Keep Your Toolset Useful | Heidelberg AI Curriculum
T16-L05
Keep Your Toolset Useful
Run your organisation's AI tools as one set: a register with admins, contracts, data terms and renewal dates, a quarterly review of use, cost and terms from the admin consoles, a routine for price, terms and model changes, deliberate consolidation and retirement, and a handover so the set survives you.
T16-L05 · Choose tools · Level 5 Operator · 18-minute read, plus 5 hours of doing over a quarter
Nobody has the list
Katrin runs research IT for an institute of twelve groups. Since the institute launched its own hosted assistant (T16-L04 · Replace a Tool Without Losing Your Work), the data protection officer has asked for one thing before his annual review: a list of every AI tool in use, each with its data processing agreement, the contract that says how a provider may handle your data. Katrin starts counting. Three groups still pay for team plans on other assistants. The finance office reimburses 31 personal subscriptions as expenses. One group transcribes research interviews with an online service. And when a PhD student left in June, her account at that service still held eleven interview recordings with participants' voices.
In a company it's Tobias, who looks after IT at a distributor of 80 people. Microsoft Copilot renews next month, and the usage report shows 31 of 80 licensed staff active in the last 28 days. Marketing has been paying for a video tool on a credit card for a year. A translation tool's provider has changed its terms so that customer texts may be used for training unless an admin opts out. And last spring an unused tool renewed itself for another year because nobody saw the notice date.
You are at Level 5 Operator. Many people work with these tools every day, and the set must stay paid for, lawful and handed over when you leave.
After this you can
Keep one register of every AI tool your organisation pays for or relies on, with its admins, contract, data terms and renewal date.
Review use, cost and terms every quarter with numbers from the admin consoles, without watching individuals.
Act on a price change, a terms change, a model retirement or an outage with a set routine and a fallback for each job.
Consolidate overlapping tools and retire one on purpose: users, data, access, keys and a written reason.
Hand the toolset over: two admins per tool, organisation billing and contacts, and a folder an auditor can read.
Admin access to each tool's console, the settings area where seats, sign-in and usage live, or the name of the person who has it.
The finance office's list of software payments and reimbursed expenses for the last twelve months.
A shared spreadsheet in a drive the organisation owns, and a calendar that belongs to a role, not a person.
The people who can say yes: the data protection officer, finance, IT security, the heads of the groups or departments, and, in a company with a works council, whoever speaks to it.
About 5⅓ hours: 18 minutes to read, about 5 hours to do, over a quarter.
Last verified 23 September 2026. Claude Team includes single sign-on; automatic account removal through SCIM and audit logs need Enterprise. Microsoft's Copilot usage report shows active users over up to 180 days and hides names by default. Details for experts at the end of this book.
The idea in one page
A toolset isn't the list of tools someone approved once. It's everything people actually pay for and rely on, including the expense claim and the free account that holds research data. Operating it means knowing that list, checking it on a schedule, reacting to changes, and cutting it down on purpose.
1. One register. One row per tool and contract, with these columns:
Column
Why you need it
Tool, plan and what job it does
You compare tools by job, not by name
Two named admins
One is a single point of failure
Seats, cost, billing route
A company card and a reimbursed expense look alike on a list, not in an audit
Renewal date and notice period
The notice date, the last day you can still cancel, is the one you can act on
Data it holds and data terms
Personal data, training setting, where it's processed, data processing agreement on file
Sign-in
Organisation sign-in, or separate passwords that survive a leaver
Fallback
What people do when it's down or gone
Last review and decision
Keep, consolidate, retire, and why
2. A quarterly review with four questions. For each row, take the numbers from the tool's admin console, not from memory:
Use: how many of the people who have a seat used it in the last 28 or 90 days?
Cost: what did it cost per active person, and when is the next notice date?
Terms: did the provider change prices, data terms or models since the last review?
Look at use by team, not by person. Usage reports can show who typed how many prompts. Reading them per person is monitoring staff, which in a German company needs the works council's agreement, and it isn't what the review is for. You need to know whether seats are used, and which team to ask.
