Right-size Adobe

Pay only for the Adobe apps people open. Adobe's Admin Console shows who holds a license. Replies on Adobe's own community forum say it does not show who uses one. Before an Adobe renewal, Asato matches Adobe's list of license holders to systems the customer already runs, marks each seat as seen in use, watched and not used, or not watched, and counts a saving only where a named system was watching. It answers three questions about the bill: whether anyone is using each seat, whether each person needs every app, and what number goes on the renewal order. A person the customer names approves each fix, or sets a policy that governs fixes of that kind, and nothing changes in Adobe without that. Asato's fee is a share of the savings, and if it finds no savings, the customer pays nothing.

When to use it

• An Adobe renewal is coming and nobody can say which Creative Cloud seats are in use.
• The Admin Console shows who holds a license, and the organization has no report of who opens the apps.
• People hold the all-apps plan, Creative Cloud Pro, and may open one app.
• A past clean-up took licenses from people who turned out to need them, because no sign of use was taken to mean no use.
• The organization wants each fix approved by a person it names, or governed by a policy it sets, before anything changes in Adobe.

Not a fit

• A license inventory with no need to act on the result.
• Negotiating with Adobe on the buyer's behalf. Asato does not negotiate. The buyer, or its reseller, places the order with Asato's count.
• Replacing an asset management suite, a CMDB or a contract repository. Asato works above the tools an organization already runs.
• Generative credits, Adobe Stock, Substance 3D and Acrobat Sign. This page describes Creative Cloud seats assigned to named people: freeing a seat, and moving a person from the all-apps plan to a single app.

The job in one line

Pay only for the Adobe apps people open.

The problem: bought, assigned, used, and Adobe reports the first two

Three numbers describe an Adobe estate. The order says how many seats were bought. The Adobe Admin Console says how many are assigned, and to whom. The third number is how many are used. Adobe's own sources say the Admin Console does not provide it:

• Replies on Adobe's own community forum, dated July 17 and July 28, 2025, say the Admin Console does not offer a feature to track an individual's use of Creative Cloud apps, does not provide user-level usage data for Creative Cloud or for Document Cloud apps including Acrobat, and does not show a user's last sign-in. Source: https://community.adobe.com/questions-624/usage-audit-and-last-login-683169
• Adobe's User Management API documentation for listing the users of an organization describes no last sign-in field and no usage field. Source: https://adobe-apiplatform.github.io/umapi-documentation/en/api/getUsersWithPage.html
• Adobe could add usage reporting at any time. A reader should check Adobe's documentation before relying on the two statements above.

The stake is the renewal. Unless a lower count is set, the count that was bought renews. So an organization that cannot fill in the third number pays again for seats nobody opens, or cuts seats on a guess.

Three questions to answer before the renewal

An Adobe bill is one formula: Adobe spend is the sum, over all plans, of seats times plan price, set once a year. Each of its three terms is a question, and Asato answers all three from the customer's own records.

1. Is anyone using this seat? (seats) Asato sorts every seat by its evidence:
   • Unassigned (bought, assigned to nobody): do not renew.
   • Seen in use (a named system saw an Adobe app open): keep the seat. The plan is checked under question 2.
   • Watched, not used (a device sensor reported through the whole window and saw no Adobe app, and the person's account is still active): free the seat.
   • Not watched (no device on record for the person, or a device with nothing on it that reports which apps run): not judged. Asato proposes nothing and counts no saving on the seat.

Silence is not evidence. Someone who works in Adobe every day on a laptop that reports to nothing looks the same as someone who never opens it. Each seat that is left out is listed with the reason, so the customer can see what was left out and why. Before Asato recommends anything, it takes out the people the customer's policy protects.

