Monthly department chargeback — July 2026
Executive summary
The estate's position across July 2026.
Spend trend estimate
Metered consumption month by month across July 2026, each month carrying its own basis.
July 2026 is the only completed month inside July 2026 — $269,760, labelled estimate — so there is a figure but nothing yet to compare it against.
Evidence & data — Metered consumption by month
Comparison
0 of 1 month in this period are measured. A month is solid only once an export covering it has landed.
Source & method
Azure Cost Management export where connected; Aristo consumption envelope otherwise.
Basis: Labelled estimate
Accessible data
| Month | Spend | Basis | Complete month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 26 | $269,760 | Labelled estimate | Yes |
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Month | Metered | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| July 2026 | $269,760 | Labelled estimate |
Cost per user counted
Counted Copilot licence per head, by team, across every department.
Product carries $17 of Copilot licence 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.
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Department | People | Seats | Coverage | Licence / mo counted | Per head counted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product | 455 | 260 | 57% | $7,800 | $17 |
| Data & Analytics | 425 | 240 | 56% | $7,200 | $17 |
| Finance | 650 | 340 | 52% | $10,200 | $16 |
| IT | 495 | 250 | 51% | $7,500 | $15 |
| Human Resources | 370 | 180 | 49% | $5,400 | $15 |
| Marketing | 540 | 260 | 48% | $7,800 | $14 |
| Supply Chain | 445 | 210 | 47% | $6,300 | $14 |
| Customer Success | 885 | 390 | 44% | $11,700 | $13 |
| Engineering | 1,550 | 680 | 44% | $20,400 | $13 |
| Sales | 1,370 | 600 | 44% | $18,000 | $13 |
| Operations | 1,020 | 420 | 41% | $12,600 | $12 |
| Manufacturing | 537 | 210 | 39% | $6,300 | $12 |
This is a TEAM total divided by a TEAM headcount, at five people or more. It is not a per-person figure, there is no per-person figure in this product, and no filter combination on this page produces one.
The consumption allocation 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: the privacy-merged bucket has no headcount to divide by, and a team with no counted seat join has no licence bill. They are named in the department table below with an em dash 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 nobody has touched.
Evidence & data — Counted Copilot licence by department, ranked
Comparison
Ranked by what each department carries. Departments with no counted licence cost are absent from the bars rather than drawn at zero, and every one of them is still in the table below.
Source & method
Microsoft Graph — licence records + adoption signals, joined per team.
Basis: Counted
Accessible data
| Department | Licence / mo |
|---|---|
| Engineering | $20,400 |
| Sales | $18,000 |
| Operations | $12,600 |
| Customer Success | $11,700 |
| Finance | $10,200 |
| Product | $7,800 |
| Marketing | $7,800 |
| IT | $7,500 |
Departments with no counted licence cost are absent rather than drawn at zero, and are in the table below.
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Department | People | Active seats | Seat usage | Licence cost / mo counted | Per active seat counted | Allocation estimate | Recoverable counted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IT | 495 | 205 | 82% | $7,500 | $37 | $17,020 | $1,350 |
| Finance | 650 | 270 | 79% | $10,200 | $38 | $23,460 | $2,100 |
| Product | 455 | 200 | 77% | $7,800 | $39 | $16,010 | $1,800 |
| Engineering | 1,550 | 520 | 76% | $20,400 | $39 | $50,900 | $4,800 |
| Customer Success | 885 | 260 | 67% | $11,700 | $45 | $27,200 | $3,900 |
| Human Resources | 370 | 120 | 67% | $5,400 | $45 | $10,550 | $1,800 |
| Marketing | 540 | 170 | 65% | $7,800 | $46 | $18,050 | $2,700 |
| Sales | 1,370 | 390 | 65% | $18,000 | $46 | $44,580 | $6,300 |
| Operations | 1,020 | 270 | 64% | $12,600 | $47 | $30,380 | $4,500 |
| Manufacturing | 537 | 125 | 60% | $6,300 | $50 | $14,340 | $2,550 |
| Supply Chain | 445 | 120 | 57% | $6,300 | $53 | $11,380 | $2,700 |
| Data & Analytics | 425 | 110 | 46% | $7,200 | $65 | $14,550 | $3,900 |
| Other team (1 small team, aggregated) | — | — | — | — | — | $120 | — |
The two money columns are on different bases. Licence cost is counted seats at your seat price; the allocation is an apportionment of metered funding, labelled an estimate everywhere it appears. Adding them together would state a total this organisation does not owe.
Ranked on the share of a team's counted seats that are genuinely active — the one column here with no estimate and no price inside it. The two money columns are on different bases and are never added: licence cost is counted seats at your seat price, the allocation is an apportionment of metered funding.
1 row carry no rank: a privacy-merged bucket or a team below the utilisation 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.
There is no “change since last month” column and no per-team trend line, and that is a missing fact rather than a missing feature: Aristo stores the estate month by month, but every per-department record it keeps — the utilisation join, the directory headcount, the seat grid — is a single current snapshot overwritten on each refresh. So these teams can be ranked against each other today and cannot yet be ranked against themselves last month. A per-department monthly record is the one upstream change that fills both columns.
Usage vs cost counted
Seat use against licence 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 licence against seat use at or below the estate's median of 66%.
