license agent misread trial licenses as paid seats, spend inflated

TL;DR

Filter license records by SKU and license type, excluding trials. The agent counts every license object, but trials are not spend.

Error

(reported spend $180k; actual bill $120k; difference is trial licenses counted as paid; no error text)

Steps

1. Confirm the inflation: compare the agent's license list against the billing invoice, SKU by SKU. Expected: trial SKUs identified as the gap.
2. Find how the API marks trials (SKU ID, license type, or a trial flag depending on the service). Expected: the trial marker known.
3. Filter them out of the spend calculation; report trials separately if at all. Expected: the filter in place.
4. Re-run the spend report. Expected: reported spend matches the invoice.

When to use

• Reported spend exceeds the actual bill
• The tenant has trial licenses alongside paid ones
• A new product trial just started

When not to use

• Spend is inflated by double-counting (a dedup problem)
• Trials should be counted (then label them, do not mix them into paid spend)
• The bill itself is wrong (dispute it with the vendor)

Tool compatibility

Microsoft Graph subscribedSkus, Salesforce, and similar license APIs.

Variant phrasings

agent counts expired trials too

Exclude expired licenses as well as trial ones.

trial converted to paid mid-period

Handle the transition: the SKU changes, so re-evaluate each run.

Why it happens

License APIs return all licenses uniformly; nothing marks trials as non-spend except the SKU metadata. Agents that sum without filtering treat trials as purchases.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstdjzq8TpUd-ve7bop2BrCg

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstdjzq8TpUd-ve7bop2BrCg

Thread query: license agent misread trial licenses as paid seats, spend inflated

TL;DR: Filter license records by SKU and license type, excluding trials. The agent counts every license object, but trials are not spend.