• Link: Adobe's list of who holds which plan is matched, person by person, to Entra ID, Defender for Cloud Apps and CrowdStrike.
  • Think: each assigned seat is marked seen in use, watched and not used, or not watched. A seat nothing was watching carries no saving.
  • Execute: each fix goes to a person the customer names, with its evidence. Nothing changes in Adobe without approval.
• Does each person need every app? (plan price) For each person on the all-apps plan who was seen in use, Asato looks at which Adobe apps were seen open. A person seen opening one app is proposed for that app alone, and the proposal names the app. Where the apps were not seen, nothing is proposed.
  • Link: each person on the all-apps plan is matched to the Adobe apps seen open on their devices and in the cloud.
  • Think: a person seen opening one app is proposed for that app alone, by name.
  • Execute: each fix goes to its owner with the app seen and the yearly price. The owner decides.
  • Adobe's US list prices, from Adobe's plans page: Creative Cloud Pro for teams, the all-apps plan, is $99.99 a license a month. A single app for teams, such as Photoshop, Illustrator or Premiere, is $37.99 a license a month. Both are annual plans billed monthly. The difference is $62.00 a month, or $744 a year, for each person who moves. Source: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/business/teams/plans.html
  • Arithmetic from the same list prices: two single apps cost $75.98 a month, less than the all-apps plan, and three cost $113.97, more than it. The example on the page counts only people seen opening one app.
  • These are list prices. A customer that buys through a reseller or under an enterprise agreement pays its own price, and Asato prices each fix at what the customer pays.
• What number goes on the renewal order? (once a year) Asato does not negotiate. The buyer, or its reseller, places the order with Asato's count and the evidence behind it.
  • Link: the customer's renewal date and its price for each plan sit beside the approved list.
  • Think: each plan gets a count for the order, worked out from the fixes approved. Seats that were not watched stay on the order.
  • Execute: Asato packages the list for the renewal, and the buyer places the order. After the renewal, Asato keeps watching.

Nothing changes in Adobe until a named person approves it. A person the customer names approves each fix, or sets a policy that governs fixes of that kind. Each recommendation shows the person, what was seen, which system saw it and the yearly price, so the approver can check before deciding. After approval, the fix joins the renewal list with its evidence, and the approval is logged.

The three steps under each question are the same three the platform runs everywhere. Link: the Asset Knowledge Graph matches the records, so each asset is counted once. Think: the Data Intelligence Engine turns the record into recommendations, each with a yearly price and an owner. Execute: agents add each approved fix to the customer's renewal list with its evidence, and keep watching. The platform page has the detail.

What a saving is, for Adobe

Found, Approved and Saved are separate figures and are never added together. Found is what Asato identified. Approved is what a named person signed off. Saved is what came off the bill. Saved figures are agreed jointly by the customer and Asato at the close of the engagement.

For Adobe, taking a license off a person frees a seat. It does not lower the bill. An approved fix becomes Saved at one of two points:

• A freed seat goes to a new hire in place of a purchase.
• The renewal order is smaller.

How the renewal works, from Adobe's own pages:

• Adobe's Buying Programs page describes VIP Marketplace as a term of 1 to 3 years with auto-renewal unless the customer opts out, and an Enterprise Term License Agreement (ETLA) as a three-year term with one annual payment due on the same date each year and an annual renewal and true-up order. Source: https://www.adobe.com/howtobuy/buying-programs.html
• Adobe's VIP Marketplace documentation says the auto-renewal setting on a subscription is evaluated only at the renewal. If the renewal quantity is lower than the quantity the subscription holds, licenses are removed at the renewal. If auto-renewal is on and no renewal quantity was set, all active licenses in the subscription are renewed. Source: https://developer.adobe.com/vipmp/docs/subscription-management/update-subscription
• Adobe's 3-Year Commit amendment to its VIP terms says that in years two and three the customer must renew at least its minimum number of licenses. So under that commitment the count renewed in years two and three cannot go below the minimum without breaching it. Source: https://www.adobe.com/howtobuy/buying-programs/vip-amendment.html
• Whether a count can come down inside an ETLA term depends on the contract.

