How audits work
The five checks, the controls they roll up into, and how often they run.
An audit compares your contracts with your usage, billing and payments, one customer at a time, and records every difference it finds.
The five checks
For each customer, Droplet compares what the contract says with what was billed:
- Pricing: the rate on the invoice against the rate in the contract, for example $42 per seat.
- Usage: metered usage against what was invoiced.
- Discounts: the discount billed against the discount agreed.
- Renewals: the renewal uplift in the contract against the uplift applied.
- Commitments: minimum commitments against what was billed.
Each check ends as a Match or as a mismatch with a variance in dollars. A negative variance means the customer was under-billed.
An Acme Corp invoice for September 2026: the per-seat price is invoiced, the usage above 8M units is not invoiced, and the discount billed is 5 points over the contract.
Controls
Standard detection controls run these checks as named controls, each with its own exceptions and exposure. For example:
- Usage → invoice coverage
- Contract → billed rate
- Minimum commitments
- Seats → subscription quantity
Each control reports a status, such as passing, warning or investigation.
Usage to invoice coverage, $48.2K, investigation; contract to billed rate, $39.7K, warning; minimum commitments, $32.0K, warning; seats to subscription quantity, $14.1K, passing.
How often audits run
Starter runs daily audits. Scale and Enterprise monitor continuously instead of waiting for the next audit.
Tune what you see
Scale and Enterprise add materiality thresholds and SLA-risk flags, so the findings that matter most rise to the top, and custom detection rules for contracts that don't fit the standard controls.
What comes out of an audit is covered in Findings and cases.