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IT Chargeback

What is IT Chargeback?

IT chargeback is a method of charging internal consumers (e.g., departments, functional units) for the IT services they used. Instead of bundling all IT costs under the IT department, a chargeback program allocates the various costs of delivering IT (e.g., services, hardware, software, maintenance) to the business units that consume them. [1]

In an IT chargeback situation, instead of simply charging all IT costs to one central department, the company charges individual costs to the user groups or centers that most directly consume the goods or services that were purchased. This principle can make things clearer for administrators who have to manage costs and can also help to provide a clearer contrast for various options, such as outsourcing. With so many types of cloud and SaaS services proliferating across the business world, IT chargeback can be a useful way of ordering information and assessing value for cost. IT chargeback is sometimes contrasted with other options for keeping track of costs, such as showback. In showback accounting, costs are presented in a decentralized way, without being actually cross-charged to the different accounts.[2]


The Purpose of IT Chargeback[3]

The need to understand the components of the costs of IT, and to fund the IT organization in the face of unexpected demands from user departments, led to the development of chargeback mechanisms, in which a requesting department gets an internal bill (or "cross-charge") for the costs that are directly associated to the infrastructure, data transfer, application licenses, training, etc., which they generate. The purpose of chargeback includes:

  • Making departments responsible in their usage, e.g., refrain from asking for resources they are not going to use
  • Providing visibility to the head of IT and to senior management on the reasons behind the costs of IT
  • Allowing the IT department to respond to unexpected customer demand by saying "yes, we can do it, but you will have to pay for it" instead of saying "no, we cannot do this because it's not in the budget."

As of 2011, the chargeback mechanisms are often controversial in organizations. Departments rarely pay directly for their own electricity bill, janitorial services, etc. -- these are allocated to departments on the basis of the number of employees or the square footage they occupy. Similarly, departments may expect to pay a fixed allocation for IT and get a flexible set of services that meet their needs in return. While the discussion on such an allocation are always difficult, seeing actual variable charges arrive on a monthly basis for specific levels of usage can create conflict both between IT and its internal customers, and between a department manager and the users who caused resource consumption to increase and therefore costs to rise.

The rise of subscription-based computing services (cloud computing) may make chargeback mechanisms more palatable.


Implementing IT Chargeback[4]

  • Step 1: Selling the chargeback Idea: Chargeback success relies on IT, business units (BUs), and corporate functions (CFs) working together. When IT budgets are centralized and owned by IT, the BUs and CFs don’t see the IT cost. For them, IT feels like a free and unlimited resource. Moving to a model where the BUs and CFs will be charged for the IT products and services they use is a big change requiring collaboration. Imagine receiving a surprise electricity bill when you have never paid for electricity before. Surprise chargeback won’t work and initiating chargeback as a surprise won’t help to establish trust and partnership. The BU and CF budget holders need to understand the reasons and benefits of chargeback—like freeing more IT budget for innovation and better alignment with business needs. There will be detractors, but it will not be a surprise to them when chargeback happens.
  • Step 2: Organizing for chargeback: Many IT organizations don’t have the people or skills needed for an effective chargeback. Finance skills will be important. IT will need to do new things like model the costs of products and services, set rates, and calculate bills. All with the goal of recovering costs. Chargeback also creates the need for product and service owners. People who design, deliver, market, and recover costs for IT products and services to IT’s new paying customers. To organize for chargeback, accountability and responsibility will need to be assigned for (not exhaustive):
    • Defining a portfolio of products and services
    • Calculating the total cost of ownership (TCO) for products and services
    • Marketing products and services
    • Defining and implementing chargeback strategy
    • Recovering costs
  • Step 3: Putting the right systems and processes in place: Can you use spreadsheets for chargeback? Yes. Should you? No. With those questions answered, let's move on to discuss some of the right systems and processes successful organizations use to implement chargeback. The systems and processes will need to do the jobs of (not exhaustive):
    • Defining product and service offerings
    • Tracking actual costs
    • Managing demand
    • Planning rates
    • Calculating bills
    • Transferring money to IT
    • Marketing and selling products and services
    • Sharing chargeback bills and reports with customers
    • The corporate finance system is critical. The corporate finance system must process the chargeback bill (also referred to as the bill of IT) to enable transfer of money to IT.

