The aim of budgeting and accounting for IT services is to budget for and provide documentary evidence of the costs for service provision. Experts in the ITIL framework might think that charging has been missed out here. In fact, service charging is not a direct requirement of the ISO/IEC 20000 standard. However, it does make reference to the importance of charging and recommends that it be implemented in accordance with the general basic principles. However, since a large number of organizations do not wish charging to be included for business policy reasons this was left out of the specification.

Budgeting and accounting does not have to be re-defined. Any implementation in this area must be agreed and coordinated with the company’s central accounting department. We recommend that guidelines be drawn up on the handling of the budgeting and accounting processes. This guideline or policy must define the required level of detail as shown below:

• What types of costs have to be proven?
• What is the structure of the allocation code for the overheads?
• What categorization detail of the customer business should be chosen in order to apportion the charging (business unit, department, location)?
• What is the procedure for dealing with deviations from the budget? Are there any dependencies with regard to the size of the deviation? What is the procedure for escalation to the senior management?
• How is this linked with the service level management?

The costs expended for the budgeting and accounting processes must be determined according to customer, service provider and supplier demand. The benefits of recording operational data must justify the expense

For comparison see the Financial Management Process according ITIL V3.