---
title: "Recommendations and savings"
slug: "recommendations-and-savings"
updated: 2026-11-02T06:53:54Z
published: 2026-11-02T06:53:54Z
canonical: "docs.turbo360.com/recommendations-and-savings"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.turbo360.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Recommendations and savings

## Overview

Recommendations are Tenant Manager's suggestions for Microsoft 365 licenses that you pay for but do not use. Savings are the estimated monthly and yearly cost of acting on them. Together they show where license spend can come down and what each change would do.

A recommendation changes nothing by itself. You decide what to do with it in **Optimization**.

### Business value

Each recommendation names the people, Microsoft Entra ID groups, or licenses involved and the saving it would bring, so you can decide quickly. Every change goes through an approval step before anything changes in Microsoft 365.

## How it works

Tenant Manager works out recommendations from the data of the last sync, and you act on them in **Optimization**. This section covers what Tenant Manager looks for, how savings are counted, and how a recommendation becomes a change.

### What Tenant Manager looks for

#### Recommendation tabs

**Optimization** groups recommendations on three tabs: **Users**, **Groups**, and **Licenses**. Each tab has filters that show why a row is listed.

On the **Users** tab, each row is a person, and the **Reason** column explains why.

| Reason | When it applies |
| --- | --- |
| Disabled | The account is disabled and holds at least one direct license. Microsoft records no date for when an account was disabled, so there is no time limit. |
| Never signed in | The account is enabled, holds a direct license, has no sign-in of either kind (interactive or background) on record, and is older than 7 days. |
| Inactive | The account is enabled, holds a direct license, and its last activity is older than the Inactive line. |
| Idle Copilot | The person holds a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seat that the Copilot usage report shows as unused for longer than the evaluation duration. |
| Low usage | The person could move to a cheaper license. This is a license swap. |
| Multiple assignments | The person holds the same license more than one way, for example directly and through a Microsoft Entra ID group. Microsoft counts one seat however many ways a license is given, so removing the extra assignment saves nothing. |

On the **Licenses** tab, each row is a license. **Overbought** lists paid licenses with more seats purchased than assigned. **Fully used** lists licenses with every seat assigned, where at least one holder could be reclaimed. **Swap license** lists people who could move to a cheaper license.

The **Groups** tab covers licenses that members receive through a Microsoft Entra ID group. You cannot remove such a license from a person while they stay in the group, so this tab lists members to remove from groups and license changes for a group.

A member is listed when the account is disabled, when the person has never signed in (the account is older than 7 days, and only when the tenant has sign-in data), or when the person has been inactive for longer than the Inactive line. Tenant Manager checks direct members only, so nested membership is not followed, and it does not evaluate owners. It skips on-premises synced groups, dynamic groups, and Exchange-managed groups, because their membership cannot be changed here. **Seats freed** counts only the paid seats a member gets from that Microsoft Entra ID group alone. Excluded users still appear in the list, but they are skipped when you file the task.

A swap on the **Users** and **Licenses** tabs looks at directly assigned paid licenses of enabled, non-excluded people who were active within the Inactive line. Tenant Manager steps down one level at a time and stops at the first rule that fails. For example, Office 365 E5 moves to E3 when the E5-only features are off or unused, and Microsoft 365 E3 moves to F3 when the person does not use desktop Office and has a small mailbox and OneDrive. It can also suggest a cheaper license plus only the add-ons the person uses, or an email-only license for a person who uses only email. A swap whose saving is zero or less is dropped.

Activity means an interactive sign-in, or use of email, Teams, SharePoint, or OneDrive. A background sign-in counts as activity only when Microsoft's usage reports have nothing for that person.

              Note:

              

The Inactive line is a viewer setting in **Filter settings**. The default is 30 days, you can change the number of days, and the choice is kept per browser, so two people can see different Inactive counts. The Overview page counts an idle seat differently: a paid seat held by a user who is disabled or has had no activity for 90 days, based on last activity.

**Recommendation settings**, available on the **Users**, **Licenses**, and **Groups** tabs, set how far back swaps, service license removals, Idle Copilot, and group license changes look at use. The evaluation duration is set for each tenant. When it is empty, each activity type keeps its own default: 30 days for sign-ins and Copilot, 60 days for SharePoint and OneDrive, and 90 days for desktop Office, Teams, and calls. A longer duration is capped at 30 days for sign-ins and 90 days for calls, because Microsoft does not keep older data. For the details, see [Optimization overview](https://docs.turbo360.com/docs/optimization-overview-in-tenant-manager).

Users that you exclude in Explore never appear as removal candidates on the **Users** and **Licenses** tabs. Tasks and automations refuse removals for them, and additions still work.

#### Group license changes

Tenant Manager judges each paid license that a Microsoft Entra ID group assigns, looking only at members who get the license through that group alone. Members who also get it directly or through another group keep it. Tenant Manager suggests removing the license from the group when every judged member can lose it. It suggests a swap when every remaining member qualifies for the same cheaper license, the cheaper license needs no add-ons, and the saving stays positive. It skips a group when any judged member is excluded, or when a member uses the license and has no cheaper option. A change is blocked when the target license does not have enough unassigned seats. Unlike the **Users** tab, this check gives new accounts no 7-day grace.

