We interrupt your regularly scheduled professional advice to bring you a special holiday presentation.

Clark Griswold is stressed about his architectural firm’s overhead. Cousin Eddie happens to be standing near the eggnog.

The scene is the Griswold living room, late December. Outside, twenty-five thousand imported Italian twinkle lights are temporarily dormant. Inside, Clark Griswold is hunched over his desk, surrounded by invoices, rubbing his temples. He looks like a man one decorative reindeer away from a total meltdown.

Cousin Eddie saunters in, wearing a bathrobe that is somehow both too short and too wide, holding a glass moose mug filled with a questionable amount of rum and a splash of eggnog.

EDDIE Clark! You look tighter than a fresh pair of pantyhose on a humid day. What’s eating you? It’s Christmas!

CLARK It’s not Christmas, Eddie. It’s fiscal year-end planning. And if I don’t figure out why my firm is bleeding money on software licenses, there won’t be a Christmas bonus. There won’t be a pool. There will just be me, outside, buried in the snow.

EDDIE (Takes a loud slurp) Is it the bills? I always just put mine in the neighbor’s mailbox. Let them deal with it.

CLARK No, Eddie, I can’t—look. It’s the design software. Autodesk. We need it to design buildings. But I’ve got interns, project managers, part-timers… they only use the heavy-duty stuff like Revit or AutoCAD maybe three days a month. But I’m paying for a full annual subscription for every single one of them! It’s like buying a whole jelly of the month club subscription just to eat one grape in July!

EDDIE I like jelly.

CLARK It’s wasteful, Eddie! It’s money down the drain! I need flexibility. I need—wait a minute. I was reading about something. Flex Tokens.

EDDIE Tokens? Like at Chuck E. Cheese? Can you trade them in for a plastic spider ring? Catherine loves those.

CLARK No, not Chuck E. Cheese. It’s… okay, imagine it like this. Instead of buying everyone an unlimited yearly pass to the amusement park even though they only ride the rollercoaster once, we buy a big bucket of tickets.

EDDIE (Staring blankly)

CLARK (Sighs) Okay. Let’s try your language. You know that… thing parked in my driveway? The tenement on wheels?

EDDIE The RV? Yeah, she’s a beaut, Clark.

CLARK Right. The toilet in that thing. You don’t pay the sanitation department a yearly fee just in case you might use it. You only have to pay to, ah… empty the tank… when it’s actually full. Right?

EDDIE (Eyes light up with recognition) Oh! I get it. You only pay when the $h!tter’s full!

CLARK (Winces) Crude, but yes. That’s the spirit of Autodesk Flex Tokens. It’s a pay-as-you-go model designed for occasional users.

EDDIE Well, hot damn, Clark. That sounds smarter than wearing rubber boots to a greased pig contest. How do you get these magic tokens?

CLARK It’s actually pretty straightforward. Even Rusty could probably figure it out.

EDDIE Rusty’s sharp. He knows his way around a Playboy.

CLARK (Ignoring him and pointing at his computer screen) Here’s the process. I looked it up.

Step 1: The Purchase (Filling the Tank)

“First, as the Administrator, I log into my Autodesk Account. I figure out roughly how many days my part-timers will need the software over the next year. Then, I buy a bulk pack of tokens. A big bucket of prepaid usage.”

EDDIE Like stocking up on Vienna Sausages before a long road trip. Smart.

CLARK Exactly. But here’s the kicker, Eddie—and this is important—they expire after 12 months. Use them or lose them. So don’t buy more than you need for the year.

EDDIE Yeah, I ate some expired potted meat back in ’82. Wasn’t right for a week. Good advice.

Step 2: The Assignment (Handing out the Keys)

CLARK “Next, in the account portal, I find the users—like the summer interns—and instead of giving them a expensive subscription, I just flip a switch that says they can use Flex Tokens.”

EDDIE Easy peasy.

Step 3: The Usage (Pulling the Lever)

CLARK “This is the beautiful part. When that intern opens up AutoCAD, the system notices they don’t have a subscription. It automatically grabs enough tokens from my company bucket to cover them for exactly 24 hours.”

EDDIE So if they use it for ten minutes, and then close it, and open it five hours later?

CLARK It’s still just one charge for that 24-hour window. But if they open it again the next day… cha-ching. Another daily rate of tokens gets pulled.

EDDIE (Raising his moose mug high) Clark, I don’t know what half those words meant, but it sounds like you’re gonna save enough money to buy another one of those sleds that goes faster than the speed of light.

CLARK It just might save the bonus, Eddie. It just might. It’s the gift that keeps on giving the whole year. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check the exterior illumination.

EDDIE You go get ’em, tiger. Say, you gonna finish that sandwich?

Need Help keeping the lights on?

Don’t let your software licensing turn into a four-alarm holiday emergency. Whether you are trying to figure out if Flex Tokens are right for your team, or you need help estimating your usage so you don’t waste budget, Seiler Design Solutions is here to help.

We assist with:

  • Purchasing: Getting you the right amount of tokens or subscriptions.

  • Workflow: optimizing how your team accesses their tools.

  • Support: answering the questions that keep you up at night.

Contact Seiler Design Solutions today. We promise we won’t kidnap your boss.