Licences for a small business: what you need and what to keep

When a company has five, ten or twenty computers, the question "are we licensed for everything?" rarely has a short answer. Still, in brief: every company computer needs Windows 11 Pro and an Office edition licensed for commercial use, plus an invoice and a record of which key is activated where.

Usually one laptop came with Windows Home, the reception desk has an older PC, and Office was installed "by someone, years ago". This article is practical: how to count licences, which editions suit business use and which documents are worth keeping so you have a clear picture during an internal check or if the software vendor asks.

Per-device licence or per-user licence

The first thing to be clear about is how each product is "counted".

• Windows and Office with a one-off payment (for example Windows 11 Pro and Office 2021) are licensed per device. One key activates one computer. The licence belongs to the computer, not to a particular person: if two people work shifts at reception, you count one computer.
• Microsoft 365 is licensed per user through a subscription. On business plans with desktop apps, each user can install Office on up to five PCs or Macs, five tablets and five phones. The flip side is that every employee who signs in with their own account needs their own subscription. Also, Microsoft 365 Business Basic does not include the desktop versions of Word, Excel and Outlook, only the web and mobile apps.

Which model is more convenient depends on how many devices each person uses and whether you need the cloud services. There is a detailed comparison in our article Microsoft 365 or Office 2021.

Count what you actually need

Before ordering, list every device used for company work. The ones most often missed are:

• laptops that employees take home or on business trips;
• the reception PC, the till or the warehouse computer – often older, with an installation nobody remembers the origin of;
• the accountant's computer. If the accountant is an employee working on a company PC, it goes on the list. If you use an external accounting firm that works on its own equipment, the licences there are their responsibility;
• spare or old computers that may come back into use;
• a personal computer on which the owner or an employee regularly works for the company. In that case the Office installed on it must also be an edition licensed for commercial use.

For each device, note who uses it, which Windows edition is installed and which version of Office. The edition is shown in Settings → System → About, under Windows specifications. That way you immediately see where there is Home instead of Pro, where Office is missing and where a trial version has been left behind.

Which Windows edition for a business

For an office computer we recommend Windows 11 Pro. The reason is not speed – Home and Pro run equally fast. The difference lies in features a business actually uses:

• BitLocker – full-drive encryption. It is available in the Pro, Enterprise and Education editions, but not in Home. If a laptop holding client data is lost, the encrypted drive cannot be read without the recovery key. Some Home devices have the simpler "Device encryption" feature, but without BitLocker's management options.
• Remote Desktop. To connect to your office PC from home, or for an IT technician to connect to it, the computer you connect to must run Pro. From Home you can only connect to other computers. The setting is in Settings → System → Remote Desktop.
• Joining a domain (Active Directory or Microsoft Entra ID) and Group Policy – important if an administrator manages the computers centrally.

If the laptop came with Home, there is no need to reinstall – the edition can be upgraded with a Pro key, as described in our article on upgrading from Windows 11 Home to Pro. The Windows 11 Pro licence covers one computer.

Office: Home & Student, Home & Business or Professional Plus

This is where small businesses most often go wrong, so here is what each Office 2021 edition contains:

• Office Home & Student 2021 – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Microsoft's licence terms for Home & Student editions explicitly exclude use for commercial, non-profit or other revenue-generating activities. In other words, this edition is not for a company computer, even if the company is a one-person business.
• Office Home & Business 2021 – the same apps plus Outlook. It is intended for both home and business use and installs on one Windows PC or one Mac.
• Office Professional Plus 2021 – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, plus Access (databases) and Publisher. These two apps run on Windows only.

In practice: if the office writes documents, builds spreadsheets and sends emails, Home & Business covers the needs. Professional Plus makes sense when someone works with Access databases or you want the same, fuller edition on every Windows PC. We offer Office 2021 Professional Plus with a licence for one computer.

Which documents to keep

A licence is a right of use, and the documents are the proof of it. It is worth keeping in one place:

1. The invoices for every purchase, issued in the company's name.
2. The emails containing the product keys and the keys themselves – in a protected folder or a password manager, not on a sticky note on the monitor.
3. A "key – computer" register: the invoice number, the key or at least its last five characters, which computer it is activated on, since when and who uses it. When a computer is replaced or scrapped, record the change.
4. The licence type – Retail, OEM or Volume. It determines what is allowed when hardware changes. We explained the differences in our article on OEM, Retail and Volume licences.

Such a register lives in an ordinary spreadsheet and takes minutes to maintain, yet it saves hours when you change IT provider, when an employee leaves with a laptop or when you need to state which software you use. The question may come from an internal check, from a large client or from the software vendor as part of an audit. In all three cases, organised documents keep the answer short.

Invoice and accounting

We issue an invoice for every order. When ordering, provide the company name, UIC (ЕИК) and registered address, and if you are VAT-registered, your VAT number. How the cost is booked (for example as a long-term intangible asset or as a current expense) depends on the company's accounting policy and is a question for your accountant. This article is not tax or legal advice.

A new work computer: Windows and Office together

When you set up a computer for a new employee, it is easiest to get both licences together. The Windows 11 Pro + Office 2021 Professional Plus bundle contains two separate keys in one order and works out better value than two separate orders.

The keys arrive by email within 15 minutes during working hours (09:00–20:00), together with an invoice, and activate through Microsoft's official servers. If there is an activation problem, we replace the key free of charge, and the purchase comes with a 2-year statutory warranty and support in Bulgarian. Other combinations are in the bundle collection. If you have questions before ordering, see the frequently asked questions or write to us.