3. A routine for changes. Four kinds of change come from outside:
Change
First step
Within
Price or plan change
Recalculate cost per active person; check the notice date
Before the notice date
Terms change (training, data location, subprocessors: other companies the provider passes your data to)
Check the setting in the console; tell the data protection officer
Two weeks
Model retirement
Rerun the job's case pack on the replacement model
Well before the retirement date
Outage or incident at the provider
Switch to the fallback; tell users
Same day
4. Consolidate on purpose. Two tools that do the same job cost twice, and people's work ends up split between them. When the review finds overlap, keep the one that passes the case pack and fits the organisation's sign-in, and move people with the method from T16-L04 · Replace a Tool Without Losing Your Work.
5. Retire in five steps. Tell the people who use it, with a date and what replaces it. Keep what matters: export data and records to where the organisation keeps them. Remove access and running parts: the sign-in connection, seats, keys, connectors, scheduled jobs and the payment method. Ask the provider in writing to confirm deletion. And write why in the register, with what would make it worth reopening.
In the four quadrants this is Structure it ⇄ Understand it on a quarterly rhythm: you write down what the set should be, you gather what it is, and each gap changes the plan. Choose tools and Build it happen one decision at a time.
Worked example: two toolsets, four quadrants
Follow the one closer to your work. The names, numbers and events are typical examples written for this book.
Lab: the institute's AI tools after the new assistant
Structure it (30 min). Katrin writes: "Every AI tool the institute pays for or relies on is on one list, with two admins, organisation billing, a data processing agreement where personal data is involved, and a renewal date someone watches. Every job has one approved tool and a fallback. When I leave, the list keeps working."
Understand it: build the register (3 hours over two weeks). She starts from money, because payments are the most complete record. The finance office's list gives 41 rows: three team plans, 31 reimbursed personal subscriptions, the transcription service, a translation service, the n8n model account, and a few one-off purchases. Then she asks each group leader one question: "What does your group use AI for every week, and in which tool?" That adds rows money doesn't show: Heidelberg AI Desk, which runs open models on five lab PCs and costs nothing, and two free accounts at a reference manager that hold one group's annotated library of papers.
Four findings stand out.
The reimbursed subscriptions are personal plans. On personal plans the provider may use chats for training unless each person switches it off, and the institute has no admin view and no data processing agreement. Several people use them for unpublished data.
The transcription service holds interview recordings with participants' voices, under a data processing agreement that one group leader signed two years ago. Only that group leader is an admin, and accounts are created by hand, so leavers keep theirs.
The three team plans overlap with the new institute assistant for most of their jobs. Two groups have already moved (T16-L04 · Replace a Tool Without Losing Your Work). The third has a job the institute assistant fails: its case pack on reading scanned instrument logs.
Nobody watches notice dates. Two tools renew automatically within six weeks.
That sends her back to Structure it. Her first sentence assumed the list could be complete. It can, but only if new tools can't appear outside it: "The institute reimburses AI subscriptions only after the tool is on the register. Personal plans aren't used for institute data. Each job has one tool; exceptions are written down with a reason." The institute's management signs the reimbursement rule; the data protection officer co-signs the rest.
Choose tools (30 min). She keeps the register in a spreadsheet in the institute's shared drive, with a Decisions tab, because the data protection officer and finance can both open it and nothing needs installing. Renewal and notice dates go into a shared calendar owned by the role research IT, with a reminder four weeks before each notice date. The alternative would be the institute's IT asset system. It knows servers and laptops but not reimbursed subscriptions, so she links the register from it instead.
Build it: the first quarterly review (90 min). For each tool with an admin console she takes the last 90 days: seats and active people. The third group's team plan has 6 seats and 6 active people, and its scanned-log job has no working alternative, so it stays, with the reason in the register. The reimbursed personal plans get a date: from 1 January they're no longer reimbursed, and those 31 people use the institute assistant, or a team plan where a job needs one. The reference manager's free accounts get a second admin and are moved to an institute address.
Build it: retire the transcription service (2 hours over a month). The review finds that the institute's hosted assistant now transcribes recordings on institute servers. The group's case pack of ten interviews, with transcripts a researcher had checked, passes. So the service is retired, in five steps:
Tell the users: the six people in the group, with the date and the new route, four weeks ahead.
Keep what matters: the checked transcripts are already in the project folder. The recordings themselves are research data under the ethics approval, so the group leader downloads them to the institute's archive for research data, with the retention period the ethics approval sets.