#### Permissions that recommendations need

Recommendations are made only from data that Turbo360 is allowed to read. Your Microsoft Entra administrator grants these permissions on the tenant's app registration with admin consent, and the information icon next to the **Optimization** page title shows which are granted.

| Permission | What it unlocks |
| --- | --- |
| Directory.Read.All, or Organization.Read.All, User.Read.All, and Group.Read.All together | Licenses, users, and groups: every recommendation. |
| AuditLog.Read.All | Sign-ins: **Inactive** and **Never signed in**, and whether people use Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, Dynamics 365, and Intune. Also needs Microsoft Entra ID P1 or P2. |
| Reports.Read.All | Microsoft 365 usage reports: **Idle Copilot**, and swaps based on Office app use and mailbox and OneDrive size. |
| RoleManagement.Read.Directory | Privileged Identity Management admin role eligibility: swaps from E5 to E3 when Entra ID P2 is unused. |
| CallRecord-PstnCalls.Read.All | Phone calls: swaps from E5 to E3 when Teams Phone is unused. |
| Real names in usage reports (Microsoft 365 setting) | Usage-based recommendations. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Settings > Org settings > Reports and clear **Display concealed user, group, and site names in all reports**. |
| Billing account reader (Azure role on the billing account) | Seat prices, so savings can be shown. Only Microsoft Customer Agreement billing accounts give prices. |

Without Microsoft Entra ID P1, Microsoft provides no sign-in data, so **Inactive** and **Never signed in** list nobody, and usage reports do not stand in for them. Idle Copilot and swaps still use usage reports, which record email, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive use. A person who uses only another service, such as Teams Phone, Power BI, or Defender, can look inactive to those checks, so confirm they do not need the license first.

### How savings are counted

Savings appear as tiles above each grid and as the **Monthly savings** column on each row.

The monthly saving for a recommendation is the price of the paid licenses it would remove, or the price difference when a swap moves a person to a cheaper license. For an overbought license, it is the unused seats at the seat price. Annual savings are the monthly figure multiplied by 12.

Seat prices come from one of two sources. The first is the tenant's Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) billing account, which needs the Billing account reader role on the connection. The second is a custom price that the Turbo360 account owner or a module owner sets in the [Global price catalog](https://docs.turbo360.com/docs/global-price-catalog-in-tenant-manager). A dash or NA means that no price is known.

Totals include only licenses with a known price, and the tiles say how many prices are known, for example prices known for 3 of 5 people. Trial licenses are never counted in cost, and they cannot be given a price. On screen, all amounts show in one currency: the billing currency of your tenants when they all share one, otherwise US dollars, converted at the daily exchange rate. Reports and alert emails do not convert; they show one subtotal for each currency. The figures are estimates based on the prices Tenant Manager knows.

### From recommendation to change

A recommendation becomes a change when you add it to tasks, or when an automation applies it. The options below are available on the **Users**, **Groups**, **Licenses**, and **Tasks** tabs.

| Option | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| Add to tasks | Creates a task with the status Awaiting approval. Only one open request is allowed for each person and license, and a change that is already requested shows as Requested. |
| Approve | An approver applies the change in Microsoft 365 immediately. You cannot undo it from Tenant Manager. To reverse it, raise the opposite change. If Microsoft refuses the change, the task becomes Failed. |
| Decline | Nothing changes in Microsoft 365. The person who raised the task must raise it again if it is still needed. |
| Trigger notification | Sends the task to your IT team by email or a notification channel, so they make the change by hand. The task becomes Notified. |
| Generate PowerShell script | Builds a Microsoft Graph PowerShell script for the checked tasks. You review and run it yourself. |
| Mark as done | Closes a task after the change was made outside Tenant Manager. Move back to not done returns it to awaiting approval. |
| Ignore | Hides a recommendation for everyone in the account, either always or until a date. Restore brings it back. |

Tenant Manager cannot change how many seats you purchased. For an overbought license, **Add to tasks** creates a task for your IT team to reduce the subscription in the Microsoft 365 admin center. **Trigger notification** sends that task to your IT team, and **Mark as done** closes it once the change is made.

If the app registration of a tenant lacks the write permission a change needs, **Approve** is disabled and the task explains why. The permission is granted in Microsoft Entra ID, or the change can go through **Trigger notification** or **Generate PowerShell script** instead.

#### Automation

Automation removes licenses without raising tasks. Tenant Manager offers two automations on each tenant: Remove licenses from disabled accounts and Remove licenses from inactive accounts. They run every day at midnight in the Background activity time zone. Before it removes a license, an automation re-checks each account against Microsoft 365. It skips an account that was enabled again or that signed in after the last sync. An automation also never removes licenses from excluded users or licenses given through a Microsoft Entra ID group, and it can keep mailbox licenses. It stops when the last good sync is older than 24 hours or failing, when a run would exceed the accounts-per-run limit, and when the tenant is connected read-only. Each of these cases is recorded as a skipped run. Changing an automation needs the **Approve license tasks** permission.

## FAQs

1. **Why does a recommendation show no saving?** No price is known for the license, the license is a trial, or the change saves no seat. Group-assigned licenses and multiple assignments free no seat. To add a price, set a custom price in the Global price catalog or connect an MCA billing account.
2. **Why can I not remove a license from a user?** The license may come from a Microsoft Entra ID group, the user may be excluded, or a task for the change may already be waiting. Licenses given through a group are handled on the **Groups** tab.
3. **Can I undo an approved task?** Not from Tenant Manager. Approving applies the change in Microsoft 365 immediately. To reverse it, raise the opposite change as a new task.

## Related articles

- [What is Tenant Manager?](https://docs.turbo360.com/docs/what-is-tenant-manager)
- [Understanding tenant groups](https://docs.turbo360.com/docs/understanding-groups-and-tenants)
- [How data sync works](https://docs.turbo360.com/docs/how-data-sync-works)
- [Alerts and incident escalation](https://docs.turbo360.com/docs/alerts-and-incident-escalation)
- [Roles and permissions in Tenant Manager](https://docs.turbo360.com/docs/tenant-manager-roles-and-permissions)
- [License tasks](https://docs.turbo360.com/docs/license-tasks-in-tenant-manager)
- [License removal automation](https://docs.turbo360.com/docs/license-removal-automation-in-tenant-manager)