The systems must be multi-user systems that provide auditing capability and scalability. This is why spreadsheets are not a good choice.

  • Step 4: Baseline the current state: Capture the current state and include:
    • Total IT costs
    • Total cost of ownership for each product or service
    • Total IT cost by BU and CF
    • To capture the current state, the following information is also needed (not exhaustive):
      • Portfolio of products, services, applications, technologies
      • Asset inventories
      • Capacity, usage, and utilization
      • Projects

This is a great opportunity to use and validate the systems and processes from Step 3, above. Store the baseline current state in the systems and use them both for defining and pricing products and services for chargeback.

  • Step 5: Transfer the IT budget to the business: IT needs to transfer its budget to their customers. IT can’t have a full budget and do chargeback. There are many strategies for transferring the budget, including:
    • The big bang – The whole budget all at once.
    • Staged transfer – Break the transfer down into smaller batches.
    • Never 100% – Some organizations choose to keep some IT budget for management, innovation, or more.

Transferring the IT budget is a fundamental change for an organization and requires support and commitment from corporate finance and senior leadership. Some organizations can take advantage of tax optimization opportunities by charging legal foreign entities for IT products and services. We mean real big dollars, like one Digital Fuel customer that has used chargeback to support $90million in annual tax deductions.

  • Step 6: Market and sell products and services: IT is not known for marketing and sales. Chargeback forces the CIO’s organization to market and sell their products and services—and also themselves. When IT has all the budget, they are the only option in town. When BUs and CFs own the budget, they have choice. IT needs to be an attractive option for their customers. Maximize likelihood of BUs and CFs buying from you by clearly defining and communicating:
    • What IT sells
    • What value IT delivers
    • How IT is better than other options
  • Step 7: Continue to learn: An essential component of all implementations is ongoing learning and process improvement.


Chargeback vs. Unattributed Accounting[5]

All costs are centralized in traditional IT accounting. One central department pays for all IT equipment and activities, typically out of the CTO or CIO’s budget, and these costs are treated as corporate overhead shared evenly by multiple departments. In an IT chargeback accounting model, individual cost centers are charged for their IT service based on use and activity. As a result, all IT costs are “zeroed out” because they have all been assigned to user groups. IT is no longer considered overhead, instead it can be viewed as part of each department’s business and operating expenses (OpEx). With the adoption of IT chargeback, an organization can expect to see significant shifts in awareness, culture, and accountability, including:

  • Increased transparency due to accurate allocation of IT costs and usage. Chargeback allows consumers to see their costs and understand how those costs are determined.
  • Improved IT financial management, as groups become more aware of the cost of their IT usage and business choices. With chargeback, consumers become more interested and invested in the costs of delivering IT as a service.
  • Increased awareness of how IT contributes to the business of the organization. IT is not just overhead but is seen as providing real business value.
  • Responsibility for controlling IT costs shifts to business units, which become accountable for their own use.
  • Alignment of IT operations and expenditures with the business. IT is no longer just an island of overhead costs but becomes integrated into business planning, strategy, and operations.


IT Chargeback Challenges[6]

  • Establishing a fair and practical chargeback policy
  • Partnering with business units for buy-in
  • Collecting usage metrics
  • Allocating IT costs efficiently
  • Pricing IT services
  • Providing detailed billing reports
  • Understanding the cost of an IT chargeback system
  • Recovering IT expenses based on business services


See Also

References

  1. Defining IT Chargeback Uptime Institute
  2. Explaining IT Chargeback Techopedia
  3. The Purpose of IT Chargeback Wikipedia
  4. How can my organization successfully implement IT chargeback? Apptio
  5. Chargeback vs. Unattributed Accounting UI Journal
  6. IT Chargeback Challenges Help Systems


Further Reading

  • Accounting and Technology: IT Chargeback and its True Costs SEI level
  • Chargeback and Showback Grow in IT’s Quest for Greater Transparency Computer Economics
  • Cloud Computing: Why You Can't Ignore Chargeback cio.com
  • ]Best Practices: Defining the Right Chargeback Methodology IBM