Fortigate Licensing

I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. I believe the way it works is that the new license starts at the end of your existing license (as long as they are the same entitlement). So there should be no penalty for renewing early. There is a penalty for lapsed coverage, but it is more than fair.

The lapsed coverage penalty is that your new license is retroactive from the activation date until the date or your last expiration or 6 months, whichever is less. So for example (with simplified dates)- if you let your coverage expire December 31 of 2015 and buy a  1 year renewal in May 2016, your coverage is back-dated to January 1 and therefore your new expiration will be December 31 2016. Effectively you have had no lapse in coverage and your new buy is lasting you 7 months after you activate.

If you choose not to buy/activate replacement until January of 2017, your new coverage is back-dated to July 2016 (6 months) and your new expiration would be in June 2017. Effectively 6 months of coverage going forward.

This pretty much dissuades people from not paying for hardware warranty and then only buying coverage after something breaks- and somewhat chastises those who do. Because the system is aware of the start/end dates, I find it highly unlikely that activating early would eat into an existing entitlement. The only situation where that may be the case would be something like switching from 8/5 to 24/7 or adding certain UTM features. For those, I would either contact support or have your reseller smooth it out with Fortinet and make sure the dates align with what you're looking for. My reseller has been able to get co-terminus coverages for renewals on devices bought at different times, so anything is possible.