Purchased, Assigned, Employed: The Three Counts Behind a Microsoft Bill

Purchased.

The number of licenses the company has bought. Microsoft bills this number every month, used or not. It is the figure on the invoice, and what the IT provider or administrator sees under Billing in the admin center.

Assigned.

The number of those licenses attached to a named person. The admin center shows it beside the purchased figure: 38 of 45, say. The seven in between are paid for and sitting empty.

Employed.

The people on payroll who need Microsoft to do their jobs. It is on no Microsoft screen. It is in the payroll system, or in the operations manager’s head.

In a company that opened last month, the three numbers match. In a company that has run for a few years across a dozen locations, they drift apart, and every gap costs the same thing: a monthly charge for a license no one is using.

Two gaps, two causes

Purchased above assigned is the simpler one. Licenses were bought ahead of hires that were never made, or came free when people left and were never released. They bill at full price while they wait.

Assigned above employed is the quieter one. A former employee’s account is still licensed because offboarding stopped at collecting the laptop. That license bills at full price too, and because it still shows as taken, the next hire gets a new one bought on top of it. One departure becomes two charges.

Why the gaps do not close on their own

Unassigning a license from a departed employee does not lower the bill. It moves one license from the assigned column to the empty column. The invoice follows the purchased number, and on an annual plan that number can come down only in the seven days after renewal. For the rest of the year it can only go up.

When it goes up mid-year, the new license is billed through to the renewal date, however far off that is. A store that adds six people for the holiday season and licenses them in November, on an annual plan that renews next September, pays for those six through September. The job lasted seven weeks. The licenses last ten months.

The term is a choice, and most companies never made it

Microsoft sells the same license on two terms. On an annual term, the count is fixed for the year and the price is the lowest Microsoft publishes. On a monthly term, the count can be reduced at the end of any month, and Microsoft prices it 20 percent higher. The two can sit on the same account at the same time, with different people on each.

A third choice sits inside the first: since April 1, 2025, an annual term paid in monthly installments costs 5 percent more than the same term paid up front. It is also the default a trial renews into.

Year-round staff on an annual term paid up front is the cheapest way to buy Microsoft. Seasonal and variable staff on a monthly term costs more per person and nothing at all once they leave. What costs the most is the arrangement nobody decided: everyone on annual, paid monthly, with the seasonal hires still on it in March.

One comparison, one afternoon

Write the three numbers side by side. Purchased, from the last invoice. Assigned, from whoever administers the account. Employed, from payroll. If they match, note the renewal date and move on. If they do not, each gap has a cause, a cost per month, and a date by which it can be closed, and all three are now known.

For multi-site enterprises, this is one reconciliation among many inside BearGuard’s monthly validation: what is billed, against what is in service, against what the business actually has, every line, every cycle.

A free 15-minute check for companies with fewer than 200 locations

Bearstone runs a free 15-minute Microsoft Renewal Check. Rick Ryan walks through the three numbers by phone. You leave knowing whether to stay put, fix one issue, or take a deeper look. If the numbers match, we say so and the call ends early. Nothing to send ahead of time, no obligation. You keep your IT provider; this is a second look, not a switch.