Two questions, two workbooks.
One splits the cost of the building you have. The other decides whether you should keep it. They share a cost pool, a measurement discipline and a refusal to supply you with numbers that are not yours.
Office Occupancy Cost Allocation Model
Splits the real cost of occupying a building across departments and finance cost codes — rent, rates, service charge, utilities and FM operating costs, with common area grossed up at the level it is actually shared at.
Monthly recharge figures your finance team will accept, on a basis that holds up when a department head challenges it in the meeting.
Office Lease Options Appraisal Model
Tests renewing, resizing in place, relocating, consolidating and serviced space against what you actually need — desks, area, time, capital — before any of them is priced.
Options that cannot seat your people or be delivered before your deadline are eliminated first, with the margin stated. Only the survivors are compared on cost per head.
What both models refuse to do
They supply no market rents, no construction rates and no benchmark costs. Every figure is your own lease terms and your own quotes. Where a number has to come from somewhere else, the model records where it came from and when — so the reader of your paper can weigh it, and so can you in six months when you have forgotten.
They do not produce accounting entries. Neither model calculates a right-of-use asset, a lease liability or a tax charge. They give you the figures; the posting and the reporting stay with the people whose job that is.
They do not score. Nothing is weighted into a single number. A composite score needs weights, weights get invented, and the first person to ask why one factor is worth thirty per cent would be right to.
Which one do you need?
| If the question is | Allocation model | Lease options model |
|---|---|---|
| Which department carries the corridor? | Yes | No |
| What does a desk cost, by team? | Yes | Per option, not per team |
| Should we renew or move? | No | Yes |
| Can this building still seat us in three years? | No | Yes |
| Is the serviced office really cheaper? | No | Yes |
| What is our total occupancy cost? | Yes | Yes |
Both at once is a normal position: appraise the lease event, then allocate whatever you end up occupying.