Order forms against the org, the three numbers per line, and the one page that holds it. Three knowledge checks along the way, and 4 clips from a senior licensing analyst.
This is a taught session, not a talking head. The instructor works through analyst grade slides, and three times the video stops on a question with four options on screen. Pause, commit to an answer, and the next slide explains which option is right and why each of the others is wrong. 4 times in the session the frame splits and a senior licensing analyst gives the view from inside real SAP negotiations, and the instructor picks the clip apart when the slides return.
The full narration of this session, section by section, for reading and reference. Guest analyst clips are marked.
Welcome back. Session five, and this one closes module one by producing the thing everything else in the course argues from: your actual position. Four sessions of context, and now the artefact. A Salesforce baseline is a reconciliation between what your order forms say and what your org contains, and I want to be honest that this is the least glamorous session in the whole thirty. It is also the one that pays for the course. Today: why the two sides diverge, what the admin console does and does not show you, the three numbers you want per line, and the one page that holds it all. Three knowledge checks. Let's begin.
Five objectives. First, reconcile two sources: what the order forms say against what the org contains, and read the gap between them. Second, explain why they diverge, which is about time rather than about anybody making a mistake. Third, know the console's blind spots, because it shows usage and it does not show entitlement, price, dates, or the things you never switched on. Fourth, produce three numbers per line, contracted, provisioned and active, and know what each gap means and who owns it. And fifth, hold it on one page, readable by a finance director in eleven minutes and maintainable by whoever holds this role after you.
So, two sources. The order forms carry contracted products, quantities, rates and dates, which is what you are committed to pay. The org carries provisioned and assigned licences, which any administrator can export in ten minutes. The gap between them is created by time rather than error: amendments, additions, cancellations, acquisitions. And the finding, the first time anybody does this properly, is usually not non-compliance at all. Let me explain why these two things drift apart, because it is worth being fair to everybody involved.
Guest analyst clip.
It is that you are paying for something nobody in the building is using. And that framing matters when you go and ask people for order forms, because if this exercise arrives looking like an audit you will get defensiveness, and if it arrives looking like a hunt for waste you will get help.
Five ordinary reasons for the gap, none of them anybody's fault. Mid term additions, bought on separate forms at separate times, often by separate people, and never consolidated into one view. Cancelled projects, where a product was bought for an initiative that stopped, so it is still contracted and was never deployed. Co-termination, where two agreements were merged into a single date, which quietly rewrites the paper trail everybody remembers. Acquisitions, bringing another org, another agreement, another administrator and frequently another edition. And turnover, because the person who knew why a particular line exists has moved on, and the reason left with them.
First knowledge check. Which is the single best source of truth for your Salesforce entitlement? A, the admin console, since it shows what exists. B, the order forms, since they are contractual. C, neither alone; the baseline is the reconciliation of both. D, the invoice, since it shows what you actually pay. Pause here and pick an answer before you continue.
C. The console answers what is being used and the order forms answer what is being bought, and the interesting facts live in the difference between those two. A misses everything contracted and never provisioned, which is the most expensive category precisely because it is invisible in the only system anybody checks. B misses whether any of it is used at all. And D is closer than people expect, and it aggregates, so it tells you the total without ever telling you which line to act on.
So what does the console actually show? Provisioned licences, which answers what exists in this org, and misses what you bought and never provisioned. Assignment, which answers who holds what today, and misses what you are contracted to pay for. Last login, which answers whether it is used, and misses whether the cost is justified. Permission set licences, which answers which capability is granted, and misses which capability is used. And this org, which answers one estate, and misses the other orgs that arrived with acquisitions. Every one of those left hand columns is worth having. The point is simply that none of them tells you your rate, your renewal date or your notice period.
Let me put the blind spots plainly, because people treat the console as the source of truth. Contracted quantity: buy eleven hundred and provision nine hundred and the org shows you nine hundred, while two hundred sit paid for and silent. Commercial terms: rate, uplift, ramp, notice period and renewal date exist only in the order form. Never deployed products, which do not appear at all. Other orgs, because nobody's default export crosses that boundary. So use both. Let me be specific about what the console will not tell you.
Guest analyst clip.
Neither one alone is your position. And the never provisioned category is worth dwelling on, because it is the one that survives renewal after renewal. Nobody questions a line they cannot see, and there is no system that will ever raise its hand about it.
Second knowledge check. Which category of waste is hardest to find, and why? A, dormant users, because nobody reviews last login. B, over-licensed users, because the licence type is not obvious. C, contracted but never provisioned, because it is invisible in the org. D, unused permission set licences, because they are buried in profiles. Pause here before you continue.
