Read-only · Nothing installed · Nothing leaves your instance
The ServiceNow renewal number nobody can explain.
SubIQ finds fulfiller license drift — in custom tables, in inherited roles, and in seats nobody is using — before your renewal turns it into a negotiation.
Fulfiller licenses are consumed by activity, not by headcount. So the count drifts — quietly, for years — while the org chart stays the same.
Request the diagnostic → hello@sub-iq.com
A person replies. No form, no trial, no mailing list.
The diagnosticOne-off
A read-only script your own administrator runs, and a written summary.
- You get the file first. Read it, have your platform team read it, then decide.
- Your administrator runs it inside your instance. We are not in the path.
- You get a written summary of what it found — and of what it could not assess.
Nothing is installed, there is no signup and no trial, and we never receive your credentials.
Read-only
It creates, updates and deletes nothing.
No user impact
No deactivations, no role changes, no interruption to anyone working.
No outbound calls
Nothing leaves your instance — not to us, not to anyone.
You read it first
You get the file before you run it. Then decide.
Who runs this?
If you have been asked “do we actually need all of these?” and had to answer from memory.
Then the renewal arrives, and the number is the number. You can query it, but you cannot correct the twelve months of drift behind it in the two weeks you have to respond.
Where does the drift come from?
Three places, and not one of them is anybody's mistake.Custom table overlap
Extending core ITSM is normal, sensible platform work. What follows is not obvious: the extension can end up recorded as costing nothing while behaving exactly like the paid table it extends. Both things are true at once.
Nothing in the platform surfaces the contradiction, so nobody has ever decided which reading is correct — because nobody has been shown that a decision is required.
Accidental role inheritance
People end up holding paid roles nobody chose to give them, because roles are inherited. Someone joins a group for an unrelated reason and arrives holding an expensive one.
There was no decision, no approval and no record of intent — just a person who now counts against your subscription.
Activity is not access
Holding a fulfiller role is not the same as using it. Someone who signs in daily and never touches a ticket they did not raise looks identical to a working agent.
If you go by sign-in dates. Sign-in dates are what most license reviews go by, because they are what is easy to get.
Why has nobody caught it?
Not negligence. Three structural reasons.
The platform records what you bought in careful detail, and what you used barely at all.
Custom tables are classified once, at creation, and never revisited.
And the only people who could investigate properly are the same people keeping the service desk running.
So the drift is invisible until it is expensive. And the moment it becomes visible is the moment it becomes a negotiation.
Why does the month matter?
Finding out is quick. Acting on it is not.
ServiceNow's financial year ends in December, so the question tends to arrive in Q4. Confirming that a specific person genuinely no longer needs a paid role means asking their manager, checking they are not mid-project, and agreeing a date. That is weeks of ordinary organizational work, per person.
Start in the fall and you have evidence and a cleaned-up count. Start when the renewal lands and you have an opinion.
What's delivered?
Each stage is a fixed one-off number, agreed before any work starts. Nothing is metered, nothing renews by itself, and there is no tier you get moved up to.| Stage | What you get | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| The diagnosticDiagnostic | A read-only script your administrator runs, plus a written summary. It names the licensed tables, which of your own custom tables descend from them, and how many people hold a paid role with no evidence of doing the work it pays for. | Fixed price, quoted before anything starts. One-off. No subscription and nothing installed. |
| The full analysisResolution | Named people rather than counts. For each one: whether there is evidence they have done the work the role exists for, where the role came from, and which of the two possible fixes actually holds. Delivered as a document with the evidence beside every claim. | Fixed price, quoted with the diagnostic. Scales with instance size. One-off — it ends when it is delivered. |
| The standing watchPrevention | Runs inside your instance. Compares what you are consuming against the number on your order form, and tells you as you approach it — and again if you pass it. Months before a Q4 conversation, not during one. | Fixed price, quoted with the analysis. Nothing recurring for hosting: it runs on your instance, not on our servers. |
Why the analysis is worth paying for
Taking one person out of a group and removing the role where it originates look like the same fix on screen. They affect very different numbers of people, and only one of them holds — do the wrong one and the role quietly comes back. Working out which is which, person by person, is most of what the manual version of this costs, and it is why the going rate for doing it by hand runs into five figures.
Everything above stays inside your instance. The watch mails through your own system; we are not in the path and we never see your numbers.
You tell us what you bought. We do not read your contract, and we are not going to guess at it.
Can you check our working?
Every finding arrives with the query that produced it.
Your administrator runs that query and gets the same answer — or a different one. Either way you are not taking our word for anything.
Each finding also carries how far we are willing to stand behind it, and what it rests on. Where the evidence is not there, it is marked cannot assess rather than quietly counted as nothing. A missing record and a record showing nothing happened are not the same.
What you will not get is a savings figure we cannot source. We will tell you what your instance says, name what it does not say, and leave the money to the rate in your own contract.
What will it not do?
It will not tell you that you are compliant — or that you are not.
It reports exposure and shows its working. A human draws the conclusion.
It will not tell you to cancel anyone's license.
Reclaiming a seat that is genuinely in use is the worst outcome available here, so the check deliberately under-reports — worth reviewing where a louder tool would say safe to remove.
It will not see everything.
Where it cannot answer a question, it says so instead of guessing. That is exactly the part that matters when you take the results to your account team.
It will not guess across releases.
Built and verified against a current release. If yours classifies things differently the check stops and tells you rather than reporting something misleading.
Does this apply to how you are licensed?
Fulfiller seats are consumed by activity — writing to a record somebody else raised. That is what this measures.
Unrestricted licensing works differently: it counts active people rather than who holds which role. If your seats are counted that way, your question is joiner-leaver hygiene and this is not the right exercise. We will tell you so.
ServiceNow changed its packaging in 2026. Tell us which model and tier you are on when you write, and we will confirm this applies before quoting anything.
Start with the diagnostic.
Tell us roughly how large your instance is and we will quote it before anything starts. If it misses something that matters to you, say so and we will extend it. Taking it no further is a perfectly reasonable outcome.
A person replies. There is no form and no mailing list.