Getting Started

Use this article to complete the initial setup and prepare your Yarken environment for reporting, analysis, planning, and allocation.

About Yarken

Yarken brings technology spend, planning, analytics, FinOps, chargeback, and AI-driven insight into one connected operating model. It helps teams understand where technology money is going, why costs are changing, and how to plan what comes next.

Yarken uses the Technology Business Management (TBM) framework to structure financial data across cost pools, towers, applications, services, and consumers — giving you a consistent view from raw transactions to business-level reporting.

Before you begin

Before users start relying on dashboards, reports, analytics, or Ask Yarken, confirm that your environment has the right setup foundation.

You should have:

1. Access to Yarken with the correct administrator role.

2. The master data needed for your organization.

3. Spend, budget, or forecast data ready to load.

4. The financial model structure your team wants to use.

5. Users, roles, and permissions defined.

6. Entity access and currency settings confirmed, where applicable.

Understand your role

Yarken uses role-based access to control what users can see and do across the platform. Roles determine access to areas such as Home, Reports, Analytics, Planning, and Admin.

Core roles:

Specialized roles (combined with a core role):

Learn more about:

• User roles and permissions

• Adding new users

Set up the foundations (Administrators)

Before teams can use Yarken for reporting and analysis, Administrators need to prepare the data and model.

Platform settings

1. Configure financial years — Review the current and previous financial years.

2. Configure default settings — Set the current financial year, financial year start month, and year format. These settings control how periods appear across reporting, planning, and analysis.

3. Choose TBM taxonomy versions - Choose TBM v4.0, TBM v5.0.1, or both. Use the version that matches your operating model and reporting needs.

4. Configure entities — Create the entities your team uses for reporting and access. Entities can represent business units, regions, legal entities, departments, or other parts of your organization.

5. Configure currency and exchange rates — Add the currencies and exchange rates your team needs for reporting, planning, and analysis.

6. Set Up Users and Permissions — Add users, assign roles, cost center access, account access, and configure entity access so each team member sees the data relevant to their responsibilities.

Data and model setup

7. Load Master Data — Configure the core reference data that Yarken uses across the platform: Accounts, Cost Centers, Vendors, Solution Offerings, and Consumers.

8. Load Accounts Payable — Add invoices and contracts to capture vendor spend at the source before allocation.

9. Load Assets — Configure and maintain asset records (applications, infrastructure, and shared services) so spend can be allocated and reported at the asset level.

10. Configure the Financial Model — Set up models for Spend, Budget, and Forecast. Models define how data is grouped, allocated, and analyzed.

11. Load Expenses — Upload your monthly spend, budget, or forecast data into the respective model.

12. Map expenses through the model — Create rules and mappings to allocate spend through Cost Pools, Towers, Assets, Solutions, and Consumers. Rules are executed in priority order and can fully or partially allocate spend.

Use the Yarken Designer workspace to manage all of the above. Designer is organized into Master Data, Accounts Payable, Lookup Types, Consumption, Assets, and Models.

After expense allocation

After the model setup is complete, you can begin working in the areas most relevant your role.

Common next steps include:

• Use Dashboards and Reports to review spend, trends, and variance.

• Use Analytics for deeper analysis across dimensions and cubes.

• Use Ask Yarken to ask questions about spend, forecast, variance, and cost drivers.

• Use Planning to manage budgets, forecasts, and workforce costs.

• Use Chargeback when costs need to be assigned to business units or consumers.

Related content

• User roles and permissions

• Adding new users

• Settings

• Configure entities

• Configure currency and exchange rates

• Load master data in Designer

• Load Accounts Payable

• Load asset data

• Create and manage custom models

• Load expenses

• Yarken Designer