Adding Licences to your Tools

In this article, we’ll walk you through how to add and manage licences for your tools in HighGround.io. Licences might not be the most exciting part of your stack -but they’re one of the most important. They’re where cost, usage, and value all collide, and if they’re not managed properly, things can get messy (and expensive) fast.

Once your tools are set up, HighGround.io gives you a clear, structured way to track how those licences are purchased, how they’re organised, and whether you’re actually getting the most out of them. No more digging through spreadsheets, chasing invoices, or second-guessing who’s using what.

Instead, you get a single place to understand your licensing setup - so you can stay in control, spot inefficiencies, and make smarter decisions about your tech stack without the usual admin headache.

When you add a tool to your stack (for example, SentinelOne), HighGround will often automatically create a licence for you to get things moving quickly.

You’ll spot these by the “auto-generated” label in the licence name - think of it as a helpful starting point rather than the finished product.

From here, you can jump in and tailor it to match your real-world setup:

Taking a couple of minutes to fill this in properly pays off quickly. Once you’ve entered the quantity, cost, and snap-to unit, HighGround starts doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

Using this data, HighGround benchmarks your pricing against the wider market and shows you where you sit on the scale - from minimum to maximum pricing. In plain terms: you’ll be able to see whether you’ve negotiated a great deal or if there’s room to save.

This calculation is based on two key things:

Put simply, the more accurate your data, the more valuable the insight. It’s like finally having visibility into whether your licensing costs are working for you… or quietly eating into your margins.

A single tool can have multiple licences attached - and that’s completely normal.

Think of licences as individual products or SKUs sitting under the same tool. In the real world, your setup is rarely “one tool, one licence” - it’s usually a mix of different configurations depending on what your clients actually need.

For example, you might have:

HighGround.io is designed with this in mind. It lets you group all of these licences under one tool, so instead of juggling multiple entries or losing track of what’s what, you get a clear, structured view of your entire setup.

The result? You can see exactly what you’re paying for, how those costs are distributed, and where there might be overlap or opportunities to optimise - without having to piece it together manually.

When configuring a licence, you’ll be asked to define a few key details about how it’s purchased. This is where things start to get really useful - because the more accurately you reflect how you buy a licence, the better insights HighGround can give you later.

The Snap-To Unit defines how the licence is measured. In other words, what exactly are you being charged per?

Common examples include:

Nice and simple… most of the time.

But let’s be honest - licensing models aren’t always that clean. Some vendors like to get a bit creative with how they structure pricing.

That’s why HighGround gives you flexibility:

Yes, really - if your pricing model is “per banana,” you can absolutely set that up 🍌

Once created, custom units don’t just live in one place either. They’ll be available across the platform, including when building services and packages, keeping everything consistent and easy to manage.

The end result? However weird or wonderful your licensing model is, HighGround adapts to it - so you can track it properly without forcing it into a box it doesn’t fit in.

Next up, you’ll enter how much the licence actually costs.

This is where you define the real-world pricing you’re paying - no estimates, no guesswork.

For example:

Enter the cost exactly as it appears on your invoice, along with the correct unit and billing period. HighGround is built to handle the complexity for you.

You can also select from different currencies, which is especially handy if you’re dealing with vendors across regions. Once you’ve done that, HighGround will:

So whether you’re buying in GBP, USD, or anything else, you’ll still get a clean, unified view of your costs.

The key takeaway? Don’t overthink it - just enter pricing the way you actually buy it. HighGround takes care of the conversions, comparisons, and calculations behind the scenes, so you can focus on understanding (and optimising) your spend rather than managing it.

You’ll also need to define a couple of key details around how the licence is structured over time:

This is simply how many licences you’ve purchased. Whether it’s 10, 100, or 10,000, getting this right is important - because it directly impacts your cost calculations and pricing insights.

This defines how long you’re committed to the licence. For example:

Nice and straightforward if you’re on a fixed-term agreement.

Not everything is locked into a long-term deal - and HighGround handles that too.

If your licence is more flexible:

By default, this sets:

But you’re not stuck with that setup. You can customise it to match your actual agreement.

For example:

Capturing these details accurately means HighGround can give you better visibility into your commitments - so you’re not caught out by renewal dates, notice periods, or licences quietly rolling on longer than expected.

Make sure to set your contract start date - this one’s more important than it looks.

It’s the anchor point for everything that follows, and without it, your contract data is basically just… vibes.

Once you’ve added it, HighGround takes over and handles the rest:

In other words, no more calendar reminders, spreadsheet notes, or last-minute scrambles to check renewal dates.

Set it once, and HighGround keeps everything ticking along in the background - so you can stay ahead of renewals instead of reacting to them

Some tools don’t fit neatly into a single box - and that’s where things get interesting.

Take Huntress as an example. It can span multiple areas of your stack, such as:

In reality, you might be using one tool to cover several technologies across your environment - and each of those can be structured differently from a licensing perspective.

For example:

By mapping licences across different technologies in HighGround, you start to unlock a much clearer picture of what’s really going on behind the scenes.

Instead of seeing fragmented costs, you can:

In short, this is where HighGround moves beyond simple tracking and starts helping you make smarter decisions. Because once you can see how a tool is actually being used across your environment, it becomes much easier to optimise it.

Licensing might not be the flashiest part of your tech stack - but as you’ve seen, it’s one of the most powerful areas to get right.

In this article, we’ve walked through how HighGround.io helps you move from scattered, hard-to-track licence data to a clean, structured, and insight-driven view of your entire setup. From auto-generated licences that give you a head start, to detailed configuration around pricing, units, and contract terms - you now have everything you need to accurately reflect how your licences work in the real world.

More importantly, HighGround doesn’t just store this information - it uses it.

By capturing the right details, you unlock:

And when you start mapping licences across multiple technologies, that’s where things really come together - giving you a true picture of how your tools operate across your stack.

The end result? Less time managing spreadsheets, fewer surprises at renewal time, and more confidence that your licensing is working for you - not against you.

Set it up properly once, keep it updated, and let HighGround do the heavy lifting from there.