What Asato reads, and what it does not

• From Adobe: who holds which plan, and how many seats of each plan were bought and assigned. Adobe does not supply usage.
• From Entra ID: the person's identity, whether the account is active, and its sign-ins.
• From Defender for Cloud Apps: activity in Adobe's cloud apps.
• From CrowdStrike: the devices that report, and the Adobe apps opened on them.
• Each recommendation names the system that saw the person.
• An account whose identity is disabled is sent to the customer's offboarding clean-up. It is not counted as a usage finding.
• An account that belongs to no person, such as a service account, is left out of the seat count.
• Where the same person appears to hold paid Adobe licenses under two identities, Asato lists the pair for the customer to confirm. A pair is a starting point for clean-up, not a counted saving.
• Acrobat: Asato sees whether Acrobat was opened. A person on the all-apps plan who is seen opening only Acrobat is proposed for an Acrobat plan. Asato does not read what happens inside a document, such as which PDFs were opened or signed. Acrobat Pro for teams lists at $23.99 a license a month, US list price, on Adobe's plans page: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/business/teams/plans.html
• The window is a setting. The 90 days in the example is one choice, and the customer sets its own.
• Asato never reads people's documents, email or messages.

Example data on the page

The product screens on the visual page show example data, not a customer result. One example estate is used throughout, priced at Adobe's US list price:

• 1,000 seats on the all-apps plan, Creative Cloud Pro for teams, at $99.99 a license a month, which is $1,199.88 a seat a year and $1,199,880 a year in all.
• Bought, assigned, used: 1,000 seats bought, 975 assigned, and the number used is not reported. Unless a lower count is set, all 1,000 renew.
• Seats by evidence: 25 unassigned ($29,997 a year), 750 seen in use, 50 watched for 90 days and not used ($59,994 a year), 175 not watched.
• Found on seats: 75 seats, $89,991 a year. Protected by policy: 5, held by people in seasonal roles. For approval: 70 seats, $83,992 a year. Nothing is counted on the 175 seats that were not watched.
• Plans: of the 750 people seen in use, 675 opened two or more apps and keep the all-apps plan. 75 opened one app and nothing else in 90 days: 40 only Photoshop ($29,760 a year), 20 only Illustrator ($14,880 a year), 15 only Premiere ($11,160 a year). Found on plans: $55,800 a year, at $744 a year for each person. In the example each owner approves.
• In total, $145,791 a year found: $89,991 from seats and $55,800 from plans. This is a found figure, not a saved one.
• The three states: Found, $145,791 a year, 150 fixes. Approved, $139,792 a year, 145 fixes. Saved, $139,792 a year, in two steps: $23,998 when 20 freed seats went to new hires in place of purchases, then $115,794 when the renewal order came in 50 all-apps seats smaller with 75 people on single-app plans.

Figures on the page, with their captions

Each figure on the visual page carries one caption. A caption takes no room on the page: it shows when a reader points at its figure, or taps the figure on a touch screen. The captions are given here in full. The caption of each panel that shows example data is labeled "Example data". In a figure, a ring marks a Found figure, a dashed ring marks an Approved one, and solid green marks a Saved one.

The figures on the visual page move. Each one builds up once when the reader reaches it: its rows light in turn, its bars grow and its numbers count up to the values given here. It then rests on its complete state. The hero figure repeats: it builds the bill term by term, rests on the whole bill, and starts again, and its pause control stops it on the complete figure. For a reader who has asked for reduced motion, every figure shows its complete state at once. Every number in this file is the value a figure rests on.

