Executive summary

The estate's position across May 2026.

Spend trend estimate

Metered consumption month by month across May 2026, each month carrying its own basis.

May 2026 is the only completed month inside May 2026 — $238,650, labeled estimate — so there is a figure but nothing yet to compare it against.

The share of the consumption cap in the summary is for September 2026 so far — the month in progress when this report was frozen. This table lists complete months only, so no row here is that month.

Cost per user assumption

Counted Copilot license per head, by team, across every department.

Product carries $17 of Copilot license per head, 1.5× what Manufacturing carries at $12 — not because its seats cost more, but because 260 of its 455 people hold one against 210 of 537.

This is a TEAM total divided by a TEAM headcount, at five people or more. It is not a per-person figure — this page holds none and no filter combination on it produces one; the only named surface is Department AI visibility, under your organization’s policy and each person’s own choice.

The apportioned consumption estimate is deliberately not divided by headcount here. That apportionment multiplies a flat per-user rate by a department size, so dividing it back out returns the same rate for every team — a column that looks like a finding and can never contain one.

1 row is not ranked here: a row is ranked only when its seat bill and its headcount are both counted and both shown. It is named in the department table below with an em dash or in words rather than a guess.

Department efficiency counted

Every team ranked on the share of its counted seats that are working, across every department.

IT runs the tightest estate at 82% of its 250 seats in use, while Sales leaves $6,300 a month on 210 seats not yet opened.

The two money columns are on different bases. License cost is counted seats at your seat price; the apportioned consumption estimate distributes metered funding, labeled an estimate everywhere it appears. Adding them together would state a total this organization does not owe.

Ranked on the share of a team's counted assigned seats that are in use — the one column here with no estimate and no price inside it. The two money columns are on different bases and are never added: license cost is counted seats at your seat price, the allocation is the consumption budget your organization set.

1 row carries no rank: a privacy-merged bucket or a team below the utilization join's five-person floor has no counted use to rank. They are shown with an em dash rather than dropped, so the table still adds up to the estate.

Aristo began keeping a per-team monthly seat record in April 2026. The “change since last month” column and the trend line need a second month and appear then; nothing is drawn as a flat line meanwhile.

Usage vs cost assumption

Seat use against license cost, one mark per team, sized by counted seats.

Sales, Operations, Marketing sit in the low-use, high-cost corner: together $38,400 a month of license against seat use at or below the estate's median of 66%.

Every mark is a team of five people or more. The bubble is drawn as an AREA in counted seats, so a team with four times the seats gets four times the ink — scaling the radius instead would quadruple the visual weight of a doubled quantity.

The usage axis runs the full nought to a hundred whatever the data does. Auto-scaling a percentage axis to its own spread makes a five-point difference between teams read as a chasm.

1 row is not plotted: a row is plotted only when its seat use and its seat bill are both counted and both shown, and a point is not invented for the others.

Product utilization counted

Every paid Microsoft product, in counted seats — bought, assigned, and never handed to anyone.

Microsoft 365 Copilot carries the largest unassigned block: 160 of its 4,200 paid seats have never been handed to anyone, which is $4,800 a month at your seat price.

Seats are counted for every paid product. Money appears only where this product holds a real price for the product — Copilot today — because an invented price makes a total look precise and be wrong.

5 of the 6 products shown are reported in counted seats and deliberately never dollarized. Their headroom is real; its value is not yet knowable.

Variance analysis projection

What moved across May 2026, against the prior month, the prior run, your cap and the labeled projection.

The largest movement across May 2026 is that seats ready to activate fell from 1,283 at the previous run on 25 August 2026 to 1,280 at this one, down 3 seats — $90 a month of license. Seats ready to activate fell by 3 while active seats rose by 3. That is the shape of activation rather than of reclamation — though the previous run did not record the paid-seat total, so the two cannot be reconciled to the seat from here.

A movement between two months on DIFFERENT bases is not purely a movement in spending — one endpoint counts Aristo-mediated consumption and the other counts everything your billing export sees. Every row states the basis of its weaker endpoint, and says so in words where they differ.

Seat and cohort movements are measured between RUNS, not between calendar months, and are labeled that way. A run is when Aristo counted; the calendar is not what moved.

Estimated months are included in the comparison and marked, rather than dropped. Dropping them would leave a tidy series with a hole in it and no sign that the hole was ever there.

Recommendations

Selected from the positions ranked above. Every figure in them is one of the figures already in this document.