How to govern Costs in Microsoft 365
A step-by-step guide to governing Costs in Microsoft 365 with Rencore: detect, review by owner and severity, and remediate with an audit trail.
Governing Costs in Microsoft 365 means finding where it goes wrong, reviewing the findings by owner and severity, and remediating with an audit trail. Rencore covers this concern for Microsoft 365 with the pre-built controls below, so it becomes a repeatable check rather than a one-off cleanup. The steps that follow apply the same detect, review, remediate loop to Costs.
Steps
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Inventory Microsoft 365
Connect Microsoft 365 and let Rencore build a continuous inventory of its resources, owners, and configuration, so governance starts from what exists rather than a stale export.
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Detect with policies
Turn on the pre-built policies that cover Costs in Microsoft 365 to surface oversharing, sprawl, and misconfiguration on the first scan, before writing a single custom rule.
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Review by owner and severity
Use the Microsoft 365 reports to review findings by owner, category, and severity, and to share them with stakeholders who do not have a seat in the platform.
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Remediate and automate
Apply automations to fix findings at scale, route sensitive changes through approvals, and keep every action reversible and logged for the audit trail.
Microsoft 365 controls for Costs
Grounded in the Rencore catalog. See the full Microsoft 365 catalog on the Microsoft 365 connector page.
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Users with Power Platform Premium License
Users with assigned Premium License for Power Platform (per user plan)
Severity: Information -
Disabled user accounts with assigned licenses
Shows disabled user accounts which have any licenses assigned
Severity: High -
Unused Licenses
Shows M365 licenses with more enabled units than consumed units
Severity: Low -
Licenses with less than 10 units available
Shows licenses with less than 10 units available to assign to users.
Severity: Information -
Guest users with a Dynamics license assigned
Guest users with a Dynamics license assigned
Severity: Medium -
Admin accounts with an Office 365 E3 license assigned
Admin accounts with an Office 365 E3 license assigned (Note: please adjust the email address, prefix or postfix to your company settings)
Severity: Medium -
Users with E3 license not using Outlook in last 12 month
Show Users with E3 license not using Outlook in last 12 month.
Severity: Low -
License usage for Visio, Project and Power BI Pro
Shows units consumed for critical licenses like Visio, Project and Power BI Pro
Severity: Medium -
Licenses assigned to disabled users
Shows licenses which are assigned to users with account enabled set to false
Severity: Medium -
Licenses assigned to external users
Shows licenses which are assigned to external users and could be removed or might unnecessary
Severity: Medium -
Licenses assigned to inactive users
Shows licenses which are users that have not signed in in last 90 days
Severity: Medium -
Licenses with unused seats
Shows licenses which have a high number of unused seats
Severity: Medium -
Over-licensed user Accounts
User accounts that have more than one License assigned with overlapping apps.
Severity: High -
Monthly costs for unused licenses
Shows licenses which have unused seats
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License costs for disabled users
License costs for disabled users
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License costs for external users
License costs for external users
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Monthly license costs for external users
Monthly license costs for external users
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Licenses with unused seats
Shows licenses which have a high number of unused seats
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License usage for Visio, Project and Power BI Pro
Shows units consumed for critical licenses like Visio, Project and Power BI Pro
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Licenses assigned to disabled user accounts
Shows licenses which are assigned to users with account enabled set to false
