Budget position and enforcement intent are shown together before a setting is changed.
License chargeback
Set what this organisation is prepared to spend on metered consumption, see where the month stands against it, and model a change before committing to it.
Actual against budget, 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 this product stores one current cap rather than a history of caps. The table below states the comparison instead, and says which cap it used.
Source & method
Azure Cost Management export where connected; Aristo consumption envelope otherwise.
Basis: Labelled estimate
Accessible data
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Month | Cap as set today |
Actual | Basis | Variance | Of cap | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 (so far) | $320,000 | $278,540 | estimate | −$41,460 | 87% | 75% band |
| July 2026 | $320,000 | $269,760 | estimate | −$50,240 | 84% | 75% band |
| June 2026 | $320,000 | $258,420 | estimate | −$61,580 | 81% | 75% band |
| May 2026 | $320,000 | $246,780 | estimate | −$73,220 | 77% | 75% band |
| April 2026 | $320,000 | $238,650 | estimate | −$81,350 | 75% | 50% band |
| March 2026 | $320,000 | $229,400 | estimate | −$90,600 | 72% | 50% band |
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: Labelled estimate
Accessible data
| Department | Policy | Used | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | Sales pay-as-you-go | 99% | amber |
| Finance | Finance pre-purchase pool | 97% | red |
| Engineering | Engineering credit packs | 73% | 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.
The monthly cap and what happens at it
Choose the amount and the enforcement, see exactly what will be written, then write it. Both steps work with scripting switched off.
A monthly cap of $320,000, with enforcement set to 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.
This writes the same tenant setting the Settings card writes, through the same store function and the same audit line. There is no second budget in this product — changing it here changes it everywhere it is read, including the Cowork gate, the Traffic Lights and the weekly digest.
This is the illustrative organisation. Its settings are built for the page and never written, so there is nothing here to change — in your own tenant this control writes the same cap the Settings card writes, records it in the audit trail, and every surface that reads the cap moves with it.
Explore planning detailMonth-end pace, department budgets, scenarios and methodology
Where this month stands, and where the pace lands
Month to date against the cap, projected to month end, and the governance thresholds that pace would cross.
At 93% of August 2026 elapsed, $278,540 of the $320,000 cap is used — a pace of $298,634 by Aug 31, which would cross 90% before the month ends. The figure is labelled estimate — A labelled envelope over real inputs, built to under-count rather than to flatter. The pace may therefore under-count.
- The 90% threshold has not been crossed yet this month, and this pace crosses it before Aug 31.
The pace is capped below the 100% claim on purpose. This month's figure is a labelled envelope estimate, and an estimate may warn that a cap is close; it may not assert that a funded envelope is fully used. Connect a read-only Cost Management export and the claim becomes available because the number becomes measured.
Department budgets
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 | Basis | What the engine says |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finance Finance pre-purchase pool |
p3 | Red | 97% | 1.31× | estimate | Pre-purchase pool Finance team pacing 1.31× — about 20,815,120 of 21,500,000 credits drawn, projected 28,128,540 by Dec 1, 2026, so the pool runs dry before the term does · estimate run-rate |
| Sales Sales pay-as-you-go |
paygo | Amber | 99% | 1.06× | estimate | Pay-as-you-go Sales team pacing 1.06× budget — $41,580 spent, projected $44,580 vs $42,000 by Aug 31 · estimate |
| Engineering Engineering credit packs |
packs | Green | 73% | 0.78× | estimate | Credit packs Engineering team pacing 0.78× allotment — 4,747,517 of 6,500,000 credits used, projected 5,090,000 by Aug 31 · estimate |
Scenario planner
What a change does to the monthly position, computed from counted quantities and your own numbers.
Every figure above is a monthly delta against today's position, and none of them is added to another: reclaiming idle seats and funding a cohort are different decisions on different bases, and a combined "total opportunity" would sum a counted saving with a labelled estimate.
Why each of these 5 is not modelled
- 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 modelled 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 licence position and a directory Aristo has not read. It can be modelled 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 licence 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 the enforcement mode on this page are the tenant settings the Settings card already writes. This page reads them straight from your tenant configuration rather than from the cached composition, so a change is visible the moment it is stored, and it writes them through the same store function with the same clamps and the same audit line.
The band ladder is not this page's. 50% · 75% · 90% · 100% are the thresholds the consumption-governance detector holds, and every band, crossing and percentage here is computed by that 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 a labelled envelope estimate, the pace is allowed to warn and is not allowed to claim the funded envelope is fully used. That clamp is the governance engine's own, applied here for the same reason it exists there.
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 enforcement mode above says so in the words the person asking will read.
- Aristo stores ONE current monthly cap, not a history of caps. Every row in the table below 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 a labelled envelope estimate over Aristo-mediated consumption only, so it may under-count. 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.
- Budget changes are direct, attributable writes by an authorised leader. Sponsors are managed in Settings and every change enters the append-only audit trail; this control does not route a separate approval request.
- Overage alerting is not a control on this page. The band crossings this page computes are the same ones the daily governance batch fires on, and a Teams card is sent by that batch rather than by this screen — one detector, one set of thresholds, and no second place for them to disagree.