Consumer Spend

Overview

The Consumer Spend cube provides a consumer-level view of IT costs, showing how Solution Offering spend is ultimately allocated to business units, departments, products, customers, or other consumers. It helps organizations understand who is consuming IT services, how much they are consuming, and the cost associated with that consumption.

Consumer Spend is typically the final stage of the Yarken cost model, where costs have already flowed through the following allocation hierarchy:

Expenses → Cost Pools → Towers → Assets → Solutions → Consumers

Use this cube to:

Review Consumer-level IT charges.
Analyze Solution-to-Consumer allocations.
Understand service consumption patterns.
Identify high-cost consumers.
Compare usage and spending across consumers.

Before you begin

Before data appears in the Consumer Spend cube:

Expenses must be allocated through Cost Pools, Towers, Assets, and Solutions.
Solution Offerings must be mapped to one or more Consumers.
Consumer allocation rules or mappings must be configured.
Usage values must be defined if usage-based allocation is used.

If Solution-to-Consumer allocation has not been configured, the Consumer Spend cube may return little or no data.

Accessing the Consumer Spend cube

Navigate to Analytics.
Open Consumer Spend.
Select the required reporting period, filters, and dimensions.
Drag fields from the Fields pane into the visualization area to build your report.

The Consumer Spend cube supports ad hoc reporting, allowing you to analyze spend and usage from different perspectives.

Understanding Consumer Spend metrics

The Consumer Spend cube contains both financial and usage-related measures.

Consumer Spend represents the total cost allocated to a Consumer from a Solution Offering. This is the amount ultimately charged or attributed to the Consumer after all upstream allocations have been completed.

Unit Spend

Unit Spend represents the cost per unit of usage for a Solution Offering. It is calculated by dividing the total Solution spend by the total usage defined for that Solution Offering.

Formula

Unit Spend = Total Solution Spend ÷ Total Usage

Example

Solution Offering Spend = $100,000

Total Usage = 10,000 transactions

Unit Spend:

$100,000 ÷ 10,000 = $10 per transaction

If multiple Consumers use the same Solution Offering, the Unit Spend remains the same for all Consumers.

Total Usage

Total Usage represents the total amount of usage defined for a Solution Offering across all Consumers. This value is established during Consumer allocation.

Usage

Usage represents the portion of Total Usage assigned to an individual Consumer during Solution-to-Consumer allocation.

How Consumer allocation works

When a Solution Offering is mapped to multiple Consumers:

Each Consumer receives a Usage value.
The sum of all Consumer Usage values equals Total Usage.
Unit Spend is calculated once for the Solution Offering.
Consumer Spend is calculated based on the Consumer's allocated Usage.

Example

Solution Offering Spend = $120,000

Total Usage = 12,000 users

Unit Spend: $120,000 ÷ 12,000 = $10 per user

Consumer allocation:

Consumer	Usage	Unit Spend	Consumer Spend
Finance	5,000	$10	$50,000
HR	4,000	$10	$40,000
Operations	3,000	$10	$30,000

Total Consumer Spend: $50,000 + $40,000 + $30,000 = $120,000

Common reporting scenarios

Analyze spend by Consumer

Drag:

Consumer
Consumer Spend

This helps identify the highest-cost consumers.

Analyze spend by Solution Offering

Drag:

Solution Offering
Consumer Spend

This shows which services generate the highest consumer costs.

Analyze usage-based allocations

Drag:

Consumer
Usage
Unit Spend
Consumer Spend

This helps validate usage-based allocation models.

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