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Department | Seats | Seat usage | Licence / mo counted | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering | 680 | 76% | $20,400 | Within the estate pattern |
| Sales | 600 | 65% | $18,000 | Above the median cost, below the median use |
| Operations | 420 | 64% | $12,600 | Above the median cost, below the median use |
| Customer Success | 390 | 67% | $11,700 | Within the estate pattern |
| Finance | 340 | 79% | $10,200 | Within the estate pattern |
| Marketing | 260 | 65% | $7,800 | Above the median cost, below the median use |
| IT | 250 | 82% | $7,500 | Within the estate pattern |
| Product | 260 | 77% | $7,800 | Within the estate pattern |
| Human Resources | 180 | 67% | $5,400 | Within the estate pattern |
| Manufacturing | 210 | 60% | $6,300 | Within the estate pattern |
| Supply Chain | 210 | 57% | $6,300 | Within the estate pattern |
| Data & Analytics | 240 | 46% | $7,200 | Within the estate pattern |
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: the privacy-merged bucket and any team without a counted utilisation join carry no coordinates, and a point cannot be invented for them.
Product utilisation 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.
Evidence & data — Where the seats sit, by product
Comparison
The ring is drawn from the slices stored on this report, and they reconcile with the total printed in it.
Source & method
Microsoft licence records (Organization.Read.All).
Basis: Counted
Accessible data
| Product | Paid seats | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | 4,200 seats | 48.0% |
| Microsoft 365 E5 | 2,500 seats | 28.6% |
| Power BI Pro | 1,050 seats | 12.0% |
| Dyn365 | 600 seats | 6.9% |
| Visio Plan 2 | 242 seats | 2.8% |
| Project Plan 3 | 150 seats | 1.7% |
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Product | Bought | Assigned | Never assigned | Assigned share | Spend / mo counted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | 4,200 | 4,040 | 160 | 96% | $126,000 |
| Microsoft 365 E5 | 2,500 | 2,440 | 60 | 98% | — |
| Power BI Pro | 1,050 | 900 | 150 | 86% | — |
| Dyn365 | 600 | 520 | 80 | 87% | — |
| Visio Plan 2 | 242 | 120 | 122 | 50% | — |
| Project Plan 3 | 150 | 90 | 60 | 60% | — |
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 dollarised. Their headroom is real; its value is not yet knowable.
Variance analysis projection
What moved across July 2026, against the prior month, the prior run, your cap and the labelled projection.
The largest movement across July 2026 is that cold seats fell from 1,283 at the previous run on 2026-07-30 to 1,280 at this one, down 3 seats — $90 a month of licence. Cold seats 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.
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| What | From | To | Movement | Basis | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cold seats | previous run, 2026-07-30: 1,283 seats | this run: 1,280 seats | −3 seats | counted | Cold seats 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. |
| Active seats | previous run, 2026-07-30: 2,757 seats | this run: 2,760 seats | +3 seats | counted | — |
| Chargeback-ready cohort | previous run, 2026-07-30: 1,118 people | this run: 1,120 people | +2 people | estimate | — |
| Next month, projected | July 2026: $269,760 | projection: $289,027 | +$19,267 | projection | A projection is what the trailing months imply if nothing changes. It is not a forecast anybody has committed to and it is never counted as spend. |
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 labelled 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.
Scroll sideways for the remaining columns.
| Source | What it supplied | As at | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft licence records (Organization.Read.All) | Seats bought, assigned, in grace, and never handed to anyone — per product. | 2026-08-29 | counted |
| Copilot usage signals | Which of those seats are doing work, and which are cold. | 2026-08-29 | counted |
| Microsoft Graph — directory | Department membership and headcount. Teams below five people are merged before they reach this report. | 2026-08-29 | counted |
| Aristo consumption envelope | Metered consumption as a labelled estimate over Aristo-mediated touches only — it may under-count. | 2026-08-29 | estimate |
| Your seat price (Settings) | The $30 per seat per month every seat figure above is multiplied by. | 2026-08-29 | counted |
| Aristo's own persisted prior run | The earlier reading that the run-to-run rows in the variance section compare against. | 2026-07-30 | counted |
Reproducibility. The figures above were computed when this report was generated and are stored on it — opening this page again re-reads them and never re-derives them. Their fingerprint is f06f29841735: two reports carrying that fingerprint carry the same figures. Regenerating over the same period at the same scope reproduces it, unless the evidence itself has changed — a billing export landing turns an estimated month measured, which is a stronger report and a different fingerprint, and the dates in the table above are how you tell which happened.
The privacy floor. 1 team is withheld from the counted-utilisation columns for the same reason. No row in this document is a person, and there is no per-person view, screen or export of anyone in this system for any leader to pull.
- Anomaly alerts stay withheld until enough measured history exists to establish a defensible baseline and threshold; ordinary variation is never promoted into a false incident.
- There is no benchmark to compare this organisation against on this page. Cross-organisation outcome evidence exists in this product only where enough tenants have run the same move, and a spend benchmark is not one of the things it evidences.
- Not every month in this period is measured. Connect a read-only Azure Cost Management export and each estimated month becomes measured, to the cent, from the month it lands onward.
- Every chart opens its exact numbers under "View the data behind this chart". The page-level Export produces the License Report with the same counted seat and licence figures in a finance-ready record.
- A per-team cost TREND is not available. Aristo persists the estate's months and each run's totals, but it does not yet keep a per-department history, so this page can rank teams against each other today and cannot yet rank a team against itself last month.