SYSADMIN : Seat TrueUp Displays Incorrect Last Activity Date

ChrisStrube

I have uncovered an issue in the Users Seat screen for TrueUp. I have a licensed member who is currently showing as having not used or Modified anything within Smartsheet in 4 months. Upon further investigation, I pulled down the data from one of the SysAdmin reports and looked closer at her usage. She is a regular use of Smartsheet but the TrueUp screen is giving false information based on peculiar logic.

What I have found is Smartsheet provides the max last modifed date of the user's HIGHEST access. In this case, this user has owner rights to some objects, but has not touched those in 4 months. She has, however, most recently touched objects which she has Editor access to.

Why would Smartsheet pull the max modified date of the user's maximum level of access instead of just giving the max modified date period? This is very misleading for a SysAdmin who needs to weed through the users during TrueUp and determine whose license to keep and whose to drop.

See attached images.

Melissa Yamada

You’re not wrong — this behavior is confusing, and you’ve correctly identified what’s happening under the hood.

The True-Up “Last Activity” logic is permission-weighted, not purely activity-weighted. Smartsheet evaluates usage based on the highest permission level a user holds across all objects, then reports the last modified date for that highest access tier (Owner > Admin > Editor > Viewer). If the user hasn’t modified anything as an Owner recently, but has been actively editing content where they’re only an Editor, the True-Up screen will still surface the older Owner-level timestamp. This is why the data appears incorrect despite real activity.

Why Smartsheet does this:

• True-Up is designed primarily as a licensing risk and entitlement audit, not a pure engagement metric.
• Owner/Admin access is treated as higher “license value,” so Smartsheet prioritizes activity at that level when determining license justification.
• The assumption (arguably flawed) is that Owner-level inactivity may signal over-licensing, even if the user is active at lower permission levels.

Unfortunately, this is expected behavior today and not something SysAdmins can change. The best workaround during True-Up is to cross-reference the SysAdmin Sheet Access and Sheet Activity reports, which do reflect actual edit behavior regardless of permission level. Many admins export these reports to validate licenses manually before making removal decisions.

You’re absolutely right that this is misleading, and this exact scenario has been raised multiple times with Product — it’s a known gap between actual usage and True-Up visibility. I’d strongly recommend submitting this as formal product feedback if you haven’t already, as it impacts license governance accuracy at scale.