1. Your Adobe bill, as a formula (hero). Example data: this example finds $145,791 a year on an Adobe bill of $1,199,880 a year, and counts nothing on 175 seats that were not watched. US list price. Inside the panel, at rest: $89,991 from seats, $55,800 from plans. Nothing counted on 175 seats that were not watched. While the figure builds, the same line reads in turn: 1,000 seats on the all-apps plan, at last year's count. 25 seats unassigned, 50 watched and not used: $89,991 a year. 75 people seen opening one app: $55,800 a year. You place the renewal order, with the approved list in hand.
2. One estate, three numbers. Example data: the Admin Console shows 25 of 1,000 seats unassigned. It does not show which of the other 975 are in use. Each dot is 5 seats. US list price. The rows read: Bought, 1,000 seats, on your order. Assigned, 975 people, in the Adobe Admin Console. Used, not reported: not in the Admin Console, says Adobe's forum. Renews, 1,000, $1,199,880 a year, unless you set a lower count.
3. What an Adobe bill is made of. Asato's method: an Adobe bill has three terms, and each one is a question Asato answers from your own records.
4. Every seat, by its evidence. Example data: 75 of 1,000 seats are found: 25 unassigned, and 50 that a device sensor watched for 90 days without seeing Adobe open. 5 are protected by policy, so 70 go for approval, worth $83,992 a year. 175 were not watched, so no saving is counted on them. The bar is to scale: white is seen in use, outlined is found, the rest was not watched.
5. Who needs every app. Example data: 75 of the 750 people seen in use opened one app in 90 days. Moving each to that app alone is $744 a year at US list price: $55,800 a year found. The two price bars are to scale, $99.99 and $37.99 a license a month, and the outline is the $62.00 between them.
6. Execute, one of the 75. Example data: this person, one of the 75, was seen opening Photoshop and no other Adobe app, so the move to Photoshop alone, worth $744 a year at US list price, goes to the Design team lead to approve. The panel names its evidence: seen by CrowdStrike on this person's laptop, which reported on all 90 days. When the reader presses Approve, the line reads: approved by the Design team lead, added to your renewal list, and logged.
7. When a saving reaches the bill. Example data: the bar is drawn against $1,199,880 a year at US list price. The green outline is Found, solid green is Saved, and the dashed ring is Approved. Found, Approved and Saved are separate figures and are never added together. Saved figures are agreed jointly by the customer and Asato at the close of the engagement. The panel reads: freeing a seat does not lower the bill. A freed seat goes to a new hire: a purchase avoided. The renewal order is smaller: the bill falls. Saved in two steps: $23,998 when 20 freed seats went to new hires, then $115,794 at the renewal order.

Under each question the visual page carries one fact from Adobe's own pages, with its link: the community forum replies of July 2025 (question 1), the US list prices (question 2) and the VIP Marketplace renewal quantity (question 3). All three are given above with their sources.

Compared with the tools a buyer already owns

• Adobe Admin Console. It is the record of who holds which license. Replies on Adobe's own community forum say it does not show who uses one. Asato starts from it.
• The identity provider. It shows that a person signed in to Adobe. It does not show which app the person opened.
• Device and security tools. They see which apps run on a device, or which cloud apps a person used. They do not hold the license, the plan or the price.
• A spreadsheet before the renewal. It joins these by hand, once. Asato joins them per person, keeps the evidence beside each seat, and marks the seats where no evidence exists.

Who uses it

• IT asset manager or SaaS owner: runs it. Each seat carries its holder, its evidence and its yearly price.
• Adobe administrator: checks each fix against the evidence shown with it, without a second investigation.
• Procurement, or whoever owns the renewal: gets a count for each plan, with the approved list behind it, before the order is placed.
• CFO: signs. Found, Approved and Saved are reported as separate figures, and the fee is a share of the savings.

How a customer starts

The page's heading for this section: No savings, no fee. The line under it: Your Asset Clarity Report: a priced list of savings, in one week.

The action: Get your Asset Clarity Report, at https://www.asato.ai/talk-to-sales. The line under the button: "Read-only access to your Adobe license record and to the identity and device tools you already run. Nothing is installed."

