Licensing in D365 Finance isn’t intuitive. Functional boundaries, new licensing rules, and misclassified roles often cause organizations to overpay every month without realizing it.

Here are five practical, real-world tips to reduce licensing costs without disrupting day-to-day operations.

1. Start by Validating the Active User List

Most companies still pay licenses for users who:

• No longer work in the organization
• Have multiple or duplicate accounts
• Are external consultants who no longer need access
• Are system or test accounts left active accidentally

If your active user list is wrong, everything that follows — license counts, classifications, compliance — becomes inaccurate.

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ERP Security Roles & Governance Approach in D365 Finance

2. Understand How Product Licensing Boundaries Work (Finance, SCM, HR, Commerce, Projects)

Microsoft now treats several workloads as separate products, each with their own licensing requirements:

• Finance
• Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• Project Operations
• Commerce
• HR

The key concept:

Licensing is driven by privileges and duties, not the UI or module name.

This means:

• Opening a screen does NOT cost more.
• Performing an operation mapped to an operations-level privilege does.

Examples:

• Entering or approving a purchase order uses SCM privileges.
• Project time/expense connects to Project Operations privileges.
• Certain HR actions use the F&O HR privilege set.

Attach licenses

If a user legitimately needs two workloads, attach licenses can lower costs when applied correctly.

📌 Related posts:

• 10 Things to Know About the New D365 Licensing Approach
• Reporting Limitations in D365 Finance

3. Map User Activities to Roles — Not Job Titles

Most licensing waste comes from assigning users more access than they actually use.

Your process should include:

1. Reviewing usage logs (menu items & forms accessed)
2. Validating real usage with team leads
3. Identifying unnecessary privileges
4. Simplifying or reorganizing security roles
5. Removing access that triggers higher-cost privileges

You’ll often find:

• Users with Finance licenses who only need read-only access
• Approvers or basic clerks who should be Team Member
• Users triggering SCM or Projects privileges without needing them

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Ledger vs Subledger in D365 Finance

4. Target High-Volume Roles With the Highest Savings Potential

Some roles affect hundreds of employees — and this is where you save the most money.

Biggest example: Approver roles

The licensing report often flags approver roles as requiring a Finance or SCM license because:

• They inherit privileges they never use
• Workflow actions map to operations-level privileges
• Some menu items appear in the role even though users never open them

In most organizations, approvers only:

• Approve purchase requisitions
• Approve invoices
• Approve timesheets
• Approve expenses

These actions typically qualify for Team Member, not full Finance.

Correcting this single category can create significant monthly savings.

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5. Establish a Quarterly Licensing Review

Licensing is not static — your organization changes constantly:

• New hires
• Departures
• Reorganizations
• New processes
• Module adoption
• Security redesign

Review each quarter:

• Licensing report results
• Actual usage vs assigned roles
• Cross-workload privilege usage
• Attach license eligibility
• Unused roles and users

This prevents “license creep” and avoids surprises during a Microsoft audit.

📌 Related post:
Environments Needed for an ERP Implementation
(Licensing reviews often happen alongside environment refreshes)

Conclusion

D365 licensing is complex because privilege mapping isn’t always obvious.
But with:

• a clean user list,
• proper understanding of workload boundaries,
• corrected high-volume roles, and
• quarterly reviews,

most organizations save 10–25% without affecting operations.