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Best Practices for Chargeback

Owning FNMS Cloud and App Portal, I want to define best practices for chargeback. Do we have recommendations on best practices for chargeback? What process should be in place, what fields can be used to define the department being charged back, and is there a way to leverage FNMS and App Portal for chargeback automation? Thank you.

Akshay
(1) Solution
ChrisG
By Community Manager Community Manager
Community Manager

I have seen several organizations take a regular snapshot of data from the FlexNet system and send it through a process to calculate internal chargebacks for end user hardware and software that is deployed. The following data elements that are often tracked in FlexNet can be helpful for this:

  • Computer manufacturer and model
  • Status or last inventory date (to avoid charging back for computers which are not active)
  • Installed software
  • Last logged on or assigned user
  • Cost center or business unit of the computer or user

Some considerations for doing charge back calculations include:

  • Determining which hardware and software should be charged back
  • How much should be charged back for different elements
  • Frequency of performing chargeback calculations (I've seen anything from daily to monthly)
  • What technology/tool will be used to do chargeback calculations (I've seen this attempted using custom SQL & PowerShell scripting doing on the FlexNet system itself, but suggest a better approach is to send raw data that is available in FlexNet off to an external system to be managed and analysed there)
(Did my reply solve the question? Click "ACCEPT AS SOLUTION" to help others find answers faster. Liked something? Click "KUDO". Anything expressed here is my own view and not necessarily that of my employer, Flexera.)

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(5) Replies
ChrisG
By Community Manager Community Manager
Community Manager

I have seen several organizations take a regular snapshot of data from the FlexNet system and send it through a process to calculate internal chargebacks for end user hardware and software that is deployed. The following data elements that are often tracked in FlexNet can be helpful for this:

  • Computer manufacturer and model
  • Status or last inventory date (to avoid charging back for computers which are not active)
  • Installed software
  • Last logged on or assigned user
  • Cost center or business unit of the computer or user

Some considerations for doing charge back calculations include:

  • Determining which hardware and software should be charged back
  • How much should be charged back for different elements
  • Frequency of performing chargeback calculations (I've seen anything from daily to monthly)
  • What technology/tool will be used to do chargeback calculations (I've seen this attempted using custom SQL & PowerShell scripting doing on the FlexNet system itself, but suggest a better approach is to send raw data that is available in FlexNet off to an external system to be managed and analysed there)
(Did my reply solve the question? Click "ACCEPT AS SOLUTION" to help others find answers faster. Liked something? Click "KUDO". Anything expressed here is my own view and not necessarily that of my employer, Flexera.)
Flexera also has a partnership with Apptio (a market-leading IT Financial reporting tool). Apptio can take data feeds from FNMS and create financial reports for spending, analysis and chargeback.

Hi Kirk, 

Do you have any technical documentation on how Apptio reads from FNMS, which includes what data flows from that integration?

@auntalan0 - You will need to reach out to your Apptio account manager.  The integration was designed by the Apptio Team.

It is not a direct integration.  It involves creating some specific Custom Report Views within the FlexNet Manager User Interface.  You would then run the reports, download the output to CSV files, and then the CSV files can be imported into Apptio.

Also please note that the strategic partnership between Flexera and Apptio is not as strong today as it was 2 years ago when the integration was created.

 

I also found this blog by Flexera - while it is many years old, the concepts are still relevant today.

https://blogs.flexera.com/elo/2012/12/make-software-chargeback-work-for-your-organization/

Akshay