing who's using what—and who isn't. |
Technical contacts | Individual app records | The person responsible for each app, useful for license management and renewal conversations. |
Rules | Automations > Rules | Automated renewal preparation workflows, preferred vendor redirection, and suspended account cleanup. See the Rule Library for setup guides. |