Introduction

Using Accounting Component › Introduction

Introduction

You can use Accounting Component for controlling IT costs, managing demand through billing and chargeback, allocating costs, and budgeting and planning IT Services. Accounting Component enables businesses to allocate their IT costs and create flexible, customized pricing models for their IT services. You can base allocated costs on transaction, usage-based billing, rate, and other factors. You can plan IT budgets and justify budget requests; implement corporate chargeback for IT resources, and bill customers for IT services on a per-use basis.

In addition, Accounting Component does the following:

Enables usage-based or transaction-based billing by importing external usage through data mediation
Adjusts charges based on SLA contract violations, when CA Service Catalog is integrated with CA Business Service Insight

Key features of Accounting Component include:

A chargeback component to allocate cost back to Business Units, including service level charges and adjustments
Scheduled account invoice processing and financial reporting used for budgeting and planning
A facility for managing subscriptions, invoices and profiles

Accounting Component provides companies with the ability to:

Improve Communication and Alignment
A Chargeback implementation triggers dialog over many aspects related to IT Services, such as advantages, costs, and requirements. With a deeper understanding of how IT is being used within an organization, services can be better aligned to meet the business objectives of each Business Unit by correcting or eliminating pervasive inefficiencies.
Increase Governance and Financial Transparency
With increased transparency and accountability reported through a successful chargeback strategy, organizations can be more adept in making astute business decisions based on true IT costs.
Influence Customer Behavior
Allocating costs to the end-user raises awareness and influences customer behavior. As Business Units become more cost-conscious with their expenditures, inefficient and frivolous behavior can be curtailed, placing better constraints over the cost of IT. The results typically include a more accurate depiction of profitability and increased control over the cost of IT.
Transition IT toward a Measurement Culture
By moving Business Units, and the organization as a whole, toward a culture of measurement, increasingly efficient management and continual improvement of overall business processes result.
Calculate Return on Investment (ROI)
The ability to identify usage either by consumer or department enables IT to easily calculate the return on investment. The detailed information available in Service Accounting also enables IT to perform cost-benefit analysis.

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