Do inactive users count against licenses?

[Mikhail T]

We'd like to mark users leaving the company as "inactive" instead of deleting them altogether -- for history.

But, if such inactive users are still counted against our licenses, then we'll just create one generic "inactive" user account instead... Which is it?

Thank you!

[Dave Meyer · Accepted solution]

No, inactive users do not count against your license. To consume a seat in your license, a user must have either the JIRA Users, JIRA Administrators, or JIRA System Administrators global permission and be active.

By default, the jira-users group has the JIRA Users global permission, therefore the easiest way to reduce your user count is usually by removing users from the jira-users group.

[Deleted user]

I have a an inactive user who counts from the 10 users license! Please advise ASAP

[Mubin Ahmed]

@[deleted] Were you able to figure out the reason? I am in same situation now. The user is marked as inactive and removed from all user groups, but is still counted against the 10 user licenses. If it makes any difference, I am using Jira Server edition.

[J. Caldwell · Accepted solution]

Are you talking Jira/Confluence or what? If you remove the person from confluence-users/jira-users groups, that won't count against your license. If you click on the "active" checkbox, that likewise will not count against your license count.

[Mikhail T]

I am talking about both Confluence and Jira. I don't quite understand your answer, however...

If you click on the "active" checkbox, that likewise will not count against your license count.

Yes, I know, that the act of clicking does not count against license. My question is, whether users, who are marked as "inactive" count against the licenses?

Say, for example, we are licensed for 50 users and have 30 active users and 10 inactive ones.

Can we add 10 or 20 more users before we need to buy more licenses? Thank you!

[J. Caldwell]

Sorry...not clear enough.

If you administer a user, click on the "Edit Details" bit. There you will find an "active" check box, which is checked by default. Uncheck it and it becomes inactive. Only active users count against your license.

An active user is defined as either existing in the confluence-user/jira-users group OR by having that "Active" checkbox checked. Removing the user from the group OR unchecking the box, deactivates a user and free's up an license.

In your example, if you have 30 active users and 10 inactive users(by removing check or from the group), you have 20 free licenses.

[Mikhail T]

Ok, great! Yes, this is, what I expected, but was not sure. Thank you very much.

[Richard Marskell]

For the sake of brevity, "An active user is defined as either existing in the confluence-user/jira-users group OR by having that "Active" checkbox checked." should actually say "AND" instead of "OR". The user must meet both criteria, which is why when you take one away, they no longer count.