IT Chargeback and Showback

Timely cost recovery demands accuracy in IT billing processes, where even small errors can mean unpaid invoices, time-consuming disputes and frustrated stakeholders.

Nicus IT chargeback and showback software helps organizations deliver a defensible, easy-to-understand bill of IT that builds trust and streamlines the payment process, enhancing the chargeback process efficiency.

• Automate billing workflows: Reduce manual effort with seamless data collection, cost allocation and invoice delivery
• Accelerate payment: Built-in tools simplify invoice processing, enabling fast payments and dispute resolution
• Deliver self-service cost visibility: Give users drill-down insights into usage details and cost drivers to help control spending
• Build trust through transparency: Minimize doubt and disputes with finance-approved data from the general ledger to ensure accurate tracking of costs associated with resource usage

IT chargeback and showback are two processes used in IT financial management (ITFM) and technology business management (TBM) to promote efficiency and shared financial accountability over IT spending, aligning costs across the organization.

With showback reports, the goal is to provide increased awareness and visibility around IT service consumption and spending. IT costs are reported back to each business unit, without collecting any actual payment.

Chargeback involves billing IT costs directly to business units, helping businesses recover costs fairly while encouraging users to manage their IT spending wisely. Many organizations use showback as a stepping stone to chargeback, allowing them to build cost awareness before implementing direct cost recovery.

Effective IT showback and chargeback management demands accuracy and transparency, but many organizations struggle with manual processes and incomplete data.

Common challenges include:

• Accuracy: Mistakes mean disputes and delays in recovering costs, taking time to resolve while potentially impacting cash flow
• Manual effort: Pulling data together from multiple sources and allocating it appropriately is complex and consumes valuable staff resources
• Transparency: When users question their bill, IT finance teams need to be able to defend the charges and justify allocations
• Cost optimization: Without detailed visibility into consumption, particularly around cloud costs, consumers struggle to control their own costs effectively

Nicus IT chargeback and showback software integrates finance-approved general ledger data with granular cost allocation and automated invoicing.

The result: a faster, more transparent approach to IT chargeback and showback that improves cash flow, helps consumers make informed decisions, and highlights the value that IT delivers through effective cost management.

• Deliver a clear, defensible account of IT spend: Provide fast, thorough explanations when consumers have questions, empowering users with self-service reporting and drill-through cost views to answer questions instantly
• Resolve disputes quickly: Accept payment on open disputes with automatic adjustments applied to the next billing cycle
• Encourage smarter IT spending: Use strategic pricing, tiered service models and total cost of ownership (TCO) reporting to guide consumption behaviors and optimize cloud spending
• Showcase IT’s business impact: Show consumers what they get from their IT spending, demonstrating how every dollar sustains, grows or transforms the business
• Manage your bill of IT seamlessly on ServiceNow: Native ServiceNow applications let you deploy quickly and leverage financial data across the entire ServiceNow ecosystem

• Automated data import
• Native compatibility with TBM and other allocation methodologies
• Service P&Ls & audit views
• Accept payment from multiple funding sources
• Dispute and approval workflows
• Automatic invoices and billing adjustments
• Support for “ragged rollup” hierarchies
• Role-based dashboards and reports
• Intuitive pro-forma invoice templates
• Granular funds tracking