- 1 · Request ✓A department asks, priced against its allocation
- 2 · ApproveTwo waiting on a decision
- 3 · Assign1 approved and recorded
- 4 · MonitorEach department watches its own light
Two requests wait on a decision. Sales asks for 120,000 Cowork credits — $1,200 a month.
Waiting on a decision
Aristo never caps spend — hard limits stay in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
This month against the cap
What you set, what has been used, and where the month lands at this pace.
$218,190 of the $320,000 cap is used so far, with 78% of September 2026 gone — $9,285 a day across the 23.5 days gone. At this pace the whole month (30 days) comes to about $278,540, 87% of the cap, crossing the 75% mark before 30 September 2026. This month is an estimate (Illustrative consumption scenario), and it never says the cap has been reached.
An estimate may warn that the cap is near; it never says the cap is reached. Connect a read-only billing export and this month becomes measured, to the cent.
The monthly cap and what happens at it
Choose the amount and what Aristo does at it, see exactly what will be saved, then save it.
A monthly cap of $320,000, and at it Aristo will nudge near the cap.
Near the cap, Aristo tells the person asking that their team is close to the budget their admin set. Nothing is withheld — it is a sentence, not a gate.
One cap, everywhere: this is the same setting the Settings page shows, and every screen that reads it moves with it — the Cowork gate, the Traffic Lights and the weekly digest. The change goes on the audit trail with your name.
Who owns each department budget, and who may approve against it
The owner answers for the spend and may raise requests. The approvers are the people who may say yes — and the two overage thresholds are the ones Aristo’s daily check already sends alerts on.
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Department | Budget owner | Approvers | Amber at | Red at | Allocation | This month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Sales |
Ada L. | Ines S., Omar K. | 85% | 110% | $42,000 | Inside both thresholds |
| Finance Finance |
Grace H. | Ines S., Omar K. | 80% | 105% | $31,500 | Inside both thresholds |
| Marketing Marketing |
Maya C. | Ines S., Omar K. | 82% | 100% | $28,000 | Past the red threshold |
| Engineering Engineering |
Alan T. | James W., Omar K. | 85% | 110% | Counted in seats | No dollar band |
Change an owner, the approvers or the thresholdsPick the department, set the fields, preview, then save
Set the owner, the approvers and the two thresholds in the form, then press Preview changes. Aristo shows exactly what will be saved before it saves it.
Ask for seats or credits for a department
Name the department, the quantity and the period. Aristo prices it against that department’s own allocation before anybody is asked to approve it.
Name a quantity above and Aristo prices the request against this department’s own allocation before anybody is asked to approve it.
You own this department’s budget, so you may raise a request against it. Someone else has to approve it.
Consumption against the cap, month by month
Every month Aristo holds, each carrying its own basis, against the cap as it stands today.
Evidence & data — Consumption against the cap, month by month
Comparison
The cap is $320,000 a month. It is drawn nowhere on these bars on purpose: a cap line across a series of months would imply the cap applied in each of them, and Aristo keeps one current cap rather than a history of caps. The table states the comparison instead, and says which cap it used.
Source & method
Azure Cost Management export where connected; Aristo consumption envelope otherwise.
Basis: Labeled estimate
Accessible data
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Month | Cap as set today |
Actual | Basis | Variance | Of cap | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 2026 (so far) | $320,000 | $218,190 | estimate An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement. | −$101,810 | 68.2% | 50% band |
| August 2026 | $320,000 | $269,760 | estimate An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement. | −$50,240 | 84.3% | 75% band |
| July 2026 | $320,000 | $258,420 | estimate An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement. | −$61,580 | 80.8% | 75% band |
| June 2026 | $320,000 | $246,780 | estimate An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement. | −$73,220 | 77.1% | 75% band |
| May 2026 | $320,000 | $238,650 | estimate An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement. | −$81,350 | 74.6% | 50% band |
| April 2026 | $320,000 | $229,400 | estimate An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement. | −$90,600 | 71.7% | 50% band |
What was assigned, and what Aristo actually did
Decision history for the departments shown. Approved receipts state whether a license moved.
