Where do I start with software?

Before you begin

You need Admin access. Employees see their own licences in their Personal workspace without any setup from you.

The model, in three levels

Cost lives on the plan. Assignment happens at the licence. A service on its own is a label with nothing attached to it.

Set up your first service

1. Add the service. Go to Assets → Software → Add Software and pick it from the catalogue, or create it if it is not there. See How do I add a software service?.
2. Add a plan. On the service's Plans tab, add the tier you actually pay for, with its cost and billing cycle. See How do I create software plans?.
3. Assign licences. Use Assign to Employees for a rollout, or assign from a plan for one or two people. See How do I assign software to employees?.

That is a working setup. Everything below makes it better rather than making it work.

Then, in whatever order suits you

Decide how access is granted. By default, assigning a licence records the fact in Velory and nothing else — access at the vendor stays your job. The service's Provisioning tab can automate it, or raise a task for whoever does it by hand. See What is provisioning and deprovisioning?.

Name a software owner. On the service's Details tab, add the person who actually administers the tool. They can then manage its licences without full software access, and manual provisioning tasks go to them instead of to every administrator.

Turn on SaaS Discovery. This is the step people skip and then wish they had not. Discovery reads your sign-in and OAuth records and tells you which tools are in use — including the ones nobody registered. Expect it to find things. See What is SaaS Discovery?.

Look at the money. Once a few plans have costs, View spending shows the trend, the split by category, and how much of what you pay for is actually assigned. See How do I track software costs and renewals?.

A reasonable first pass

If you are setting Velory up for a company with software already in place, this order wastes the least effort:

1. Add the handful of services you know are expensive, with real plan costs. Accuracy on five services beats guesses on forty.
2. Turn on SaaS Discovery and let it run overnight.
3. Work the discovery list. It will show tools you have not added, and people using tools without a seat.
4. Only then fill in the long tail of small services.

Doing it this way means the list you build is the list that matters, rather than an inventory you assembled by memory.

Good to know

Do I have to enter costs?

No. Cost, currency and cost type are all optional, and a plan without them still tracks who has access. You will get no spending figures until you add them, which is usually reason enough.

What if I do not know which plan someone is on?

Put them on the plan you pay for and correct it later. An approximate record beats no record, and moving a licence between plans is straightforward.

Should I add every free tool?

Only if you want to track access to it. A free service with no plan cost still shows who has a seat, which is worth it for anything holding company data — and SaaS Discovery will surface the ones you did not think of.

What is the difference between this and Hardware?

The lifecycle. Hardware is a physical unit you buy, deliver, repair and retire. A software licence is a seat you grant and reclaim, so the interesting questions are who holds one, whether they use it, and what it costs each month.