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Our company has received a letter for a software audit. Ours should be fairly painless as were are small enough, but I’m worried about responding correctly in a way that keeps them coming for more. People keep saying they are trying to shake us down into an Enterprise agreement. Have others perceived it that way also? Does anyone know of any response templates a guy could use? I don’t want to tell too little or too much. Any help from the community would be surely appreciated, thanks!

@Microsoft

9 Spice ups
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we had an audit at my old job, we got a spread sheet to fill in and that was it. They told us that we were missing some licenses which we had to buy and that was it. It’s a pain to fill out the spread sheet unless you use VLK but I can’t say they were tough to deal with. Even gave us an extension

2 Spice ups
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They have been good with us also, given 2 extensions because our company officers have been out. Did THEY give you the spreadsheet??

2 Spice ups
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yup, they sent us the spread sheet that we had to fill in with our license info

2 Spice ups
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As long as your company isn’t trying to use licenses on machines that are not licensed for them, you should be good. A few years back, a “big player” in my town was caught up in an audit, something like 500 illegal installs on customer machines. It was a big news item back then (for a smaller town). Best of luck, I’m sure you will do just fine in this audit =)

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The number of Spiceworks threads about Microsoft audits has exploded in the past 6 months, so don’t feel singled out. It’s been happening to a LOT of people. Just go through the process that they have indicated (there seem to be 2 different types: the self-audit that only requires you to send a letter on company letterhead, and a full audit with a spreadsheet to fill out) and if needed, make arrangements to purchase any licenses if you have a shortfall.

My hunch is that Microsoft is just getting all their ducks in a row in order to start implementing their recently announced change in volume licensing: Microsoft makes sweeping changes to its volume-licensing plans | ZDNET

2 Spice ups
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We should be okay I think, buy some CALS and that’s it. Thanks for the replies all.

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Thank you Gabrielle: I forgot to distinguish the self audit vs the full audit. Ours is a self audit, maybe not as stressful as I’m making it.

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Started this about 6 weeks ago…although it wasn’t said to be an audit. It was said to be “Microsoft Software Asset Management Review” Got the spreadsheet, filled it out and sent it to them.

Heard back a few days later. The numbers they came back with were okay except for our server licenses. They said we had 15 and were using 17. We looked at our various different documents (and the volume licensing site) and could come up with 10 or 20, but never 15. We sent that back for questions and as of yet have not heard back from them. Very odd in my opinion. Additionally I discovered that somewhere back in 2001 we had bought Exchange and user cals. That information sure would have been nice to know in 2012 when we bought Exchange yet again. So that was yet another question I had for them and have yet to hear back from them.

Hopefully yours goes better and quicker.

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Thanks, I hope we have better results lol.

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There’s a lesson to be learned here. Track your licenses and installs regularly and the audit will be very easy. If you wait until they send you the letter to figure it out then you’ll be running around gathering data in a rush.

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Like Glenn says track all of your licenses and keep a record of who is getting what and include the COA with who got the machine. This will work unless you move machines around from time to time or switch users. You need to keep track of from 5 to 10 COAs and if you use the Home and Business track those COAs as well. If you have them in a database or spreadsheet it will take this down to a simple copy and paste.

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Thanks Glenn and Robert. We keep a pretty accurate account and have what I would call a fairly decent system in place. The workstations are fairly easy, it was more the server CALS I was concerned with. Plus, against my advice and wishes, company policy has everyone an admin on their local pc, I have to rely on Spiceworks to know when some of these changes occur. Ya gotta love end users!

Thanks for all of the input from the community.

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ask the partner you buy your software from. Many times, they have records of what you purchased, and offer a free service or software to run to get an audit. Because they are Microsoft partners and resellers, things go smooth, even with Microsoft.

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I thank everyone for their input. The papers get signed today, keeping my fingers crossed.