About unexpected license usage
If the number of consumed licenses for your enterprise is unexpected, you can review your consumed license report to audit your license usage across all your enterprise deployments and subscriptions. If you find errors, you can try troubleshooting steps. For more information about viewing your license usage, see "Viewing license usage for GitHub Enterprise" and "Viewing the subscription and usage for your enterprise account."
For privacy reasons, enterprise owners cannot directly access the details of user accounts.
About the calculation of consumed licenses
GitHub bills for each person who uses deployments of GitHub Enterprise Server, is a member of an organization on GitHub Enterprise Cloud, or is a Visual Studio subscriber. For more information about the people in your enterprise who are counted as consuming a license, see "About per-user pricing."
For a person using multiple GitHub Enterprise environments to only consume a single license, you must synchronize license usage between environments. Then, GitHub will deduplicate users based on the email addresses associated with their user accounts. Multiple user accounts will consume a single license when there is a match between an account's primary email address on GitHub Enterprise Server and/or an account's verified email address on GitHub.com. For more information about verification of email addresses on GitHub.com, see "Verifying your email address."
When you synchronize license usage, only the user ID and email addresses for each user account on GitHub Enterprise Server are transmitted to GitHub Enterprise Cloud.
Fields in the consumed license files
The GitHub.com license usage report and GitHub Enterprise Server exported license usage file include a variety of fields to help you troubleshoot license usage for your enterprise.
GitHub.com license usage report (CSV file)
The license usage report for your enterprise is a CSV file that contains the following information about members of your enterprise. Some fields are specific to your GitHub Enterprise Cloud (GHEC) deployment, GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) connected environments, or your Visual Studio subscriptions (VSS) with GitHub Enterprise.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | First and last name for the user's account on GHEC. |
| Handle or email | GHEC username, or the email address associated with the user's account on GHES. |
| Profile link | Link to the GitHub.com profile page for the user's account on GHEC. |
| License type | Can be one of: Visual Studio subscription or Enterprise. |
| License status | Identifies if a user account on GitHub.com successfully matched either a Visual Studio subscriber or GHES user. Can be one of: Matched, Pending Invitation, Server Only, blank. |
| Member roles | For each of the organizations the user belongs to on GHEC, the organization name and the person's role in that organization (Owner or Member) separated by a colonEach organization is delimited by a comma. |
| Enterprise role | Can be one of: Owner or Member. |
Visual Studio subscribers who are not yet members of at least one organization in your enterprise will be included in the report with a pending invitation status, and will be missing values for the "Name" or "Profile link" field.
GitHub Enterprise Server exported license usage (JSON file)
Your GitHub Enterprise Server license usage is a JSON file that is typically used when performing a manual sync of user licenses between GitHub Enterprise Server and GitHub Enterprise Cloud deployments. The file contains the following information specific to your GitHub Enterprise Server environment.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Features | The GitHub Connect features that are enabled on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, and the date and time of enablement. |
| Host name | The hostname of your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. |
| HTTP only | Whether Transport Layer Security (TLS) is enabled and configured on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. Can be one of: True or False. |
| License | A hash of your GitHub Enterprise Server license. |
| Public key | The public key portion of your GitHub Enterprise Server license. |
| Server ID | UUID generated for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. |
| Version | The version of your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. |
Troubleshooting consumed licenses
If the number of consumed seats is unexpected, or if you've recently removed members from your enterprise, we recommend that you audit your license usage.
To determine which users are currently consuming seat licenses, first try reviewing the consumed licenses report for your enterprise for unexpected entries.
There are two especially common reasons for inaccurate or incorrect license seat counts.
- The email addresses associated with a user do not match across your enterprise deployments and subscriptions.
- An email address for a user was recently updated or verified to correct a mismatch, but a license sync job hasn't run since the update was made.
When attempting to match users across enterprises, GitHub identifies individuals by the verified email addresses associated with their GitHub.com account, and the primary email address associated with their GitHub Enterprise Server account and/or the email address assigned to the Visual Studio subscriber.
Your license usage is recalculated shortly after each license sync is performed. You can view the timestamp of the last license sync job, and, if a job hasn't run since an email address was updated or verified, to resolve an issue with your consumed license report you can manually trigger one. For more information, see "Syncing license usage between GitHub Enterprise Server and GitHub Enterprise Cloud."
If your enterprise uses verified domains, review the list of enterprise members who do not have an email address from a verified domain associated with their GitHub.com account. Often, these are the users who erroneously consume more than one licensed seat. For more information, see "Viewing members without an email address from a verified domain."
Note: For privacy reasons, your consumed license report only includes the email address associated with a user account on GitHub.com if the address is hosted by a verified domain. For this reason, we recommend using verified domains with your enterprise account on GitHub.com. Then, if one person is erroneously consuming multiple licenses, you can more easily troubleshoot, as you will have access to the email address that is being used for license deduplication.
If your license includes Visual Studio subscriptions with GitHub Enterprise and your enterprise also includes at least one GitHub Enterprise Server connected environment, we strongly recommend using GitHub Connect to automatically synchronize your license usage. For more information, see "About Visual Studio subscriptions with GitHub Enterprise."
If you still have questions about your consumed licenses after reviewing the troubleshooting information above, you can contact GitHub Support through the GitHub Support portal.