Constructed figure, assumptions listed
The letter arrives on a Tuesday. It is polite. It talks about a compliance check, it recalls a clause you have not reread since signing, and it proposes a date.
Six weeks later, the figure lands. It is very large. It is calculated on the gap between what you have deployed and what you have purchased, at list price, sometimes with years of retroactivity.
What the only available figure says
A firm specialised in audit defense publishes two figures on its 2024 and 2025 cases: nine out of ten close below the initial claim, and settlements land between 10 and 30 cents per dollar claimed.
Take this figure for what it is. It is produced by an operator that sells the defense service, on cases it has itself defended, and it is not verifiable by anyone else. A case handled without assistance does not enter this statistic.
It remains the only public order of magnitude on a question whose outcome is, everywhere else, covered by a confidentiality clause.
What you provision the day the letter arrives
| Initial claim | Settlement at 10 % | Settlement at 30 % |
|---|---|---|
| €100,000 | €10,000 | €30,000 |
| €250,000 | €25,000 | €75,000 |
| €500,000 | €50,000 | €150,000 |
| €1,000,000 | €100,000 | €300,000 |
The high bound is the one that matters for your provision. The low bound is the one that matters for your negotiation.
Between the two, a single thing is at stake: your ability to document what you have actually deployed, with dated records, before the vendor produces its own. A company that cannot count its own installations accepts the counting of the opposing party.
Three decisions for the first week
Check what the contract authorises the auditor to do. Scope, notice period, collection tools, nature of data transmitted, place of processing. A contractual audit is not a raid, and what is not provided for in the contract is negotiable before starting.
Decide who speaks. An audit is handled in writing, by one designated person, through a single channel. Informal exchanges between a system administrator and a vendor engineer feed the vendor’s case, not yours.
Provision the high bound without announcing it. An amount provisioned internally is a negotiating position. The same amount announced to the vendor becomes a floor.
What you will be told, and what to answer
“It’s a simple routine check.” Maybe. Respond in writing, asking for the contractual clause behind the request, the exact scope and the timetable. A well-founded request gets a three-line answer. An exploratory one withers.
“Our tools will do the collection, you have nothing to do.” You have everything to do, starting with knowing what the tool collects. Ask for the list of data extracted and the purpose of each item. This question also falls under your personal-data obligations if user identifiers are involved.
“The amount claimed is the list price, it is not negotiable.” The list price is a starting point the vendor itself never applies to a sale. Nine cases out of ten close below it.
“Settle now and the audit stops.” An immediate settlement at list price is the most expensive of the three possible scenarios. The second is a negotiated settlement. The third, rarer, is demonstrating that the claim is ill-founded.
To check for yourself, in twenty minutes
Your deployment record, dated today. Export active accounts, installations, servers concerned, and timestamp the file. It is your only piece of evidence, and its value depends on how far back it goes.
Your contract’s audit clause. Copy it into your vendor file. You must be able to cite it without reopening the contract.
The gap between licences paid for and licences used. If it is in your favour, it is an argument. If it is against you, it is an amount to provision before it is claimed from you.
Who has the right to install. Most gaps arise from installations made in good faith by people who did not know a licence was at stake.
The sentence to remember
An audit claim is not an invoice. It is an opening position, and yours is built with dated records.
Open in a spreadsheet · The settlement bounds, as a spreadsheet (572 bytes)
Sources
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Software license audit defense, case results 2024 and 2025 · Redress Compliance, 1 January 2026
Licence: NON VÉRIFIÉ · Nine cases out of ten closed below the initial claim, settlements of 10 to 30 cents per dollar claimed. Firm-produced figures, unverifiable from the outside, produced by an operator that sells the audit defense service.
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Professional resources on software asset management · IT Asset Management, 1 January 2026
Licence: NON VÉRIFIÉ · Cross-check source suggested, not used figure by figure in this article.