IT Financial Management
Knowing what technology costs, where it goes, and what it buys.
A cost model your CFO recognizes, and the reporting rhythm that keeps it true.
Advisory. Built with your finance team, in their chart of accounts. We do not replace accounting.
CIOs and CFOs who cannot answer what a service costs, and IT leaders heading into a budget round.
Technology spend is a single line nobody can break down, cloud costs are climbing without explanation, or a budget was cut because nothing could be defended.
The practice
Cost model
General ledger spend mapped to the towers it funds — end-user computing, infrastructure, applications, service desk, people — then to services and the business units consuming them.
Run against change
What keeps the lights on against what changes the business, split consistently. The ratio is the single most useful number in an IT budget conversation.
Budgeting and forecasting
The annual build, the reforecast cycle, variance analysis and accruals — in your finance calendar and your chart of accounts, not a parallel spreadsheet.
Showback and chargeback
Allocation people accept: direct where it can be traced, consumption-based where it can be measured, and a deliberate method where it cannot. Showback first, chargeback only where the behaviour is worth the argument.
Service and unit costs
What a service costs end to end, and the unit metrics that make it comparable year over year — cost per user, per device, per transaction, per application.
Cloud cost management
Tagging that survives contact with reality, commitment and reservation coverage, rightsizing, anomaly detection, and workload-level accountability.
Licence position
Entitlements against deployment for the agreements that carry real money, the renewal calendar, and the true-up exposure nobody has quantified.
Capital and operating treatment
How projects, cloud migration and internal development land as capital or operating cost — worked through with your finance team, whose call it is.
Benefits tracking
What the spend was supposed to deliver, measured after the fact, which is what makes the next portfolio conversation credible.
It has to reconcile, or it loses the first argument.
- 01General ledger
Where the spend actually sits, in the chart of accounts finance already reports on.
- 02Towers
Mapped to what it funds: end-user computing, infrastructure, applications, service desk, people.
- 03Services
What each service costs to deliver end to end, including the share of everything underneath it.
- 04Consumers
Which business unit consumes what — showback first, chargeback only where the behaviour is worth the argument.
The most useful number in an IT budget conversation. It turns “trim ten per cent” into “which of these do you want to stop”, and it is the split most estates cannot produce on demand.
We build the cost model with your finance team: ledger spend mapped to towers, services and consumers, a clean run-against-change split, a forecasting rhythm, and showback that survives being questioned.
The model has to live in finance’s numbers
An IT cost model built in a parallel spreadsheet gets challenged the first time it disagrees with the ledger, and once it loses that argument it is finished. It starts from the general ledger, uses the chart of accounts finance already reports on, and reconciles to the total every period.
Run against change is the number that moves conversations
Most IT budget arguments are stuck because nobody can separate what keeps the estate alive from what changes the business. Split consistently, that ratio tells an executive what their options actually are — and it reframes a cut from “trim ten per cent” to “which of these do you want to stop”.
Showback before chargeback
Showback tells a business unit what it consumes and costs. Chargeback moves the money, changes behaviour, and generates argument about allocation method. Both have a place, but chargeback introduced before the model is trusted produces a year of disputes about the model rather than about consumption.
Cloud is where the model breaks first
Cloud spend is consumption-based and attributable, which is the promise. In practice tags are missing or inconsistent, commitments are under-covered or over-committed, environments run at production size to serve a test, and nobody owns the number. The fix is unglamorous: a tagging standard that is enforced at deployment, coverage reviewed on a cycle, and a named owner per workload.
Where this stops
We are not your accountants. Capitalization treatment, audit positions and statutory reporting are decisions for your finance function and their advisors. What we bring is the model, the allocation design, the operating rhythm and the technology detail underneath the numbers.
What you keep
The code and the data·Your existing relationships·Approval and control·The ability to stop·The off switchWhat that means
IT Strategy
A technology plan tied to what the business is trying to do, and funded.
Learn more ↗Enterprise Architecture
Standards, reference models and the governance that makes them stick.
Learn more ↗AI Strategy & Enablement
The same strategy discipline, pointed entirely at AI.
Learn more ↗IT Portfolio Management
Demand, capacity and money, managed as one view instead of three arguments.
Learn more ↗IT Operating Model
How IT is organized, funded and held to account — and who decides what.
Learn more ↗IT Service Management Design
Designing the processes — not running your service desk.
Learn more ↗Program & Project Delivery Assurance
An independent read on whether a programme is where it says it is.
Learn more ↗Fractional CIO
Senior technology leadership, in whatever shape the situation needs.
Learn more ↗Start with a 45-minute briefing.
No pitch. We’ll map your situation against what actually works and tell you honestly where to start.