An analysis of 3,141,000+ provisioned license seats across 15 SKUs in Microsoft Partner Center. This report separates inflated trial and free-tier allocations from real paid license waste, showing where clients are paying for seats nobody uses.
An analysis of 3,141,000+ provisioned license seats across 15 SKUs in Microsoft Partner Center. This report separates inflated trial and free-tier allocations from real paid license waste, showing where clients are paying for seats nobody uses.
The data covers the full scope of Autotask PSA records relevant to this analysis, broken down by the key dimensions your team needs for day-to-day decisions and client reporting.
Who should use this: Microsoft 365 administrators, security teams, and account managers
How often: Weekly for license management, monthly for adoption reviews, quarterly for optimization
An analysis of 3,141,000+ provisioned license seats across 15 SKUs in Microsoft Partner Center. This report separates inflated trial and free-tier allocations from real paid license waste, showing where clients are paying for seats nobody uses.
High-level metrics across all subscribed SKUs in Microsoft Partner Center.
Per-SKU breakdown of total seats, consumed seats, and waste percentage. Color-coded by severity.
| Metric | Count |
|---|---|
| Total | 3,249,734 |
| Consumed | 4,217 |
| Available | 3,245,517 |
EVALUATE ROW("TotalLicenses", SUM('BI_MicrosoftPartnerCenter_Subscribed_Skus'[total_units]), "ConsumedLicenses", SUM('BI_MicrosoftPartnerCenter_Subscribed_Skus'[consumed_units]), "AvailableLicenses", SUM('BI_MicrosoftPartnerCenter_Subscribed_Skus'[available_units]))Separating inflated trial/free-tier seat counts from actual paid subscriptions to reveal the real waste picture.
Of the 15 SKUs in this dataset, 7 are trial/viral licenses and 8 are free-tier allocations. None of the top 15 by seat count are paid licenses. Microsoft automatically provisions 10,000 to 1,000,000 seats for these categories, which makes the overall utilization number (0.03%) essentially meaningless as a business metric.
The real question for MSPs is what happens below this top 15. Paid licenses like Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, or E5 typically have seat counts that match what clients actually purchased. That is where genuine waste lives and where cost savings are possible.
EVALUATE TOPN(10, SUMMARIZECOLUMNS('BI_MicrosoftPartnerCenter_Subscribed_Skus'[name], "TotalUnits", SUM('BI_MicrosoftPartnerCenter_Subscribed_Skus'[total_units]), "ConsumedUnits", SUM('BI_MicrosoftPartnerCenter_Subscribed_Skus'[consumed_units])), [TotalUnits], DESC)Horizontal bar chart showing available (unused) vs consumed seats for SKUs with the highest absolute seat waste.
SKUs categorized by utilization band: Active (>50%), Underused (10-50%), Dormant (<10%), Ghost (0%).
Zero active SKUs. Not a single license type in the top 15 reaches even 10% utilization. The highest utilization belongs to FLOW_FREE at 7.28% (728 out of 10,000 seats). Seven SKUs have literally zero consumed seats, making them ghost licenses that exist only on paper.
EVALUATE
ROW(
"TotalLicenses", [Total Licenses],
"ConsumedLicenses", [Consumed Licenses],
"UniqueSKUs", [Unique SKUs]
)Estimated financial impact of unused licenses, separated by trial/free vs paid categories.
This is the most important distinction in this report. The 3.14M unused seats generate zero cost because Microsoft does not charge for trial and free-tier allocations. The real waste sits in paid SKUs with smaller seat counts where every unused license is a direct line-item expense.
For a typical MSP managing 500 users across M365 Business Premium ($22/user/month), even a 15% waste rate translates to $19,800/year in unnecessary spend. That number is worth more than the dramatic 3.14M headline.
3.14M unused seats sounds alarming, but every single SKU in the top 15 is a free or trial license. Microsoft provisions these with inflated seat counts (1M, 50K, 10K) as a default. Reporting on these numbers without context will confuse stakeholders and undermine trust in the data. Always separate trial/free from paid when presenting license utilization.
FORMS_PRO, STREAM, a generic trial SKU, DYN365_CUSTOMER_INSIGHTS_VIRAL, AX7_USER_TRIAL, POWERAPPS_DEV, and POWERAPPS_VIRAL all show zero consumed seats. While these do not cost money, they do create noise in license reporting and may indicate that users are not aware of available tools. For trial licenses, the question is whether anyone evaluated them before they expired.
With 728 consumed seats out of 10,000, Power Automate (Flow) Free is the only SKU showing meaningful traction. This could indicate shadow IT adoption where users self-provision automation workflows. Worth investigating whether these flows are documented, governed, and aligned with client policies.
Filter the SKU data to exclude trial and free-tier licenses. Focus on M365 Business Basic, Standard, Premium, E3, E5, and any add-on SKUs where per-user-per-month costs apply. That is where actual savings exist. Use the DAX queries in this report as a starting point and add a WHERE clause on SKU type.
The seven ghost SKUs with zero consumption should be reviewed. If the trials have expired, remove them from the tenant to reduce reporting noise. If they are still active, decide whether to convert them to paid or let them expire. Leaving trial licenses active indefinitely creates confusion during audits and license reviews.
Self-service adoption of Power Automate is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it means users are solving problems with automation. On the other, ungoverned flows can create security risks and data sprawl. Catalog the active flows, identify who created them, and bring them under IT governance before they become a liability.
Microsoft uses large default seat counts for free and trial SKUs to avoid artificial limits on adoption. The 1M number is a placeholder that means "unlimited" in practical terms. It does not reflect actual purchased seats and carries no cost.
No. Trial and free-tier licenses have no per-seat cost. The financial waste only applies to paid SKUs like M365 Business Premium, E3, E5, or add-on licenses where you pay a monthly fee per assigned user.
Use the DAX query from section 2.0 but filter on SKU names that contain "BUSINESS", "ENTERPRISE", "E3", "E5", or specific add-on identifiers. Those are the paid licenses. Compare consumed_units to total_units for each to find the waste gap.
You cannot disable most free-tier licenses at the tenant level. For trials that have expired, you can remove them. For active free licenses, leave them enabled but exclude them from waste reports to keep your numbers clean and actionable.
A consumed seat means a license has been assigned to a user. It does not necessarily mean the user is actively using the product. A user could have a Power BI license assigned but never log into Power BI. For true usage analysis, you need sign-in and activity logs, not just assignment data.
Power Automate is often self-provisioned by end users who discover it through Microsoft 365 app launcher tiles or SharePoint integrations. The 728 consumed seats suggest organic adoption where users are building their own workflows without formal IT involvement.
Yes. Copy any query from the toggles above and paste it into DAX Studio or the Power BI Desktop performance analyzer. The queries reference standard Proxuma data model tables and measures that exist in every Proxuma Power BI deployment.
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