Software License Compliance (SAM)

Starting with version 5.0.2, Network Asset Tracker Pro includes Software Asset Management (SAM) — a set of license compliance tools that answers three questions every IT department gets asked sooner or later: What is installed? What do we actually own? Where is the gap? Software found during your regular network scans is automatically recognized and grouped into products, then reconciled against the licenses you record — so you can see at a glance whether you are compliant, under-licensed (audit risk), or over-licensed (paying for unused seats).

All license compliance tools live in the main menu under "License Compliance":
  • License Compliance Report — the reconciliation report: installed vs. owned, renewals, spend, unauthorized software;
  • License Compliance Entitlements — the register of licenses your organization owns;
  • Software Catalog — the recognition rules that turn raw software titles into clean products.

It works out of the box.

There is nothing to configure before you get value. Network Asset Tracker Pro ships with a built-in recognition catalog covering common commercial software (Microsoft Office, Adobe, Autodesk, antivirus products and many more). It automatically groups every edition, version and language variant into a single product — "Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019 - en-us" and "Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise" are both simply Microsoft Office. Updates, hotfixes, runtimes and drivers are filtered out automatically, so the compliance picture is not cluttered with noise.

Open License Compliance → License Compliance Report right after your first scan and you will already see a clean, deduplicated list of the licensable products installed on your network, with installation counts — before you have entered a single license.

Step 1. Review the License Compliance Report.

Select menu "License Compliance" → "License Compliance Report". The report starts with summary cards — tracked products, products at risk, compliant, over-licensed, shortfall seats, renewals due and unauthorized software — followed by the detailed license position. Each tracked product gets a clear status:
  • No license / Under-licensed (red) — more copies installed than you own. This is your audit risk, listed first;
  • Compliant (green) — installed count matches owned count;
  • Over-licensed (amber) — you own more seats than are installed, including licenses for software that is not installed anywhere.
Products that are not recognized by the catalog appear in a separate "Discovered / unclassified software" list at the bottom — they are never counted against you until you decide to track them. The report can be exported to HTML, CSV or PDF, like every other report in the program.
License Compliance Report — installed vs. owned with compliance status

Step 2. Record what you own — Entitlements.

Select menu "License Compliance" → "License Compliance Entitlements" and click "Add new license". Start typing a product name — the search finds matches anywhere in the name, so typing "visual" finds "Microsoft Visual Studio". Products discovered on your network are listed with their installation counts; picking one pre-fills the publisher and suggests the owned quantity, which you adjust to what you actually purchased.
License Entitlements — the register of owned licenses
For every license you can record:
  • Quantity owned;
  • License model — per device, per user, per core, subscription, OEM, Volume (MAK/KMS);
  • Unit cost and currency;
  • Vendor and PO number;
  • Purchase date and expiry date (calendar date pickers; leave expiry unset for perpetual licenses);
  • License key and notes.
Double-click any license in the list to edit it; right-click to delete. You can also record licenses for software you have purchased but not yet deployed — the report will show it as over-licensed until it is installed.
Add or edit a license — product search, quantity, cost, dates and key

Step 3. Fine-tune recognition — Software Catalog.

The built-in catalog covers the common commercial products, but every network has in-house tools and less common software. Select menu "License Compliance" → "Software Catalog" to see and manage the recognition rules. Each rule maps scanned software titles (with wildcard support, e.g. "Microsoft Office%") to a product, with a category, a "licensable" flag and a "blacklisted" flag. Rules shipped with the program are marked as seed; your own rules as user. Click any column header to sort; double-click a rule to edit it.
Software Catalog — recognition rules
The "Unclassified software" tab lists every title found on your network that no rule recognizes yet, sorted by installation count — a ready-made to-do list. Double-click a title to create a rule for it, or select several titles at once (Ctrl/Shift+Click) and click "Create rule(s) from selected" to map them in one step, assigning a common category. As soon as a title is mapped to a licensable product, it starts counting in the compliance report.
Unclassified software — titles waiting to be mapped to products

Renewal and expiry alerts.

Any license with an expiry date is watched automatically. Thirty days before it lapses it appears in the "Upcoming renewals & expired licenses" section of the compliance report — most urgent first — and as a warning on the Dashboard. Already-expired licenses are flagged in red, so a missed subscription renewal never comes as a surprise.

Spend and savings insights.

Record a unit cost on your licenses and the report adds three numbers your management will actually read: total license spend, the estimated cost to fix the shortfall (what closing the under-licensed gap would cost, based on your own recorded prices), and the estimated value tied up in unused seats — over-licensed products where you could save money at the next renewal.

Unauthorized software detection.

Mark any product in the Software Catalog as "Blacklisted" — games, torrent clients, unapproved remote-access tools — and the compliance report gains an "Unauthorized / blacklisted software" section listing every flagged product found on your network, with installation counts. The Dashboard shows a red alert whenever unauthorized software is detected, whether the product is commercial or free.

Compliance on the Dashboard.

The Dashboard includes a License compliance card: at-risk product count, a compliant / at-risk / over-licensed breakdown, seats short, renewals due, unused-license value and unauthorized software alerts — with one click through to the full report. The card refreshes automatically whenever you change licenses or catalog rules.
License compliance card on the Dashboard
Software License Compliance is included in Network Asset Tracker Pro 5.0.2 and later, in both Pro and Special Edition (SE), at no extra cost. Read the 5.0.2 release announcement or download the free trial and try it on your own network.

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