Remove access and running parts: every account at the service, including the PhD student's from June; the upload link a partner clinic had bookmarked; the credit card on file.
Ask for deletion: the group leader requests written confirmation that recordings and transcripts are deleted from the service. The confirmation arrives in nine days and goes into the register.
Write why:"Retired 15 December. Transcription now runs on the institute assistant on institute servers; the service held participant voices outside the institute; one admin; manual accounts. Reopen if the institute assistant can't handle a language we need."
Build it: the change routine at work. In November the model behind the third group's team plan is announced for retirement, with the date two months away. The group reruns its scanned-log case pack on the replacement model and it passes. One line in the register records the rerun. In February the institute assistant is down for half a day; the fallback in the register, "write it down, run it later", is what people do, and nobody's work depends on it for more than an afternoon.
Understand it: the auditor's questions. Before his annual review, the data protection officer asks three questions and finds the answers in the folder in twelve minutes: which tools hold personal data and under which agreement; who can still sign in to the retired transcription service (nobody, with the date); and who decides about a new tool (research IT, with his co-signature where personal data is involved).
What it taught Katrin: the dangerous tools weren't the expensive ones. They were the ones nobody had put on a list: reimbursed, free, or signed by one person two years ago.
Company: Copilot seats, a card payment and a terms change
Structure it (20 min). Tobias writes: "Every AI tool is on the register with company billing, two admins and a watched notice date. Seats go to people who use them. A change of terms reaches the data protection officer within a week."
Understand it (90 min). The Copilot usage report, under Reports → Usage in the Microsoft 365 admin center, shows 80 licensed and 38 active for the last 90 days; Microsoft hides names by default, and Tobias leaves it that way. He looks by department instead: sales and customer service use it daily; the warehouse has 22 licences and 2 active people. The works council agreed to Copilot last year on the condition that usage data isn't used to assess individuals. So the question goes to the warehouse lead, not to the 20 people who didn't use it: "Do your team's jobs need it?" The answer: the shift leads do, for rotas and supplier emails; the pickers don't.
The translation tool's new terms turn training on for customer content unless an admin opts out. Tobias checks the console: nobody had opted out, and the setting had been live for three weeks. The marketing video tool is on a personal credit card with the marketing lead as the only admin.
Back to Structure it: "Licences are reviewed by department each quarter, with department leads, never by name. Terms changes are checked in the console within a week of the provider's notice, and the provider's notices go to a team mailbox."
Choose tools and Build it (2 hours). Four decisions go into the register.
Seats: 18 Copilot licences are removed at renewal, after the warehouse lead confirms.
Translation tool: training is switched off in the console the same day. The data protection officer decides it needs no report, because only product descriptions went through it in those three weeks, and the decision is filed.
Notices: the translation provider's notice address is changed from a former employee to the IT team mailbox.
Video tool: it moves to company billing, with IT as second admin, and goes on the register with a review date.
Tobias adds one thing Katrin didn't need: the company's sign-in connects to Claude, which marketing and product use on a Team plan. Team includes single sign-on, so a leaver can't sign in once IT disables the account. But accounts aren't removed automatically without SCIM, the standard that creates and removes accounts from the company directory, which needs Enterprise. At 12 seats, the monthly access review on the register is cheaper than the Enterprise plan, and he writes that decision down with its reason.
Understand it: renewal. At the Copilot renewal, the register gives the head of finance the decision in one line: 62 seats instead of 80, cost per active person down by about a fifth, and the notice date met.
In both cases the step that mattered most was cheap: a list built from payments, a notice date in a shared calendar, and a question asked per team instead of per person.
What goes wrong
The register starts from approvals.Symptom: the list shows what IT approved, and the audit finds tools paid for by expense claim or card. Fix: build the register from the finance office's payments and from what each team says it uses weekly.
One admin per tool.Symptom: the admin leaves and nobody can manage seats, export data or read the provider's notices. Fix: two named admins per tool, organisation billing, and provider notices sent to a team mailbox.
Watching people instead of seats.Symptom: someone asks for a list of who used Copilot least. Fix: review use by team, keep names hidden in usage reports, and ask team leads whether the jobs need the tool. In a company with a works council, agree this with it.
Renewal dates, not notice dates.Symptom: an unused tool renews for another year. Fix: put the notice date in a role's calendar, with a reminder four weeks ahead.
