residential-amenities-platform

CAPEX / OPEX View

This document is a project/FinOps planning view, not formal accounting advice.

OPEX-oriented model

The hosted-service model is primarily operating expenditure because the platform is expected to incur recurring costs for cloud operation and supporting services.

Cost area	Typical project treatment
Azure application runtime	OPEX
Managed PostgreSQL	OPEX
Storage/backups	OPEX
Monitoring/logging	OPEX
Domain/DNS	OPEX
Transaction/payment fees	Variable OPEX
Notification provider usage	OPEX / usage-based
Maintenance/support	OPEX
Development tools/subscriptions	OPEX unless a specific accounting policy says otherwise

Up-front investment view

Initial analysis, design and implementation are a one-time project investment from a planning perspective. Whether any development expenditure is capitalized for accounting purposes depends on the legal/entity/accounting context and is intentionally not decided here.

FinOps principles

1. Start with the smallest viable managed footprint.
2. Avoid always-on resources unless justified.
3. Use budgets and alerts before production.
4. Keep staging smaller/ephemeral where possible.
5. Review logs/monitoring retention.
6. Measure cost per building, resident and reservation as the product grows.
7. Treat payment-provider fees separately from cloud infrastructure cost.