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Department | Approved | Per month | Assignment record | Note | Decided | Decision handoff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finance | 250,000 credits | $2,500 | budget allocation recorded This is an internal Aristo allocation. It does not claim Microsoft provisioned or assigned credits. |
$2,500/month added to Finance’s Aristo allocation. This receipt does not claim Microsoft provisioned credits. | Approved by the IT and Finance approver on 11 September 2026. | Prepare Outlook updateCopy this decision brief, paste it into Outlook, choose the audience, and review it before sending. Aristo does not open, address, or send the message.
|
Where each department stands against its own allocation
Current attributed usage against what that department was allocated, with the comparison window and the two thresholds its owner asked to be told at.
Sales has used $34,921 of its $42,000 monthly allocation month to date — 83.1%, inside both of the thresholds its budget owner set (85% and 110%).
Labeled estimate — An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement.
Finance has used $18,940 of its $31,500 monthly allocation month to date — 60.1%, inside both of the thresholds its budget owner set (80% and 105%).
Labeled estimate — An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement. Last assigned 13 days ago: $2,500/month added to the internal Cowork allocation; no Microsoft credits were provisioned..
Marketing has used $29,240 of its $28,000 monthly allocation month to date — 104.4%, past the 100% threshold its budget owner set. This is the point the owner asked to be told about.
Labeled estimate — An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement.
Engineering holds a Copilot seat allocation rather than a dollar budget. The assignment receipt shows whether the license group was attached and whether its members were counted; the License Report and Traffic Lights show paid, assigned and active seats without turning them into a made-up dollar allowance.
Labeled estimate — An estimate worked from real inputs, deliberately on the low side — never a measurement.
What this journey will not do
- A request commits nothing on its own. Approving one moves the department’s own allotment on the policy the Traffic Lights already measure. Every step is kept on the request or the department’s policy record, with the identity of the person who took it; the audit trail is a second copy of that, not the only receipt.
- A requester never decides their own request. Aristo tells people apart by their identity in your directory rather than by e-mail address, because an address can be reassigned to somebody else and a rule that matched on one would silently hand the authority over with it.
- Aristo cannot move a Copilot seat in this tenant: the license-write scope is not consented, and it is deliberately absent from the default permissions so a read-only trust story stays intact. An approved seat request therefore records an assignment HANDED TO AN ADMINISTRATOR and names the step. It is never recorded as a seat that moved.
- The two overage thresholds on each department are the SAME numbers the daily governance batch fires on. Setting them here sets them there; there is no second ladder for a screen, and nothing on this page can disagree with the alert somebody receives.
Each team against its own budget
Department-scoped Traffic-Light policies, ranked by how much of their own budget is used.
Evidence & data — How much of its own budget each team has used
Comparison
Each bar is measured against that team's OWN budget, not against the estate cap — the paths differ, so 3 bars at the same length would be 3 different amounts of money. A bar past the hundred mark is a policy already crossed.
Source & method
The Traffic Lights engine, over this tenant’s own department-scoped policies.
Basis: Labeled estimate
Accessible data
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Department | Policy | Used | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finance | Finance pre-purchase pool | 96% | red |
| Sales | Sales pay-as-you-go | 83% | amber |
| Engineering | Engineering credit packs | 61% | green |
A department-scoped credit figure is an apportionment of the org figure by headcount share, so it is an estimate even where the org figure is measured. Dividing a measured number does not keep it measured.
Department budgets as the Traffic Lights hold them
The team-scoped spend policies on this tenant, read from the Traffic Lights engine and edited there.
