Most Bentley users with an active SELECT subscription have access to Bentley usage reports, but the majority have never looked at one. That’s understandable and it’s not always obvious what you’re supposed to do with the data.
If your organization recently received an unexpected term license charge, your usage data is one of the most important things to understand before you make any decisions.
Here’s an overview of what these reports cover, what they’re measuring, and where the complexity tends to show up.
How Bentley Licensing and Bentley Usage Interact
Bentley’s SELECT subscription allows licenses to be pooled and shared across your organization. Rather than assigning a license to a specific individual, multiple users can draw from the same pool as needed. This flexibility is one of the key benefits of the SELECT model.
The trade-off is that Bentley actively monitors how many machines are accessing each application concurrently. If that number exceeds your owned license count at any point, Bentley can invoice you for the difference. These additional charges are known as Term Licenses, and they’re billed at a premium rate relative to standard licensing.
Usage reports are how you see where your organization stands against your license pool, and where potential exposure exists.
What Bentley Usage Reports Show
At a high level, Bentley usage reports give you visibility into:
- Which applications your team is actively using
- How concurrent usage compares to your owned license count
- Where and when usage spikes occur
- Which machines are accessing specific products
- Whether any applications are being accessed outside your expected license pool
There are a couple of different report types available through Bentley’s reporting portal, each providing a different level of detail. Understanding which one to use for a given question – and how to read the data correctly – makes a significant difference in how useful the information is.
How Usage is Measured
Usage is determined by counting the total number of unique machines that access an application during each 10-minute interval throughout the day. The highest number of machines accessing an application during any one 10-minute interval during the quarter is the peak usage.
Bentley review usage in 10-minute intervals and as soon as your number of con-current users exceeds your license pool allocation, you will trigger a Term License ‘overage’.
What Term Licenses Actually Mean
A term license charge doesn’t automatically indicate a problem. The model is designed to give organizations flexibility – if demand spikes during a busy project period, the software remains accessible and the overage is reconciled after the fact.
The more important question is whether an overage is genuinely occasional or whether it’s become a recurring pattern. Consistent overages on the same application often signal a mismatch between your contracted license count and your actual demand, and in those situations, the math on adding an additional seat usually works in your favor.
Talk to the CAD Journey Team
Interpreting usage reports in the context of your specific licensing structure isn’t always straightforward. The questions organizations most often need help with include:
- Why am I being charged for an application I thought I had covered?
- Which users or machines are driving the overages?
- Is my current license count aligned with how my team works?
- What would my costs look like if I restructured my contract based on actual usage?
These are exactly the kinds of conversations CAD Journey is set up to support. We can review your usage data with you, explain what the numbers mean and give you a clear picture of your options going forward.
