What StackTrackr is, and your first 3 steps

StackTrackr keeps your whole software estate in one place. Instead of contracts scattered across inboxes and spreadsheets, you get a single register of every tool you pay for, with its cost, renewal date, owner and key contract terms all in view. It is built for the moments that catch teams out: the auto-renewal that slipped through, the cancellation deadline you only spotted after it passed, the licence nobody remembers signing up for.

The heart of it is the renewal timeline. For each tool you record when it renews, whether it renews automatically, and how much notice you must give to cancel. StackTrackr works out the date that actually matters - the last day you can give notice before it rolls over - and keeps it in front of you so a decision is always made on purpose, not by default.

Your first step is to add a tool. Go to the register and choose Add software, then start typing the product name. StackTrackr recognises around 60 common products and fills in the website, vendor, category and a short description for you, so you often only need to add the numbers. Repeat this for the handful of tools you care about most and you already have a useful picture.

Your second step is to get the renewal details right on each tool. Set the renewal date, tick or untick Auto-renews, and enter the notice period in days if the contract asks for one. These three fields are what drive the reminders and the status badges, so they are worth a moment of care. If you are not sure, add what you know now and refine it later.

Your third step is to open the dashboard. It gives you the headline numbers at a glance: how many tools you track, your annualised spend, what is renewing soon, and anything sitting in a notice window or already overdue. Within a few entries the dashboard turns a pile of contracts into a short, honest to-do list.

On your first day the register and the dashboard both start empty, and the register points you straight at Add software, so your first tool is only a click away.

A few things to know early on. You add tools yourself - there is no bulk import yet, but ticking Add another tool after saving on the create form keeps it open so you can enter several in a row without leaving the page; after each save a banner names the tool with a link to open it, and warns you if a document you attached did not upload. Reminders are sent by email ahead of each deadline; on Team and above you set the schedule per tool (90, 60, 30 and 7 days before, by default), while the Starter plan uses a fixed 30 and 7 day schedule. And every tool you add counts towards your plan's tool allowance, so it pays to track the software that genuinely matters to you.

That is the whole loop: add your tools, keep their renewal details accurate, and let the dashboard and email reminders do the watching. Everything else in StackTrackr - documents, ownership, spend, filtering - builds on top of that simple register.