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Department | Path | Light | Of budget | Pace | Cost center declared |
Basis | What the engine says |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finance Finance pre-purchase pool |
p3 | Red | 96% | 1.31× | — No cost center on this department yet |
estimate A department-scoped credit figure is an envelope apportionment of the organization's metered dollar by headcount share. Dividing a measured number does not keep it measured. | Pre-purchase pool Finance team pacing 1.31× — about 20,533,866 of 21,500,000 credits drawn, projected 28,128,583 by 1 January 2027, so the pool runs dry before the term does · estimate run-rate |
| Sales Sales pay-as-you-go |
paygo | Amber | 83% | 1.06× | — No cost center on this department yet |
estimate A department-scoped credit figure is an envelope apportionment of the organization's metered dollar by headcount share. Dividing a measured number does not keep it measured. | Pay-as-you-go Sales team pacing 1.06× budget — $34,921 spent, projected $44,580 vs $42,000 by 30 September 2026 · estimate |
| Engineering Engineering credit packs |
packs | Green | 61% | 0.78× | — No cost center on this department yet |
estimate A department-scoped credit figure is an envelope apportionment of the organization's metered dollar by headcount share. Dividing a measured number does not keep it measured. | Credit packs Engineering team pacing 0.78× allotment — 3,987,173 of 6,500,000 credits used, projected 5,090,008 by 30 September 2026 · estimate |
Scenario planner
What a change does to the monthly position, computed from quantities and prices you set. Every scenario here is a link you can send.
Every figure above is a monthly delta against today's position, and none of them is added to another: rerouting seats and funding a cohort are different decisions on different bases, and a combined "total opportunity" would sum a counted saving with a labeled estimate.
Why each of these 5 is not modeled
- A price increase. Aristo holds your seat price only because you set it, and it holds no Microsoft price list, no volume tier and no renewal quote. A modeled increase would be this product inventing a number about your contract, which is the one number a leader would take into a negotiation.
- An acquisition. This needs a headcount, a license position and a directory Aristo has not read. It can be modeled the day the acquired tenant is connected, at which point it is not a scenario — it is a count.
- Seasonal usage. A seasonal shape needs more than a year of measured months. Aristo keeps every month it measures permanently, so this becomes real on its own; asserting a season from a handful of months would be a pattern drawn through noise.
- A new product introduction. Aristo prices what your license records show you already own. A product you have not bought has no seat price here, and inventing one would put a precise-looking total on a guess.
- Department growth. The department split on this module is an envelope apportionment by size and consumption fit. Growing one department inside it moves dollars between teams without changing the estate total, which looks like a finding and is an artefact of the apportionment.
How every number on this page was arrived at, and what this page will not do
One budget, one place. The cap and what Aristo does at it are the same settings the Settings page shows. This page reads them straight from your saved settings rather than from an earlier snapshot, so a change is visible the moment it is saved, and it saves them through the same path with the same limits and the same audit line.
The band ladder is not this page's. 50% · 75% · 90% · 100% are the thresholds every alert in Aristo reads, and every band, crossing and percentage here is computed by that same detector. This page does the dollar arithmetic — a month-to-date figure divided by the share of the month elapsed — and hands the result over. Nothing here would survive disagreeing with the alert you receive.
An estimate never asserts that a cap is reached. Where the current month is an estimate, the pace is allowed to warn and is not allowed to claim the cap is reached. That clamp is the governance engine's own, applied here for the same reason it exists there. This month is an estimate, so its pace may warn that the cap is close and may not assert that a funded envelope is fully used.
A cap is a measurement, not a control on Microsoft. Aristo governs what it recommends and what it hands off. Actual credit spending is stopped in your Microsoft 365 Admin Center, and every mode above says so in the words the person asking will read.
- Aristo keeps ONE current monthly cap, not a history of caps. Every row in the month table is measured against the cap as it stands today, including months that ran before that cap was set — the column says so rather than re-basing itself silently.
- This month is an estimate (Illustrative consumption scenario). An estimate is never allowed to assert that the cap has been reached — the pace warns and stops short of the 100% claim. Connect a read-only Azure Cost Management export and the current month becomes measured, to the cent.
- The ORGANIZATION-WIDE cap above is still a direct, attributable write by an authorized leader — it routes no approval request, because it is the envelope the approvals are decided inside rather than a spend against one. Requests and approvals are per DEPARTMENT, and they are below.
- Setting a department’s two overage thresholds here sets the ones the daily governance batch already fires on. The Teams card is still sent by that batch rather than by this screen: one detector, one set of thresholds, and no second place for them to disagree.