The Cost Model
Billed cost and effective cost
Every period reports two figures, and they are different on purpose.
| Figure | What it is |
|---|---|
| Billed cost | What the provider invoiced in this period |
| Effective cost | Cost with commitments and amortised charges spread across the periods they actually cover |
Reporting only billed cost makes the month you buy a three-year reservation look like a crisis, and the following thirty-five months look like an efficiency programme. Reporting only effective cost makes it impossible to reconcile against the invoice finance actually received. So both are reported, side by side.
Ingestion cadence
Cost data is ingested on two schedules:
- Daily — the running picture of the current period.
- Monthly close — the finalised run for a completed period.
Because the current period is still being ingested, its figure moves. The Runs view shows when it last moved and whether the period has closed.
Reconciliation
Each period carries a reconciliation state describing how well the ingested records agree with the source billing data. Read it before quoting a figure to anyone: an unreconciled current period is a working estimate, and the console labels it as one rather than presenting it as settled.
Categories and dimensions
Cost decomposes by category, by owner, by resource and by day. Category partitioning is checked for balance — if the parts do not add to the whole, the console says so rather than rendering a chart that quietly drops the remainder.