Salesforce Shelfware Assessment: 20-Point Expert Checklist

The User Login History report in Salesforce Setup shows login activity by user across configurable date ranges. Export the full list and sort by last login date. Users with no logins in the past 90 days represent potential shelfware. Expert note: Pull this report quarterly and before every renewal. Users with zero logins in 90 days are your primary reduction target. Build a spreadsheet tracking login date, licence type, and business unit. Do not rely on manager attestation alone — actual system data is your negotiation evidence.

Manual offboarding processes frequently fail to deactivate Salesforce licences when employees leave. In organisations with high turnover — sales teams, customer service centres — 5–15 percent of licensed users may be former employees. Expert note: Export your current Salesforce user list and cross-reference against your HR system's active employee record. Any Salesforce user not in the active employee list should be investigated immediately. Deactivate confirmed leavers, then use the resulting reduction in required licence count as the basis for your renewal quantity.

Licences are sometimes provisioned as part of a system deployment or department onboarding without verifying that every recipient actually needs access. End users in supporting roles — logistics, facilities, finance operations — may have Salesforce licences they have never used. Expert note: Work with business unit managers to validate the business justification for each licensed user. Any user whose role does not require Salesforce access should be deprovisioned. Supplement the HR cross-reference with a brief manager validation exercise for the lowest-activity user cohorts.

Salesforce licences are named-user — one licence per person. However, if shift workers, part-time staff, or contractors access Salesforce only during defined time windows, the organisation may be able to reduce the total licence count by validating that concurrent usage never exceeds a lower threshold. Expert note: Pull concurrent session data if available. In contact centres where agents work defined shifts with no overlap, the total simultaneous active users may be significantly lower than the total provisioned count. Use this analysis to determine whether the licence count can be reduced without access disruption. Present the concurrent usage data to Salesforce as evidence for the reduced renewal quantity.

Salesforce sandbox licences are included in Enterprise and Unlimited editions but can be purchased separately for additional environments. Unused sandboxes represent wasted licence spend that is often overlooked in renewal reviews. Expert note: Inventory all Salesforce sandbox environments, their purpose, and their last-used date. Decommission sandboxes not used in the last 90 days. If sandboxes are consuming separate licence allocations above the included tier, remove the excess at renewal.

Platform licences provide access to custom applications built on Force.com, custom objects, and standard CRM data but exclude Sales Cloud and Service Cloud standard functionality. Users accessing only internal custom applications — asset trackers, HR portals, approval workflows — do not need Enterprise ($150/user/month) or Unlimited ($300/user/month). Expert note: Build a feature usage map for each user group. Users who never open Accounts, Leads, Opportunities, or Cases — and only work in custom objects or internal apps — are Platform candidates. A 100-seat conversion from Enterprise to Platform saves $125,000 per year.

Salesforce Unlimited edition ($300/user/month) includes full API access, Premier Success, unlimited custom apps, and additional storage versus Enterprise ($150/user/month). Users who do not use the API, do not require Premier support, and work within the same custom app limits as Enterprise do not need Unlimited. Expert note: Identify the specific Unlimited-exclusive features being used per user cohort. If a cohort's usage falls entirely within Enterprise edition limits, propose a downgrade at renewal. The $150/user/month saving on 100 seats is $1.8 million over a 3-year term.

Salesforce multi-cloud purchases sometimes result from historical deal structures rather than genuine need. A user provisioned on both Sales Cloud and Service Cloud may only ever work in one. Expert note: Pull feature usage data by cloud for multi-cloud users. Any user with zero activity in one of their assigned clouds over 90 days is a rationalisation candidate. Remove the unused cloud licence at renewal. If the user genuinely needs access to both clouds, a Sales+Service bundle may be available at a discount versus purchasing separately.

Experience Cloud (formerly Community Cloud) licences for external users — partners, customers, distributors — are priced per user or per login. Over-provisioning is common when community user counts are estimated rather than measured. Expert note: Pull active Experience Cloud user counts from your community analytics. If licensed user counts significantly exceed active user counts, reduce the allocation at renewal to actuals plus a 15 percent buffer for growth. If the licence model is per-login, review whether the usage pattern justifies switching to a per-login model at lower aggregate cost.

Salesforce charges for additional data storage above included limits. Storage purchases made during growth phases may have been over-specified and may now exceed actual requirements. Expert note: Check current data and file storage consumption against purchased limits in Salesforce Setup > Storage Usage. If actual consumption is below 70 percent of purchased storage, include a storage reduction in your renewal proposal.