C. Everything else on that list is at least visible in the system somebody checks, which means a diligent administrator can trip over it eventually. A product bought and never switched on leaves no trace in the org at all, so it can only be found by reading the order forms, and it survives renewal after renewal because nobody has a reason to question a line they cannot see. A, B and D are all real and all findable from a single export, which is exactly why session four could tackle them without touching any paperwork.
So, three numbers per line. Contracted, from the order form, meaning what you are committed to pay for this term. Provisioned, from the org, meaning what exists whether or not anybody holds it. And active, meaning used in the last ninety days, which is the only one of the three that reflects value. Contracted above provisioned is free money, because nobody loses anything when it comes off at renewal. Provisioned above active needs a conversation with the business owner before removal, because occasionally there is a genuine reason. Let me walk through how to read those gaps.
Guest analyst clip.
Did not change somebody's mind about what to renew. And notice the third case in there, active above provisioned, which should be impossible. If your data shows it, stop and fix the data, because a baseline with one impossible number in it will be dismissed entirely by the first person who spots it.
Five steps to build it, about two weeks the first time. Collect every order form, including the small mid term ones, from procurement, legal, your account team and your own files. List the contracted lines: product, quantity, rate, start and end, one row each, in one place, however ugly it looks. Export the org: licence types, assignment, last login, permission set licences, for every org you have. Match and mark the gaps line by line, and where you cannot match something, write down that you could not, because an unexplained gap you have flagged is a task while an unexplained gap you have hidden is a future argument. And have somebody approve it, because a named owner signing it off is what turns a spreadsheet into the organisation's position.
Five failures. Built once and never maintained, so it is accurate for a fortnight and quietly wrong by the renewal, which is exactly when it is needed. Only the main org, so the acquisition's estate sits outside the analysis and outside anybody's attention. Assignment mistaken for use, because a licence assigned to somebody who has not logged in since March is not in use in any sense that matters. Gaps left unexplained, which become arguments nobody can settle later. And no owner, so the baseline belongs to whoever built it and dies quietly when they change roles.
Last knowledge check. What makes a baseline authoritative inside your own organisation? A, that it came from Salesforce. B, that a named owner approved it and every figure traces to a source. C, that it is detailed enough to answer any question. D, that finance has signed off the total. Pause here and pick an answer before you continue.
B. Traceability lets a challenged figure be defended, and ownership means somebody is accountable for keeping it true, and those two properties are what separate a position from a spreadsheet. A is the vendor's view of your estate, which is useful to compare against and is assembled from their records rather than yours. C describes the model that impresses people in the meeting and gets maintained by nobody afterwards. And D is a consequence of B rather than a substitute for it, since finance can only sign off a number that traces to something. Let me describe the finished artefact.
Guest analyst clip.
A position you actually hold. So, one line per product, not per user and not per order form, because per product is what fits on a page and what can be read. The three numbers, contracted, provisioned and active, dated, so the gaps are visible at a glance. The money and the dates: annual cost, renewal date, notice date, which between them decide what you can do and when. An owner per line, by name, meaning the business owner who can answer whether it is still needed. And updated quarterly, which is three numbers and a date, about fifteen minutes, four times a year.
Three sentences, and this closes module one. A Salesforce baseline is a reconciliation rather than a report, because the order forms say what you buy and the org says what you use, and the gap between them is created by ordinary time rather than by anybody's error. The admin console is genuinely useful and exactly half the picture, since it cannot show you contracted quantity, commercial terms, other orgs, or the most expensive category of all, which is a product bought and never switched on. And three numbers per line, contracted, provisioned and active, held on one page with an owner and a date, is the whole discipline: about two weeks once, and fifteen minutes a quarter after that. Next time, module two opens with Sales Cloud.
Homework before session six, and this is the big one, about two weeks running in the background. One, start the collection: ask procurement, legal and your account team for every order form, and start it today rather than planning it. Two, write the contracted lines, so product, quantity, rate and dates, because ugly and complete beats elegant and partial. Three, export every org, including the ones that arrived with an acquisition, which usually takes a phone call to somebody you have not met. Four, mark three lines you cannot explain, because every estate has them and they are the most interesting conversations you will have this quarter. And five, draft the one page even half filled, because the format is what makes the rest of the work land.
Five guides, all on redresscompliance dot com. Building a Salesforce entitlement baseline covers the reconciliation step by step with the one page format, which is the reference version of today. Salesforce licence types explained covers what each type permits, for reading the provisioned side properly. Salesforce renewal preparation is about working backwards from the notice date with a clean base. Salesforce contracts explained covers reading the order forms this is built from. And the Salesforce licensing assessment page describes what an independent review covers, if you would rather not do the first pass yourself.
That is session five, and that is module one complete. You now have the landscape, the contract stack, the edition ladder, the licence types and the baseline, which between them are the foundation everything else stands on. Next time, module two opens on Sales Cloud: what each edition includes, where the upsell boundaries sit, and the features that quietly require the next tier. See you then.