Written by Lucy Hall and reviewed, fact-checked and signed off by a SocialDay editor before publication. Read our editorial standards and corrections policy. Spotted something wrong? Tell the newsroom.

Before buying another tool, find out what your team already pays for, what it actually uses and where the work gets stuck.

A social media stack usually grows one problem at a time. A scheduler makes publishing easier, a design tool helps with creative and a reporting platform promises to save Friday afternoon. Another subscription arrives when video becomes a priority. Individually, the decisions may be sensible. Together, they can leave a team paying for overlapping capabilities while still moving files and figures manually.

An audit should produce decisions about that work. It needs to show the cost of the current approach, the problems worth solving and the evidence required before changing tools. Start with a recent campaign and a complete subscription inventory.

Choose a campaign that reflects normal work rather than an unusually successful launch. Trace its brief, creative production, approvals, publishing, responses and reporting. Record which person and system owns each step, how the output reaches the next person and where corrections happen.

Look for repeated downloads, copied metrics, unclear approvals and enquiries without an owner. Ask the people doing the work to estimate the time involved, then measure a sample. The most frustrating step may not be the most expensive one.

If content waits three days because nobody knows who approves it, a new calendar alone will not fix the delay.

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