Value Ledger and Verification
Separate estimated opportunity, customer-attested value and measured financial results.
The Value Ledger records the evidence path from expected opportunity through implementation and outcome. It is the place to ask what changed, what was observed, and how trustworthy is the attribution?
The stages of value
- Estimated: a recommendation or modeled opportunity, before execution.
- Approved: a human decision authorizing an action, not a saving.
- Implemented: customer-confirmed work outside CoreFinOps.
- Customer-attested: value supported by authorized human-submitted evidence.
- System-measured: requires comparable billing baseline and observation windows, same financial measure and currency, and a defensible resource/action linkage.
- Unverified / not attributable: insufficient evidence to make a stronger claim.
Verification requirements
Review the baseline period, post-change period, source of actuals, cost measure, currency, observation time, actor and proof. Distinguish a workload's overall monthly bill movement from savings attributable to one change.
Overlap control
Do not double-count two actions that act on the same underlying resource or baseline. The financial summary must use a consistent non-additive rule across Overview, Value Ledger and reports.
Important
Why the ledger is empty
Connecting AWS or importing a legacy estate is not enough. A value entry requires the applicable action/implementation/verification pathway and supporting evidence. Empty results are preferable to invented savings.
Reporting language
Use “estimated opportunity” for forward-looking recommendations, “customer-attested” for human-verified claims, and “system-measured” only for the stronger automated evidence path if the installed release supports it. Never collapse them into a single unqualified verified-savings amount.