Terms changes noticed late.Symptom: a training setting was switched on by the provider weeks ago. Fix: provider notices to a team mailbox, a console check within a week, and the data protection officer told.
Retiring by cancelling.Symptom: the subscription is cancelled, but the data stays at the provider and old accounts still work. Fix: the five steps: tell, keep, remove access and running parts, get deletion confirmed, write why.
The register lives with you.Symptom: the list and the calendar are yours and vanish when you leave. Fix: keep both in places the organisation owns, assigned to a role, with a named deputy.
Do it yourself (5 hours, over a quarter)
Structure it (20 min). Write what the toolset should be: one list, two admins, organisation billing, data terms on file, watched notice dates.
Understand it (2 hours). Build the register from twelve months of payments and from each team's weekly jobs. Mark every row with one admin, personal billing, personal data without an agreement, or a notice date within eight weeks. Rewrite your sentence.
Choose tools (20 min). Decide where the register and the calendar live, who the deputy is, and the rule for adding new tools.
Build it: the first review (60 min). For each tool, take use and cost from its console for the last 90 days, by team. Record one decision per row: keep, consolidate or retire.
Build it: one retirement (60 min, spread over a month). Retire one tool with the five steps, including the deletion confirmation.
Understand it: the audit test (20 min). Ask a colleague who wasn't involved three auditor questions and let them answer from the folder alone. Fix what they couldn't find.
Exit check
What you hand in: a toolset folder with:
the register, one row per tool and contract, with every column filled;
the last quarterly review, with use and cost by team and one decision per row;
the change routine, with at least one change handled and recorded;
one retirement record, including the provider's deletion confirmation;
a handover checklist: two admins per tool, organisation billing, team mailbox for notices, calendar owned by a role.
It passes when every tool has two named admins and organisation billing, every tool that holds personal data has a data processing agreement on file, one tool has been retired with a deletion confirmation, and a colleague who wasn't involved answers three auditor questions (which tools hold personal data, who can still sign in to a retired tool, who decides about a new one) from the folder in 15 minutes.
Rule to remember
A tool nobody listed is a tool nobody will ever switch off.
Details for experts
Checked on 23 September 2026. You don't need this to follow the book; it's for setting things up or answering a colleague.
What
Details
What it means for you
Claude Team
Standard seat $25 a month, or $20 billed annually; Premium seat $125, or $100 annually. Includes central billing, single sign-on (SSO) and admin controls for connectors, the links to drives and other systems. No model training on content by default.
Sign-in follows your directory; account removal is still yours.
Claude Enterprise
$20 per seat a month billed annually, plus usage at API rates. Adds role-based access, SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management: accounts created and removed from your directory), audit logs, a Compliance API (lets audit tools read the organisation's activity and chats) and custom data retention.
Worth it when leavers and audits outweigh the cost.
Microsoft Copilot usage report
Microsoft 365 admin center → Reports → Usage → Microsoft Copilot. Time frames of 7, 28, 90 or 180 days; Enabled users (licensed) and Active users (sent at least one prompt). Names, groups and sites are hidden by default; showing them is an admin setting. Export as a CSV file.
Review by department; leave names hidden unless agreed.
Microsoft Copilot Chat
Included at no extra cost with eligible Microsoft 365 plans, with web results. Full results from work content need a Microsoft Copilot licence; in Outlook, Copilot Chat also reads a person's mail.
Not everyone who uses Copilot needs the paid licence.
Model retirement
Anthropic gives at least 60 days' notice before retiring a publicly released model; requests to a retired model fail.
Enough time to rerun a case pack, if the notice reaches a team mailbox.
Claude: Taught. Team and Enterprise admin features.
Heidelberg AI Desk: Catalogued. Open models on the institute's own PCs, which belong on the register too.
n8n: Catalogued. Automations whose model accounts are rows of their own.
Watch
How to Build AI Governance in 5 Practical Steps Real Usecase
How to Build AI Governance in 5 Practical Steps Real UsecasePrabh Nair
T12-L05: Learn how an AI inventory connects each system to risk assessment, documentation and continuing oversight. The fictional hiring example is not current legal advice or proof of deputy readiness.
T16-L05: Connect your tool register to vendor-risk review and continuing monitoring, so it stays useful after initial approval. This does not teach subscription reconciliation or complete retirement.
