Saving money on Office Technology, don't renew unused software subscriptions.

Well the magic of saving money isn't all that magical after all.  And I gave away one of my favorite ways to save money in the title of today's blog.

It's true, you're probably still paying for you, or your employees, to renew software they don't need or use.  I had an experience, from a previous employer, where they called me up after I had been away from the company for several months, and they asked me if I was renewing their antivirus software on their computers while I was away.  Really?  While I am very concerned with people's computers being protected I'm not going to charge anyone anything without them knowing about it.  The moral of the story is that a lot of the programs you use come with auto-renewing subscriptions that will charge you annually/quarterly/monthly/whenever they want, and they'll send you an email saying they're going to do it, but it often ends up in the junk mail so you don't see it.  In fact, several antivirus software providers were just fined for their auto-renewal services not being stated clearly enough (http://antivirus.about.com/b/2009/06/11/auto-renewal-of-antivirus-software.htm).

To cut costs I would look through your current list of installed software and inventory what you do and don't use.  This can be done very easily by going to the computer's control panel, selecting programs then selecting programs and features.  This will give you a list of installed programs.  Check to ensure that there isn't any junk.  Simply uninstall any unused software and check to see if you are running any software that is on auto-renewal that doesn't need to be. 

There's the magic.  You can easily cut a couple dollars per Computer just by combing through the excess.