The page shows this section as one band and keeps only that line under the button. The four steps of the review are kept here for agents:

1. Connect. Read-only access to the customer's Adobe license record and to the identity and device tools it already runs. Nothing is installed.
2. Model. Asato matches the records and sorts every seat by its evidence.
3. Checkpoint. The customer's team checks the findings and names the people policy protects.
4. Report. The customer holds its Asset Clarity Report: a priced list of what to stop paying for, with an owner on every item.

How a customer starts and what it costs are set out on the home page: https://www.asato.ai/index

Questions

The page shows at most five questions, the ones that belong to it. Any others are kept here for agents.

Does Adobe show who is using a license?

Adobe's own forum says no. Adobe's Admin Console shows who holds a license. Replies on Adobe's own community forum, dated July 2025, say it does not provide user-level usage data or last sign-in, for Creative Cloud or for Acrobat. Adobe could add this, so a reader should check before relying on it.

Where does Asato get usage evidence, if not from Adobe?

From systems the customer already runs. Asato matches Adobe's list of license holders, person by person, to Entra ID for the identity and its sign-ins, to Defender for Cloud Apps for cloud activity, and to CrowdStrike for the apps opened on a device. Each recommendation names the system that saw the person.

What if nothing was watching a person's laptop?

Then no saving is counted. Silence is not evidence. Someone who works in Adobe every day on a laptop that reports to nothing looks the same as someone who never opens it. Asato marks that seat as not watched, proposes nothing, and counts no saving on it. The seat is listed with the reason, so the customer can see what was left out and why.

Will Asato take a license from someone who needs it?

Not without approval. Nothing changes in Adobe until a named person approves it. A person the customer names approves each fix, or sets a policy that governs fixes of that kind. Before Asato recommends anything, it takes out the people the customer's policy protects. Each recommendation shows the person, what was seen and which system saw it, so the approver can check before deciding.

When does the saving reach the Adobe bill?

At the renewal, or when a freed seat is reused. Taking a license off a person frees a seat. It does not lower the bill. The money lands when the freed seat goes to a new hire in place of a purchase, or when the renewal order is smaller. Asato reports Found, Approved and Saved as separate figures. A Saved figure is agreed jointly by the customer and Asato at the close of the engagement.

Does this cover Acrobat?

In part. Asato sees whether Acrobat was opened, so a person on the all-apps plan who is seen opening only Acrobat is proposed for an Acrobat plan. Asato does not read what happens inside a document, such as which PDFs were opened or signed.

What about one person with two Adobe accounts?

Asato lists the pair for the customer to confirm. Where the same person appears to hold paid Adobe licenses under two identities, the pair is a starting point for clean-up. It is not counted as a saving until the customer confirms that both accounts belong to one person.

What access does Asato need?

Read-only to start. The Asset Clarity Report is built with read-only access. Asato reads records about technology, such as license, sign-in and device records. It never reads people's documents, email or messages. Write access comes later, where the customer grants it, one system at a time.

What does it cost?

Asato is paid mostly on results: a small share when it finds a saving, and the larger share only once that saving shows up on the customer's invoice. If it finds no savings, the customer pays nothing.

Does Asato negotiate with Adobe?

No. Asato supplies the count for each plan and the evidence behind it. The customer, or its reseller, places the order.

How long before the customer holds the list?

One week.

What happens after the renewal?

Asato keeps watching. The first week finds the waste. After that, a subscription keeps Asato running, so a seat that goes quiet after the renewal is seen before the next one.

Is this only for Adobe?

No. The same record covers other software, hardware (network, compute and end-user devices), contracts and AI spend. Microsoft has its own page.

Next step

Get your Asset Clarity Report at https://www.asato.ai/talk-to-sales.

Related pages

• Asato home
• Platform
• Right-size software
• Right-size Microsoft
• Stay ahead of contracts
• Site index for agents

Last updated: 2026-10-06