Automating Software Capitalization for Engineering Teams with Hatica

When we talk about our data-driven engineering vision, it's not the full picture unless we're also empowering engineering teams to turn operating expenses into capital assets. 

Software cost capitalization is the first step towards optimizing your engineering assets, and improving the financial health of a company. 

It is the intersection point of engineering and finance teams, and a powerful way to structure your engineering expenses, reduce the overall financial burden, and unleash engineering excellence even on a tight budget.   

Despite all the potential benefits that cost capitalization brings; engineering teams still dread it. Tracking software capitalization has been a recurrent challenge for engineering teams: 

• The ambiguity in GAAP rules about what can be capitalized. In today’s ever changing landscape, assessing the feasibility of your next product without any north-star can be a daunting task. 

• Tiring, and time-consuming manual efforts to collate engineering data from multiple sources– VCS, issue trackers, project management tools, and budget allocation dashboards. 

• Currently, engineering teams are squandering 500+ hours annually in just collecting data across the toolstack. A clear engineering expense, and silent productivity killer.  

• Accuracy, and precisional challenges with no single source of truth 

• Guesswork, anecdotal evidence, and conformity bias involved in calculating effort allocation

• Manually logging IC work hours can spiral into micromanagement, higher incidences of context switching, a haywire engineering team, and distracted developers disengaged from their core work items

• Logging work hours manually is a fast track to micromanagement, increased context-switching chaos, a team in disarray, and developers who'd rather be anywhere else but actively coding and grooming. 

This manual burden derails engineering teams from putting their best version in work, and reduces engineering effectiveness at all levels. 

R&D cost capitalization demands not just adherence to rules but a deep understanding of the engineering pulse. The balance between financial precision and the fluidity of technology is a tightrope to walk. However, it does get easier with the right set of tools, and objectively tracking software spending. 

Cost Reporting Made Easy With Engineering Analytics  

Manually collating data-points comes with enormous opportunity cost, and even lacks insights for engineering leadership to make sense of the outputs that lack outright precision, and accuracy.

The best way forward is engineering analytics.

Forward-looking engineering teams are riding the data wave to effortlessly sync their engineering resources with financial goals. No more hand-cramping, manual mapping of team efforts to cash-generating missions. 

This means saving scarce manpower for more strategic initiatives- build visionary products, and budgeting effectively.

And Hatica does precisely that. We help you realize the true potential of cost capitalization for your engineering team. 

How? 

Hatica pulls data from IDEs, VCS and code repositories, so you can monitor engineering costs in real-time. 

What’s more is that engineering leaders can customize software capitalization reports for different projects, teams, and time period, and get a 360 degree breakdown of opex, and capex engineering efforts. 

Engineering teams can also configure FTE salaries, and other overhead employee expenses:

And you are all set! The first step to your capitalization reports is done. Based on contextual team data, live, actionable reports are generated by Hatica, incorporating:

• Historical analysis of engineering spending

• Current status of software capitalization, and

• Present-day engineering effort (in FTEs) invested in capitalized expenses. 

In case you need to breakdown your capitalization initiatives in terms of team issues, releases, and cross-functional engineering teams, we have got you covered here too!

The cost capitalization dashboard’s filter to retrospectively track capitalization data from previous sprints, issues, and epics helps for easy comparison and forecast any overhead expense or cost fluctuations beforehand.

Moreover, our engineering management platform also helps your team to visualize their work allocation: bugs vs KTLO vs technical debt vs roadmap, so the C-suite leadership can connect engineering efforts with strategic decisions, and visualize the value created by every spent dollar.

We don’t just take care of your team’s big picture goals. But also offer even the most minute, but crucial details that can make or break your product roadmap. 

Auditable Software Capitalization With Hatica 

With Hatica, your engineering team can spearhead their capitalization process. Here’s how: 

• Accounting-ready capitalization reports for your engineering team 

• No more chasing down reports, and manual data collection! Hatica empowers your team to move towards an automated, objective, and real-time tracking of engineering spending. 

• Save hundreds of hours violently spent in producing non-contextual data across the toolstack.

• Freedom to plan sound budgets that effectively ties to the big picture  

• Improved accuracy, and precision of generated reports with a clear auditable trail.

• By breaking down efforts, project by project, our data-powered insights also help you spot initiatives that match capitalization criteria. This ensures that resources are allocated to projects with genuine economic potential.

Engineering teams armed with advanced analytics are poised to navigate this terrain with precision. 

Backed by data-driven insights, you can not only allocate expenses accurately and identify strategic projects but also maintain compliance, optimize resource utilization, and foster visionary decision-making. 

Bottom Line: Bring Financial Accountability To Engineering Teams

20k+ developers, and 200+ engineering teams view Hatica as a platform of choice to visualize engineering spending, map development activities with created business value. 

The idea is to focus on what matters the most- maximizing investment on the roadmap, and not technical debt, or support. 

With Hatica, curate on-demand capitalization reports in no time, and streamline your strategic resource planning initiatives. Forecast with precision, and eliminate any fiscal burden that plagues your development efforts.   

Want to know more about capitalizing R&D costs with Hatica? Request a demo here→

Subscribe to the Hatica blog for more insights on cost capitalization, developer productivity, and engineering effectiveness.