Overview
The Consumer Expenses 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:
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Review Consumer-level IT charges.
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Analyze Solution-to-Consumer allocations.
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Understand service consumption patterns.
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Identify high-cost consumers.
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Compare usage and spending across consumers.
Before you begin
Before data appears in the Consumer Expenses cube:
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Expenses must be allocated through Cost Pools, Towers, Assets, and Solutions.
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Solution Offerings must be mapped to one or more Consumers.
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Consumer allocation rules or mappings must be configured.
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Usage values must be defined if usage-based allocation is used.
If Solution-to-Consumer allocation has not been configured, the Consumer Expenses cube may return little or no data.
Accessing the Consumer Expenses cube
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Navigate to Analytics.
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Open Consumer Expenses.
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Select the required reporting period, filters, and dimensions.
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Drag fields from the Fields pane into the visualization area to build your report.
The Consumer Expenses cube supports ad hoc reporting, allowing you to analyze Expenses and usage from different perspectives.
Understanding Consumer Expenses metrics
The Consumer Expenses cube contains both financial and usage-related measures.
Consumer Expenses
Consumer Expenses 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 Expenses
Unit Expenses 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
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 usage metric type affects reporting periods
Each Solution Offering can use a usage metric type to control how Yarken combines monthly usage when a report covers more than one month.
|
Metric type |
How Usage and Total Usage are calculated |
|---|---|
|
Sum |
Adds usage from every month in the selected period. |
|
Average |
Averages usage across the months in the selected period that contain usage. |
|
Last |
Uses usage from the latest month in the selected period that contains usage. |
If a Solution Offering does not have a usage metric type configured, Yarken uses Average.
Single-month reports
When a report covers one month, Yarken always uses that month’s actual usage. The configured metric type does not affect the calculation.
For one month:
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Usage = Consumer Usage for that month.
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Total Usage = Solution Offering Total Usage for that month.
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Unit Spend = Solution Offering spend ÷ Total Usage.
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Consumer Expenses = Month spend × (Consumer Usage ÷ Total Usage).
A one-month filter should therefore show the same values as the corresponding month in a report grouped by Month.
Reports covering multiple months
For a year, quarter, or other multi-month period, Yarken first combines Usage and Total Usage based on the Solution Offering’s metric type.
Formula
Unit Spend = Total Solution Offering spend ÷ Combined Total Usage
Spend from months that have no usage remains included in total spend.
Allocated cost remains monthly
The usage metric type does not change Consumer Expenses.
Yarken calculates Consumer allocation separately for each month using that month’s actual usage, then adds the monthly allocated costs for the selected period.
Therefore:
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Sum, Average, and Last can produce different Usage, Total Usage, and Unit Spend.
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Total allocated Consumer Expenses remain unchanged.
Usage without spend
Consumer Usage includes months where the Consumer has usage even when there is no corresponding spend for that Consumer in the month.
This helps Consumer Usage reconcile to the Solution Offering’s Total Usage.
Unit values in totals and grouped reports
Unit rates are not additive. Therefore:
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Grand totals for Unit Spend, Unit Budget, and Unit Forecast are blank.
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Grouped rows display Unit only when the group resolves to a single Unit value.
How Consumer allocation works
When a Solution Offering is mapped to multiple Consumers:
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Each Consumer receives a Usage value.
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The sum of all Consumer Usage values equals Total Usage.
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Unit Spend is calculated once for the Solution Offering.
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Consumer Expens is calculated based on the Consumer's allocated Usage.
Common reporting scenarios
Analyze Expens by Consumer
Drag:
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Consumer
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Consumer Expens
This helps identify the highest-cost consumers.
Analyze Expens by Solution Offering
Drag:
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Solution Offering
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Consumer Expens
This shows which services generate the highest consumer costs.
Analyze usage-based allocations
Drag:
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Consumer
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Usage
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Unit Spend
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Consumer Spend
This helps validate usage-based allocation models.
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