Signal · Cost

Zombie subscriptions

Recurring supplier subscriptions that are rising, duplicated, or long-unchanged — quiet savings sit here.

Cost

What the signal measures

Recurring supplier subscriptions that are rising, duplicated, or long-unchanged — quiet savings sit here.

Why it matters

Recurring supplier subscriptions accumulate silently — a tool signed up for a trial in 2023, an analytics platform whose seat count crept up, two identical-looking subscriptions to the same vendor under different contact names. Individually they are rounding errors; collectively they can be 5-10% of your overheads. This signal identifies the three patterns — rising, duplicate, and long-unchanged.

How to act on it

The drafted action is a review checklist per supplier: what is this for, who uses it, is the plan right-sized, is there a duplicate? Compass does not suggest cancelling anything — the human always decides whether the £30/month spend still earns its keep.

Worked example — fixture consultancy

On the fixture, Flowstate Analytics (s-flow) rises every month across the window from £300 to £750 — a classic scale-creep zombie. CloudHost Ltd and CloudHost Limited (near-identical names, different supplier IDs) look like a duplicate bill. Compass surfaces both patterns with the underlying bill sequence so the human can decide.