What we tend
Your tech stack, audited.
We trace every recurring charge, kill the tools you don't use, and consolidate the rest. Most owners save $100–$500 a month after the first pass. Sometimes much more.
What is a small business tech stack audit?
A tech stack audit is a trace of every recurring software subscription you pay for, categorized by whether you actually use it. The average small business with under 200 employees now uses about 42 different SaaS applications and overspends by 25–30% on tools they barely use (CloudNuro, 2026). We identify the dead weight, the overlap, and the downgrade opportunities — then we cancel or consolidate. Most small businesses save $100–$500 a month after the first pass.
· Written by the founder of Tend the Tech — operator with decades in FM, servers, web, SEO, and auto-shop operations.
What we typically find.
Anonymized examples from real audits. Real savings. Each one paid for the audit in the first month.
$140/mo
Auto shop paying for three review-management tools when GBP + manual replies covered the same job
$280/mo
FM operator with redundant cloud storage (Dropbox + Google Drive + OneDrive) — consolidated to one
$95/mo
Retail shop on a $99 "unlimited" platform when the free tier covered their actual volume
$220/mo
Service business paying for Yelp ads that drove zero attributable revenue across 6 months
$350/mo
Restaurant with overlapping POS + scheduling + payroll fees that consolidated into a single integrated platform
$2,728/yr
Founder who thought he had a lean stack — single audit found nearly $3k/yr in unused tools
How does the audit pass run?
- 1. Inventory. You give us read-only access to your business card statements (or just last 90 days as PDFs) and a list of accounts you remember signing up for. We trace every recurring charge.
- 2. Categorize. Each charge gets tagged: software / service / utility / marketing / other. Then within software: actively used / occasionally used / forgotten / overlap / downgrade-candidate.
- 3. The kill list. A one-page document with every charge, your monthly cost, our recommendation (keep / cancel / downgrade / consolidate), and estimated annual savings. We send it as a text-readable summary, not a 40-slide deck.
- 4. You approve. You go down the list and check yes/no/think-about-it on each. No pressure. We don't try to talk you out of keeping things you want.
- 5. We execute. We cancel what you approved canceling. Where data needs to move (e.g., consolidating two email tools), we migrate it first. We send confirmation of each cancellation.
What does your stack look like after we tend it?
Fewer logins. Fewer renewal-notice emails. A documented inventory of what you keep and why. A monthly software bill that's $100–$500 lower than it was. Owners describe the after-state as "I finally know what I'm paying for" — and that's the elevation. You're not just paying less; you're operating from clarity instead of accumulating clutter.
The annual re-audit keeps the cleanup from sliding back. Beacon Auto Care does this with us yearly; we caught $140/month of slow-creep within nine months last time. See the Beacon case study for the full operation.
Why is this the highest-ROI work we do?
A new landing page might bring you 5 more customers a quarter. A GBP rescue might move your local ranking from #6 to #3 (see our GBP tending). Both worth doing. But a tech stack audit that finds $300/month in dead subscriptions is $3,600 a year, every year, forever — until something else creeps in. We've never done a tech stack audit that didn't pay for itself in month one.
It's also the work that builds trust fastest. We're not selling you something new. We're cancelling things you didn't realize you were paying for. That tends to be a different kind of conversation than "let us run your SEO."
Want a free 10-minute tech stack scan?
Send us a screenshot of the last 30 days of your business card statement (just the recurring charges). We'll text back our top 3 "this looks like dead weight" picks within the workday. No audit commitment. No upsell. No retainer. No deck. No Loom.
Text us →Tech stack audit FAQ
How much money does a tech stack audit typically save a small business?
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Typical small business: $100–$500/month saved within the first audit. Industry research backs this up — the average SMB uses around 42 SaaS applications and overspends by 25–30% on tools they barely use. We've seen single audits surface $32,000 in annual waste. Common findings on our side: a $99/mo "unlimited everything" plan with one user when the free tier covered the actual volume, three overlapping email tools, an SEO subscription you forgot, free trials that auto-converted. The audit pays for itself the first month and keeps paying every month after.
How does the audit actually work?
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We get read-only access to your business credit card statements, your bank's recurring-charges list, and a list of accounts you remember signing up for. We trace every recurring charge, categorize what it is, and tag whether you actually use it. Then we walk through the kill list with you — over text, no Loom required. You approve. We cancel.
Will you make me switch tools I like?
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No. If you love QuickBooks, we keep QuickBooks. If you love Tekmetric, we keep Tekmetric. The audit is about killing what you DON'T use and consolidating overlap — not forcing you onto our preferred stack. We don't have a preferred stack. We use what works for you.
What kinds of tools do you usually find that get cut?
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Top recurring offenders: duplicate email marketing (Mailchimp + Constant Contact), SEO tools nobody logs into, abandoned project management apps (Asana + Trello + Notion all paid), expensive website builders the owner has outgrown, "premium" GBP automation tools that do worse than free, redundant cloud storage, and Yelp ads that aren't converting. See our honest Yelp page for the Yelp Ads audit specifically.
Are there security risks to leaving old SaaS subscriptions open?
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Yes. Every abandoned SaaS account is a credential leak risk — old passwords, old API tokens, old integrations sitting in systems nobody monitors. When a vendor gets breached (and one does, every few months), those credentials get harvested and tried against your real systems. Cancellation closes the door. The audit is partly a cost-saving exercise and partly a security hygiene exercise.
What does the audit cost?
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$300–$800 depending on size of stack (number of subscriptions to trace). Most audits pay for themselves in the first month of savings. We tell you the estimated audit cost and estimated savings before you commit, so you know whether it's worth doing.
Do you consolidate too, or just identify cuts?
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Both. After the audit, we migrate data and accounts where consolidation makes sense — e.g., moving from two email tools to one, or rolling your scheduling + CRM into a single platform if that fits. Migration is priced separately per-thing. See integrations for the wiring side.
How often should a small business audit its tech stack?
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Once a year for most operators. SaaS subscriptions accumulate over time the way clutter accumulates in a garage — you don't notice the slow build. An annual audit catches the new dead weight before it adds up. Some clients have us run a quick "what's new this quarter" pass every 90 days; it's cheaper than the full audit.
Can you do the audit remotely?
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Yes — the whole thing is remote. You share statements via secure upload (or PDFs over encrypted email), we trace, we send back the kill list, you approve via text. No in-person meeting required.
What happens after we cancel everything?
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Two outcomes. (1) Lower monthly burn — typically $100–$500 immediately, sometimes more. (2) A cleaner stack you can actually see, with a documented inventory of what you keep and why. Most owners report a real sense of relief — fewer logins, fewer renewal notices, fewer "wait am I paying for this?" moments. The annual re-audit keeps the cleanup from sliding back.