A corporate licence looks like the easiest sale you'll ever make. One contact, one invoice, twenty readers. Then the renewal comes round, the person who signed it has left, nobody knows who's actually using it, and the finance director at the client wants to know why they're paying for twenty seats when "only about six people read it".
Corporate licences are worth having. They're also where a lot of subscription admin quietly goes wrong. Here's how to get the basics right.
What counts as a corporate licence
The term gets used loosely, so it's worth being clear. Usually it means one organisation paying for access for several people. That might be:
- Named seats. A fixed number of individuals, each with their own login or copy.
- Site or IP-range access. Everyone on the client's network gets in, with no named users.
- Bulk print copies. A number of copies sent to one or more addresses at the organisation.
Plenty of deals mix these. A law firm might want ten print copies to its library, named digital logins for partners and IP access for everyone in the office. Write down exactly what each deal includes, because you'll need it at renewal and at audit.
Pricing: pick a model you can explain
There's no single right way to price a licence, but there are a few common approaches:
- Per seat, often with a discount that grows with the number of seats.
- Banded, where the price covers a range (up to 10 users, 11 to 25, and so on).
- Site-wide, priced on the size of the organisation, such as headcount or number of offices.
Whichever you choose, the client should be able to work out roughly what they'd pay before they ask. A rate card with bands is easier to sell, and easier to defend at renewal, than a fresh negotiation every time.
Two things are worth deciding up front. First, what happens if they want more seats mid-term: pro rata, or the next band up straight away? Second, what's the minimum? A "corporate" licence for two people is really just two subscriptions with extra admin.
Seat counts: keep them honest
The seat count is the heart of the deal, and it drifts. People leave, new starters ask for access, someone shares a password with the whole team. If you don't keep on top of it, you end up either giving away access or arguing with a good customer.
A few habits help:
- Name a licence administrator at the client. One person who tells you about joiners and leavers. Ask for a replacement when they leave.
- Show allocated seats against the maximum. Your team, and the client, should see "18 of 20 used" without having to count.
- Send the client their list. Once or twice a year, send the administrator the names on the licence and ask them to confirm it. It's useful housekeeping and it reminds them who's benefiting.
- Decide what you'll do about overuse. Usually a friendly conversation about moving up a band, not a cut-off.
For IP-based access, the equivalent is keeping the client's IP ranges up to date. Offices move and networks change. An out-of-date range either locks out a paying customer or lets in someone who isn't one.
Report usage before they ask
The renewal conversation is much easier if the client already knows the licence is being used. If you can, send a short usage summary each quarter: how many seats are active, how many people logged in, and which content they read most.
Keep it simple and honest. A summary the licence administrator can forward to their boss without editing is worth more than a 40-page export. If usage is low, it's better to know early. A low-usage licence is a renewal at risk, and three months' notice gives you time to offer training, a quick demo for new staff or a smaller band.
The renewal is the big moment
Losing one individual subscriber is a small dent. Losing a corporate licence can take dozens of readers out at once. So corporate renewals need their own process, separate from your normal renewal series.
Start earlier than you would for individuals, because organisations need time to raise purchase orders and get sign-off. Know who signs and who uses it, as they're often different people. Have the usage figures ready. And keep a pipeline that shows which licences are due in the next few months and how many seats each one carries, so account managers spend time where the seats are.
When you measure renewal rates, report corporate licences separately, and count seats as well as accounts. We covered that in how to measure renewal rates properly.
A few rules worth knowing
The 2027 subscription rules. The new UK rules on auto-renewing subscriptions cover contracts with consumers. A business buying a licence for its staff is a business-to-business contract, so it's outside them. But many titles sell to both, so it pays to know which customers are which. Our guide to the 2027 subscription rules goes through who's in scope.
VAT. Since 1 May 2020, qualifying e-publications have been zero-rated, the same as print. HMRC's VAT Notice 701/10 says a fee for access to several zero-rated e-publications is zero-rated, but where one charge covers a mix of zero-rated and standard-rated items, you need to apportion it "on a fair and reasonable basis". If a licence bundles the magazine with something that isn't an e-publication, check how that part is treated and make sure your invoices split it.
ABC audits. If you're ABC audited, the 2025 Business Magazines changes removed the separate Corporate Subscriptions category. In ABC's words on its 2025 changes page, "employee copies may be claimed as Single Copy Subscriptions." There's also a Multiple Copy Subscriptions category, which can now include digital copies, so check the Business Magazines standards for which one fits each deal. Either way, you'll need the contract, the payment and the recipient records to back up what you claim, so keep them with the licence. If you're audited by AAM (formerly BPA) instead, check its rules, as they differ.
What the software should do
You can run a handful of licences in a spreadsheet. Past that, the spreadsheet tends to belong to one person and stops being right fairly quickly. Your subscription system should hold licences as proper orders on the organisation's record, with:
- seat maximums and allocated named users;
- easy ways to add people in bulk, because client lists arrive in every format going;
- IP ranges linked to the licence, which your website or paywall can check;
- a renewal pipeline showing seats at risk;
- an export of the people on each licence to send to the client.
That's how Avio, our subscription platform for larger publishers, handles corporate subscriptions, with a dashboard of its own covering licences, seats and upcoming renewals. If you'd rather someone else kept the lists straight, our circulation and subscriptions bureau can run it for you.
If you've got corporate deals living in a spreadsheet and you'd like to see what the alternative looks like, book a demo and bring a real licence along. We'll show you how it would sit in the system.
Rob Sherwood is Managing Director of Adept Data Services. He has spent his career in subscriptions and circulation, at WDIS, Optima and CDS Global before founding Adept.