Every tool you pay for, in one inventory, by this afternoon

What is the exact prompt?

"Build a complete inventory of the software we pay for. Evidence sources, in order: (1) search my email for the last 12 months of receipts, renewal notices, 'your plan', 'payment failed', and price-change announcements; (2) this card statement I am pasting: match every recurring line to a product, and list the lines you cannot identify separately; (3) the billing or admin page of each tool you found, opened in my session, for plan name, seat count, and renewal date. One row per product: tool, what it does in five words, plan, seats paid for, seats active if the admin page shows it, price, billing cycle, renewal date, who probably owns it (from who receives the receipts), and which evidence sources confirmed it. Then three flag lists: overlap (two tools doing the same five-word job), oversubscription (seats paid minus seats active), and renewals within 45 days. Hard rule: change nothing. No cancellations, no plan changes, no seat removals, and do not click anything on a billing page other than viewing it."

The unmatched-statement-lines list is quietly the most valuable output. The mystery charges are where forgotten tools and departed employees' subscriptions live.

Why three evidence sources, not just the statement?

Each source lies differently.

The statement is complete but cryptic. The inbox is legible but leaky, since receipts go to whoever bought the tool, including two people who left. The billing pages are authoritative but only for tools you already know about.

Seats paid versus seats active is where audits find their money, and only source three carries it. A team of nine paying for fourteen seats is invisible in any statement and obvious on the admin page, which typically pays for the audit several times over on the first pass.

Check every flag before you cancel anything

The "unused" tool might run quarterly invoicing.

The "overlapping" tools might serve two teams with different needs. The oversubscribed seats might be next month's hires. Cancellation needs context that lives in people's heads, so the audit ends in a meeting agenda and the hard rule in the prompt makes it safe to run unsupervised.

In Strawberry the rule has enforcement behind it: consequential actions pause on an approval card, and Ask Always mode in Settings → AI permissions extends the pause to everything. The renewals-within-45-days list feeds the vendor renewals playbook, where negotiation prep is delegable.

Run it quarterly and reconcile the total

Quarterly, as a routine, with the previous inventory as baseline: "diff against the sheet dated [last quarter]: new tools, ended tools, price changes, seat drift." The first run is the archaeology. The diffs are cheap and catch creep while someone still remembers the purchase.

Verify by reconciliation: the inventory's monthly total should sit within a rounding error of the statement's recurring software spend. A gap means a missed source, usually a second card. Spot-check two owner guesses too, since the wrong ones are themselves findings. The receivables-side sibling is invoice collection.

Frequently asked questions