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Layer’s spend management tools help you understand where your software budget goes and take action to reduce waste. The spend dashboard aggregates subscription costs across every connected integration, and features like budgets, license harvesting, and virtual cards give you direct control over spend.

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Spend dashboard

Go to Spend in your Layer dashboard. The page shows:
  • Monthly spend trend — a chart of total SaaS spend over time.
  • Spend by application — every app ranked by total cost, with monthly averages and record counts.
  • Spend by department — costs attributed to departments using your identity provider data. Unattributed spend is grouped separately.
Connect your identity provider (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or Okta) to attribute spend to departments automatically.

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Budgets

Budgets let you set spending limits and get alerts before you overshoot.
Budgets are available on the Growth plan and above.

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Create a budget

1

Open the budgets page

Go to Spend → Budgets in your Layer dashboard.
2

Add a new budget

Click Add budget and fill in:
  • Label — a name for the budget (e.g. “Engineering SaaS” or “Company-wide”).
  • Amount — the spending limit in your chosen currency.
  • Period — the time window the budget covers.
  • Alert threshold — the percentage of the budget at which Layer sends an alert. Defaults to 90%.
3

Save

Click Save. Layer starts tracking spend against the budget immediately.

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Budget alerts

When actual spend reaches the alert threshold, Layer flags the budget in the dashboard. If spend exceeds the budget amount, the budget is marked as overrun. You can configure notifications to receive alerts via email, Slack, or webhook.

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License harvesting

License harvesting identifies seats assigned to people who haven’t used the tool recently. Layer checks each license against the user’s last activity date and flags candidates that exceed an inactivity threshold (default: 30 days). Harvesting candidates appear in the Spend section of your dashboard. For each candidate, you see:
  • The application name and user email.
  • How many days the license has been inactive.
  • The user’s employment status (active, on leave, or terminated).
You can then reclaim the seat directly with the vendor or use the information to negotiate a smaller renewal.

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Virtual cards

Virtual cards let you issue single-vendor cards with hard spending limits. Each card is tied to a specific vendor and cardholder, so you control exactly how much can be charged.

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Issue a virtual card

1

Open the virtual cards page

Go to Spend → Virtual cards in your Layer dashboard.
2

Fill in the card details

  • Cardholder — the person responsible for the card.
  • Vendor — the vendor the card is issued for.
  • Spending limit — the maximum amount in dollars.
  • Period — how often the limit resets: Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.
  • Currency — defaults to USD.
3

Issue the card

Click Issue card. The card is created immediately and can be used for the specified vendor.

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Manage existing cards

From the virtual cards page you can:
  • Adjust the spending limit or reset period on any active card.
  • Pause or deactivate a card to stop all charges immediately.
  • View transaction history for each card.
Virtual card authorization is enforced in real time. Charges that would exceed the card’s spending limit are automatically declined.