Frontrow publishes a free Copilot usage report template as a downloadable Excel workbook at frontrowtech.com.au/downloads/copilot-usage-report-template.xlsx. It does one job: turns the Microsoft 365 admin centre's Copilot usage export into a per-seat waste report an executive can read, with idle seats flagged at 30, 60 and 90 days and the cost of the idle ones totalled in Australian dollars. No email gate, no macros, no branding on your output.
Why a usage report before every renewal
At roughly AU$45 per user per month (indicative list ex GST), every idle Copilot seat costs about AU$540 a year, and idle seats are the norm rather than the exception: seats get assigned by department or seniority during the rollout excitement, and a share of them go quiet within weeks. Community estimates of low Copilot uptake circulate widely among IT administrators, and while the exact figures vary, the pattern Frontrow finds in tenant reviews is consistent enough that no renewal should proceed without a usage report. The renewal conversation changes completely when it opens with 'we use 61 of 90 seats, here is the evidence' instead of a round number from last year.
What is in the workbook
- Read me: one page of instructions, including exactly where the source data lives (Reports, then Usage, then Microsoft 365 Copilot in the admin centre).
- Seat register: one row per licensed user with last-activity dates overall and per app (Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams). Days-idle and status columns calculate themselves: Active under 30 days, Watch at 30–60, Waste candidate beyond 60, and Never used flagged separately, with conditional formatting doing the colour coding.
- Summary: seat counts by status, the monthly and annual AUD spend on idle seats, and the idle share of the fleet. The per-seat cost is a single input cell, so a negotiated price replaces the AU$45 default in one edit.
How to use it, in ten minutes
- 1Download the template from frontrowtech.com.au/downloads/copilot-usage-report-template.xlsx and open it in Excel.
- 2Export the Copilot usage report from the Microsoft 365 admin centre and paste one row per licensed user into the Seat register.
- 3Set your real per-seat price in the Summary sheet if it differs from list.
- 4Read the Summary. The annual-spend-on-idle-seats figure is the number that belongs in front of whoever signs the renewal.
- 5Act on the three bands: Active seats stay; Watch seats get a training nudge (a one-hour habits session moves most of them); Waste candidates get reassigned to the waiting list or cut at renewal.
The next step up from the spreadsheet
The template answers 'how many seats are idle and what do they cost'. The natural follow-on questions are 'is our adoption normal, and what would fixing it be worth': for those, Frontrow's Copilot Adoption & Waste Detector at frontrowtech.com.au/tools/copilot-adoption-waste scores a tenant's waste profile interactively, and the ROI calculator below prices what recovered seats return in saved hours. Between the three, a licensing owner walks into renewal season with evidence instead of estimates, which is the entire game.
Try it
Price what the active seats are worth
The Copilot ROI calculator models hours saved per role against the AU$45 seat cost, the other half of the renewal case the usage template starts.
Assumptions
Tune your Copilot business case.
Roles
Live result
$704,668
Net annual benefit
- Active users
- 73
- ROI
- 1788%
- Hours / year
- 8,786
- Payback
- 0.6 mo
- Value saved
- $744,088
- Licence cost
- $39,420
Directional only. Real outcomes depend on licence mix, adoption and which workflows you actually target. Book a review to ground the model against tenant telemetry.
Role-by-role breakdown
| Role | Active | Hours/yr | Value | Licence | Net |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership / Exec | 5 | 920 | $143,000 | $2,700 | $140,300 |
| Managers | 14 | 1,932 | $191,100 | $7,560 | $183,540 |
| Knowledge workers | 42 | 4,830 | $324,187 | $22,680 | $301,507 |
| Sales & client-facing | 12 | 1,104 | $85,800 | $6,480 | $79,320 |