Models Overview

What are models

Models are reusable structures that organize your financial data across Spend, Budget, and Forecast scenarios.

Model allows you to:

• Separate actuals from planning data

• Run multiple planning scenarios in parallel

• Create and manage allocation strategies specific to each model

• Compare financial outcomes across different strategies

Why models matter

Models give you control over how data is structured and analyzed.

Instead of mixing all data into one view, you can:

• Keep actual spend separate from budgets and forecasts

• Compare multiple financial plans side by side

Default vs custom models

Yarken includes three default system models:

• Spend

• Budget

• Forecast

You can also create custom models of the same types for additional planning scenarios.

Key concepts

• A model defines how data is grouped and analyzed

• Models apply to:

  • Spend, budget, and forecast

  • Rules and mappings across assets, cost pools, towers, solutions, and consumers

Models do not apply to:

• Master data

• Assets

• Cloud consumption and mobile usage

• License usage (tenant, individual, and product)

• Accounts payable

• Companion metrics

Each model also has an assigned Taxonomy Version, which determines the Cost Pool and Tower structures available for that model in Designer. Different models can use different taxonomy versions, allowing you to maintain separate classification and allocation structures within the same environment.

For configuration instructions, see Create and manage custom models.

How models work

Data separation by model

Each model maintains its own:

• Data

• Rules

• Mappings

• Model-specific Upload Rules, where supported

This ensures:

• No unintended overlap

• Clean separation between scenarios

Publishing behavior

• Standard Spend model — Cloud spend can be published through the supported Expenses, Cost Pool, and Tower levels.

• AI Model — Only qualifying AI-related Cloud spend is published to Expenses. Cost Pool and Tower distribution are not used.

• AI usage data — Loaded AI cost and usage data can be published to selected Spend models. Publishing creates records at the Expenses level only and does not distribute the spend through Cost Pools, Towers, or Assets.

• Budget data — published to the Budget model.

• Forecast data — published to the Forecast model.

A custom Spend model can be designated as an AI Model under Admin > Settings > Models.

For the AI-specific Cloud publishing workflow, see Cloud Usage Data. For AI cost and usage publishing, see AI Usage Data.

Interaction with rules and mappings

• Rules and mappings (Cost Pools, Towers, Solutions, Consumers) are:

  • Managed independently

  • Usable across models

• You can:

  • Copy rules and mapping between models

  • Reuse allocation rules

Upload Rules behavior

Upload Rules can be either model-specific or Global.

For rules created in model-based areas:

• New rules default to the current model.

• Apply only to this model controls whether the rule is model-specific.

  

• Clearing Apply only to this model creates a Global rule.

• Global rules can use a Model filter to further control which models they apply to.

Rules created in non-model areas, such as Master Data, Assets, Consumptions, and Lookup Types, are Global because those areas do not have a model context.

This allows each Spend, Budget, Forecast, or custom model to maintain independent Upload Rules where model-specific processing is required, while still supporting rules that need to be shared across models.

For configuration details, see Manage Upload Rules.

Next step

Create and manage custom models

Related content

Working with models