Tableau CRM licences are typically licensed per user but dashboards and analyses are frequently accessed by a smaller subset of licensed users. Expert note: Export Tableau CRM login and asset access data. Users with zero dashboard views in 90 days do not require Tableau CRM licences. Reduce the licence count at renewal to active users plus a 20 percent buffer.

Salesforce CPQ (Configure Price Quote) is licensed per user. Sales users who rarely generate quotes — account managers focused on renewals, overlay specialists, sales management — may hold CPQ licences they almost never use. Expert note: Pull CPQ quote generation data by user. Users with fewer than 5 quotes generated in the past 6 months are CPQ licence rationalisation candidates. A CPQ licence typically costs $75/user/month — removing 20 unused licences saves $18,000 annually.

Pardot is licensed by contact tier — the maximum number of contacts in the database. Organisations that have reduced their marketing database, consolidated lists, or reduced campaign frequency may be in a higher contact tier than their actual usage requires. Expert note: Check the active contact count in Pardot against the licensed tier. If your active contact count is below 80 percent of the licensed tier threshold, downgrade to the lower tier at renewal. Contact tier pricing is significant — the difference between 10,000 and 50,000 contact tiers can be $20,000–$40,000 annually.

MuleSoft licences are typically tied to core capacity (vCores). Unused integration flows, deprecated API connections, and retired data pipelines may be consuming vCore capacity without business value. Expert note: Work with your integration team to inventory all active MuleSoft flows and their business purpose. Decommission flows without an active business owner. Calculate the vCore consumption reduction and include it in your MuleSoft renewal scope.

Field Service Lightning licences are provisioned for field technicians but staffing levels change. Seasonal reductions, outsourcing transitions, and workforce restructuring can leave over-provisioned Field Service licences. Expert note: Cross-reference your Field Service licence count against your current active field workforce. Include a 10–15 percent buffer for seasonal peaks but remove licences for positions that have been eliminated or outsourced.

Most Salesforce shelfware accumulates in the 12–18 months between renewals because no one is systematically monitoring utilisation. A quarterly review — 2–4 hours per quarter — prevents shelfware from accumulating to the levels typically identified at renewal. Expert note: Assign a named owner — typically a Salesforce admin or IT business partner — with the authority to deactivate unused licences and the mandate to report utilisation to procurement quarterly. The quarterly review should cover: login activity by user, feature usage by licence type, add-on utilisation versus provisioned count, and storage consumption.

Licences are sometimes activated without a formal request or approval process. An automated provisioning workflow with manager approval creates accountability and prevents unnecessary provisioning. Expert note: Implement a ServiceNow, Jira, or email-based provisioning request process that requires: business justification for the licence, manager approval, specification of the required licence type, and confirmation of a named provisioning date. This prevents ad hoc over-provisioning and creates an audit trail for every licence activation.

Integrating your HR offboarding workflow with Salesforce user deactivation eliminates the most common source of shelfware — undeprovisioned leavers. Expert note: Work with your HR and IT teams to implement an automated Salesforce user deactivation trigger on HR system termination events. Most major HRMS platforms (Workday, SuccessFactors, ServiceNow HR) support this integration via standard APIs. Once implemented, the leavers-on-Salesforce problem is eliminated systematically rather than requiring periodic manual audits.

A centralised licence register gives procurement, IT, and finance a shared source of truth for Salesforce licence management. Without it, licence counts, types, and costs are distributed across Order Forms and system reports with no consolidated view. Expert note: Build a quarterly-updated register in Excel, SharePoint, or your ITSM tool that captures: user name, licence type, monthly cost, last login date, utilisation score (high/medium/low based on login frequency and feature usage), business unit, and renewal flag (retain/reduce/upgrade). This register is your primary input for every renewal discussion and makes shelfware identification a 30-minute exercise rather than a multi-week project.

Governance processes reduce shelfware accumulation but do not eliminate it. A contractual true-down right provides a structured mechanism to reduce licence counts when utilisation reviews identify excess licences mid-term. Expert note: Negotiate an annual true-down right allowing licence count reductions of up to 10–15 percent at the 12-month renewal anniversary without commercial penalty. This right, combined with quarterly utilisation reviews, ensures that shelfware identified mid-term can be removed rather than carrying the cost until the end of the contract.