Licences and subscriptions in a project are eligible only to the extent that falls within the eligible period. If a company buys a three-year subscription and the project lasts one year, the provider will generally recognise only the proportional part. The number of users is also monitored – licences for employees who do not take part in the project are ineligible. For software provided as a service, the expense is not accounted for as an asset but as a service, which simplifies record-keeping but complicates the question of sustainability: once the support ends, the company must pay for the subscription from its own resources, and the provider does ask about this. A practical solution is to align the billing period with the project timetable and supplement the document with a breakdown of which part of the period and which users are being claimed.
See also: Eligible expenditure period, Cloud services in a project, Sustainability of an AI project.
