The MSP SaaS Setup Review: A Repeatable Checklist

A well-run SaaS stack is a known quantity: every app accounted for, access controlled from one place, seats matched to the people who use them, and company data owned by the company. That is the end state a professional setup review delivers, and it is the first thing ScaleIt runs on day one of a new engagement. The review is repeatable because it covers the same five areas every time:

The same checklist works for a 5-person startup and a 120-person company. The right time to run it is from day one, with everything configured for scale. If your stack grew up ad hoc and you have already outgrown those defaults, it is not too late to bring it back to a clean baseline. Here is what each area covers and why it earns its place.

Account Inventory and Ownership

You cannot manage what you have not listed. The first pass builds a single inventory of every SaaS product the company touches: the app, what it is used for, who owns the vendor relationship, who holds admin access, and which email address the account is registered under.

The pattern to follow: one inventory, maintained in a shared document or spreadsheet, with a named owner for every app. Admin access mapped to at least two current employees per system, using work addresses only.

The anti-pattern shows up in almost every unreviewed stack: an app the finance team pays for that nobody can log into, admin rights held solely by someone who left last year, or a critical account registered to a personal Gmail address. Each of those is a quiet single point of failure, and the inventory pass surfaces all of them in one sitting.

Identity, Sign-In, and MFA

Centralized identity is the highest-value configuration decision in the stack. The pattern: every app signs in through the company identity provider, usually Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, using SSO or at minimum "Sign in with Google/Microsoft." Multi-factor authentication enforced tenant-wide, not left to individual choice. Both Google and Microsoft ship admin controls for org-wide MFA enforcement, and Microsoft's security defaults turn it on as a baseline.

The payoff is compounding: one identity to grant on hire, one identity to revoke on exit, and one place to see who can reach what. It also makes every later area of the review faster.

The anti-pattern is credential sprawl: passwords shared in chat threads or a spreadsheet, each app holding its own local account, and MFA enabled only on the systems that forced the issue. A stack in that state still gets to centralized identity cleanly, and the review produces the migration order.

Onboarding and Offboarding Flows

The joiner and leaver moments are where access control succeeds or fails in practice. The pattern: a written per-app checklist for both directions. On hire, the checklist grants exactly the apps the role needs. On exit, it revokes access the same day, transfers file and account ownership, reassigns licenses, and redirects the mailbox.

Run the exit checklist against the inventory from the first area, so no app gets skipped. Offboarding from memory is the anti-pattern, and it fails silently: the departed contractor who keeps repository access, the former employee still in the shared drive. Nothing announces the gap until someone goes looking, which is exactly what the review does.

License and Spend Review

With the inventory in hand, the spend pass is mechanical. Compare seats purchased against seats actively used in each app's admin console, and flag accounts with no recent sign-ins. Look for overlapping tools covering the same job, plans sized for a team that has since changed shape, and monthly pricing on tools the company has clearly committed to, where annual terms are cheaper.

The pattern: reclaim idle seats on the spot, shortlist the overlaps for a consolidation decision, and put renewal dates on a shared calendar so each one becomes a deliberate decision instead of an auto-charge.

The anti-pattern is treating SaaS spend as fixed overhead reviewed once a year at budget time. A stack reviewed on a regular cadence stays matched to the team it serves, and the savings recur every month.

Data Ownership, Sharing, and Backup

The final area confirms the company owns and controls its own data. The checklist here: org-wide sharing defaults reviewed so files are visible to the people who should see them and no wider, external sharing rules set deliberately, retention configured for mail and files that matter, and backups in place for the systems the business could not rebuild from scratch.

Ownership questions get special attention: the domain registrar, DNS host, and billing accounts for critical vendors must belong to company-controlled logins, with recovery contacts that survive any single person leaving. The anti-pattern is discovering during an incident, or a fundraise, that a personal account stands between the company and its own infrastructure.

What the Review Produces

The output is a short findings document: the inventory, the issues ranked by risk, and a remediation order. Most items close in the first week, and the stack settles into a state where new hires, exits, renewals, and security questions all have a known, fast path. You can work through the checklist internally, and it will take focused time from whoever owns IT as their side duty. An MSP runs it faster because it runs the same review every engagement and already knows where each admin console keeps the settings.

Would a clean, fully accounted-for SaaS stack free you up to focus on the business? ScaleIt runs this review at the start of every engagement. Book a free call and we will walk through what it would cover for your stack.

Cross-checked against Google Workspace's security checklist for small and medium businesses and Microsoft Entra security defaults documentation on 2026-07-17. Vendor docs: support.google.com/a/answer/7587183, learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/fundamentals/security-defaults.