FinOps playbook · M365 Copilot
The metered line has landed on your Copilot invoice, and finance wants a name next to it. Your per-seat split has no answer: a credit pool is not a seat count, and "evenly" is not a method. This is the model that is.
6 files · instant download · the workbook reconciles to the invoice within $1
The June 2026 change is an additive metered layer. Cowork credits and agent runs bill at $0.01 per credit, on top of the flat $30 per seat (both Microsoft list, as of June 2026). The seat price did not change. What changed is that one invoice now needs two allocation methods, and headcount logic covers only one of them.
The primary worked example is Tallgrass Foods, an invented mid-size manufacturer (every org name, headcount and credit volume is invented for illustration, and labeled that way throughout): an $80,000 invoice, $54,000 of flat seats plus $26,000 of credits across four business units, arithmetic shown line by line.
Split that credit pool by seats instead of consumption and Supply Chain gets subsidized by about $2,474 a month. That is the case for consumption math, stated in dollars.
| Split the credit pool by… | Supply Chain pays |
|---|---|
| Headcount (seat share) | $8,955.56 |
| Actual consumption | $11,430.00 |
| Difference (the subsidy) | $2,474.44 |
Illustrative figures from the worked example. Your numbers go in the workbook; the math is yours to check.
credits_used * 0.01, never a pasted result). Ships pre-populated with the worked example; swap in your invoice and every tab recomputes. Reconciliation ties to the invoice; the Metered Allocation tab carries the seat-versus-consumption comparison.FinOps practitioners and cost analysts at M365 enterprises who already run tag-based chargeback for Azure or AWS and can read a FOCUS or CUR export without help. Nothing here explains what chargeback, showback or tagging is. The Copilot-specific billing mechanics get the full treatment, because that part is genuinely new.
This covers the M365 Copilot invoice only. Not Azure OpenAI or Foundry token chargeback (different meters and exports). If your problem is seat cost, that is The Real Cost of Copilot ($29), not this. And there is no software here: no dashboards, no connector. The workbook is the tool, deliberately.
Drafted with AI agents inside a gated pipeline, then checked by machines that have no feelings to spare. Every prose file passed a deterministic slop scanner; every deliverable passed a build checker. The workbook is produced by a script that runs 57 self-checks, asserting formula strings cell by cell and recomputing the full allocation independently in Python: variance $0.00. Every price carries an "as of" date. The worked-example orgs are invented and labeled as invented everywhere they appear. A human reviewed the result, and each gate's output is logged, dated, in the product's STATUS file.
You need three inputs: the M365 invoice, the Copilot usage export from the admin center, and a seat roster by business unit. The workbook uses plain Excel formulas: no macros, no external connections, any BU count. Where the export can't attribute every credit to a user, the shared-pool rule and the seat-weighted fallback cover the gap, and the playbook says where attribution ends, with a date.
One afternoon for the build: 20 minutes on the method checklist, the rest populating the workbook and filling the policy. From month two, the close runs to a 40-minute runbook. And if your metered line is under 5% of the invoice, the checklist's first gate tells you to run showback for two quarters instead.
It was drafted with AI agents, and we would rather tell you how than pretend otherwise. The draft went through a slop scanner on every prose file, a build checker on every deliverable, and a workbook script running 57 self-checks with the full allocation recomputed in Python (variance: $0.00). Fluff does not survive that pipeline, and arithmetic errors do not either.
One purchase covers internal use at your org: run the model, share the BU statements and the signed policy inside the company, adapt everything to your setup. Do not redistribute the files themselves. Full terms at kesslernity.com/license. It's a Gumroad purchase, so refunds go through Gumroad; if the workbook won't reconcile against your invoice, tell us, because that's a bug we want to hear about.
The Real Cost of Copilot ($29) feeds in from the seat-cost side; this feeds The Variable Cost of Copilot Team tier ($249) once your model is running.
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