Shared Costs

Shared Costs are costs that benefit several recipients jointly and cannot be assigned directly to a single consumer, such as central platforms, network infrastructure or company-wide support contracts. Their distribution is one of the most demanding tasks of cost allocation.

Common distribution methods are proportional allocation, for example by the recipients' share of consumption or costs, even split and fixed agreed shares. An example: the costs of a shared Kubernetes cluster are distributed according to the resource consumption of the namespaces. Reliable Allocation Metadata are a prerequisite; methodologically, the topic is anchored in Cloud Cost Management.

Shared Costs must be distinguished from Shared Services: Shared Costs denote a cost category, Shared Services an organizational model of centrally provided services. Errors in shared costs are among the most frequent causes of acceptance problems in internal charging.