Transparent accounting for service

There is hardly a company that can afford to account for costs arising from the IT department centrally. Mostly the expense is allocated to the source from which it originated. Besides the cost of purchasing the individually used hardware and software, the network operating costs, the server usage and services must be allocated accurately to cost centres. Spider Asset has the solution.

All workstations and servers in the company are administrated by the IT asset management system Spider Asset: This means that technical and commercial information is available centrally. Automatic updating is taken over by agents who get the required information from, for example, accounting.

Purchase prices and dates of purchase can be captured for each hardware component. Even the period for which it was used at a workstation can be determined accurately. This means that the depreciation as well as the current value can be determined at any time. Often hardware is posted globally every month: Instead of basing it on the actual value the IT department enters a standard value according to the hardware category. This synchronises the cost accounting for complex mixtures of purchase, rental and leasing agreements.

Since Spider captures the cost centre to be used for each workstation and for each hardware component and also administrates the commercial aspects, the current usage of hardware and software can be posted individually every month on a particular day. Alternatively, Spider can generate a data file. It transfers the current costs directly into a commercial system.

Service costs money

Also the costly services, either via the User Help Desk or an external service provider, must be allocated. Often the problem is resolved when the Ticket Tool supplies the workstation-related service information regularly. These costs can, for example, be fixed across the board for the different ticket types (e.g. telephonic support for software, repairs to hardware, change) and entered when the ticket is completed. This data is allocated directly to the workstation and therefore also to the correct cost centre.

If the costs of a complex server system is involved, the allocation must take the actual usage into account. Some systems give a parameter (volume per user, frequency of usage, available bandwidth), which can be converted to cost allocations using a suitable key.

Automatic transparency

Spider Asset evaluates the data collected in this manner in individually designed reports and prepares them, if required, for the accounting system. When linked to the Microsoft Reporting Services the charges to the cost centre can automatically be sent to the persons responsible for them. After only a few months, the collected data enables effective analysis: How have the types of cost developed, have savings measures had any effect, have unnecessary expenses been incurred.