How to Conduct a Mobile Expense Audit (Without Losing Your Mind)

In today's hyper-connected business world, mobile devices are no longer a luxury - they're a necessity. But with a growing fleet of smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices comes a new challenge: managing the costs. Left unchecked, a company's mobile expenses can spiral out of control, eating into profits and causing headaches for IT and finance departments.

The solution? A mobile expense audit.

While the term might sound intimidating, a systematic audit is the best way to gain visibility into your spending, identify waste, and ensure you’re getting the most value from your carrier plans. And the good news is, it doesn't have to be a nightmare.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to conducting a mobile expense audit without losing your mind.

Step 1: Gather Your Data

Before you can analyze anything, you need to collect all the relevant information. This is often the most time-consuming part, but getting it right from the start will save you countless hours later.

• Carrier Bills: Collect at least three to six months of detailed bills from all your mobile carriers. Look for itemized breakdowns of usage, including voice, data, and messaging for each line. It's also essential to pull the PDF versions to check for any buried late fees, one-time charges, or overpayments that can be easy to miss in summary reports.
• Device Inventory: Create an accurate list of every mobile device your company owns and who is assigned to it. This should include smartphones, tablets, hotspots, and any other cellular-enabled devices. Note the device model and IMEI number. Most carriers provide this information through their online portals or via existing Telecom Expense Management (TEM) tools, which can significantly speed up the process. You may need to consolidate data if you use multiple carriers.
• Employee Information: Match each device to its user. Include details like department, cost center, and their role within the company. This helps in understanding usage patterns and allocating costs correctly.
• Contracts: Find your current service contracts with each carrier. Note key terms like the duration of the agreement, data allowances, overage charges, and any a-la-carte fees.

 Step 2: Reconcile Your Inventory with Your Bills

This is where the detective work begins. Your goal is to match every line on your carrier bill to a physical device in your inventory and an employee.

• Identify Orphaned Lines: Look for lines on your bill that are not assigned to a device or an employee. These could be devices that were not returned by a former employee, test lines, or simply billing errors. These are often easy targets for immediate savings.
• Spot Missing Devices: Conversely, if you have devices in your inventory that are not appearing on a bill, investigate why. They could be inactive, on a separate plan, or simply not being billed correctly.

 Step 3: Analyze Usage Patterns

Once your data is reconciled, you can start digging into the details of your usage. This is where you’ll find the biggest opportunities for optimization.

• Data Hogs vs. Light Users: Identify the top 5-10% of data users and the bottom 5-10%. Are your high-usage employees legitimately power users (e.g., field sales, engineers) or are they simply streaming personal content? Are your light users on a plan that is far too expensive for their needs?
• Overage Charges: Scrutinize your bills for any overage charges for voice, text, or data. A single overage fee can be a significant cost multiplier. A consistent pattern of overages on a specific line is a clear sign that the user needs a different plan.
• International Roaming: International travel can lead to astronomical roaming fees. Identify who is traveling and whether your current plan adequately covers their needs. Could a local SIM, Wi-Fi calling, or an international data package be a better solution? Also, check if any unused international travel features or other add-ons are still active and generating unnecessary recurring costs.
• Inactive Lines: How many lines on your bill show zero or minimal usage over the audit period? You are likely paying a monthly fee for a service no one is using. These lines can be suspended or canceled for immediate savings.

 Step 4: Evaluate Your Plans and Policies

Your audit data is useless without context. Now it’s time to look at the bigger picture.

• Is the Plan Right? Are your employees on the right plans for their usage? Consider a pooled data plan for a team with varied usage needs. You can put the data hogs and the light users on the same plan, allowing the heavy users to draw from the shared pool without incurring overage fees.
• Review Plan and Feature Options: Check whether there are underutilized or grandfathered plans you could be leveraging, or if there are any available plan features under your current contract that have not yet been applied to the necessary lines to reduce overage costs.
• Review Your Contract: Is your carrier providing the services and rates you agreed to? Have there been any recent changes to their terms? Is your contract coming to an end, giving you leverage to renegotiate?
• Assess Your Policies: Do you have a clear Mobile Device Usage Policy? Does it specify what is acceptable and what is not? A strong policy can help mitigate future cost overruns by setting clear expectations for employee usage.

 Step 5: Take Action and Implement Changes

The audit is not complete until you implement your findings.

• Right-size Your Plans: Based on your analysis, migrate users to more appropriate plans. Put heavy data users on higher-tier plans and low-usage users on more cost-effective ones.
• Terminate Unused Lines: Immediately suspend or terminate any lines that are no longer in use.
• Engage with Your Carrier: Schedule a meeting with your carrier representative to present your findings. Use your audit data to negotiate better rates, more flexible plans, or to resolve any billing discrepancies.
• Establish an Ongoing Process: An audit is not a one-time event. Implement a monthly or at least quarterly review process to keep costs in check and ensure your mobile fleet remains optimized. High-volume usage data and overages should be monitored much more frequently than a yearly check-up.

 Don't Lose Your Mind—Use the Right Tools

 The thought of doing all of this manually can be overwhelming, especially for a large organization. This is where a mobile expense management service becomes invaluable. A solution like vMOX automates much of this process, from gathering billing data to identifying cost-saving opportunities and managing your device inventory. It provides the visibility and control you need to conduct a thorough audit without the manual, time-consuming grunt work.

Mobile expense management doesn’t have to be a journey into madness. With a structured approach and the right tools, you can transform a chaotic collection of bills into a clear, actionable strategy that saves your company money and improves your operational efficiency.