Method

How Oabo calculates the numbers

If your auditor asks how a number was derived, this is the document to share. It explains the math behind the cash ledger, the capacity log, and the grade.

Overview

Two ledgers, two units

Oabo reports two things: cash saved (in dollars, sourced from your general ledger) and capacity created (in hours, sourced from your agents). The two are reported separately and never combined into one number.

Cash ledger

Cash saved — dollars, sourced from your GL

Each entry is one GL event the customer attests is AI-caused. Five categories: GL delta, cancelled subscription, avoided backfill, cut overtime, reduced contractor. The total is the headline number, with an attribution haircut applied so the methodology does not overclaim.

Headline formula: net = sum of entries × (1 − attribution haircut)

The haircut is reported as a band (low to high), not a point. The band is disclosed on every entry.

Capacity log

Capacity created — hours, never dollars at the headline

Each entry records hours absorbed by an agent, derived from metered outputs times a customer-stated baseline time per output. Capacity does not become cash through multiplication. It becomes cash only when the hours reconcile to a specific GL event.

Pre-deployment baseline

Two measurements before any cash is credited

Before any AI-attributed cash is recorded, the customer captures (a) a paired shadow agent run and (b) an independent 12-month sample. Both must be present and customer-signed. This is the contemporaneous control group the post-deployment attribution rests on.

Rate cards

Rates are derivations, not numbers

A rate card on Oabo is not a database row. It is a five-artifact derivation: the GL extract that produced the rate, the denominator definition, the allocation basis, the utilization assumption, and a countersignature. Rate cards expire on the budget cycle and must be re-signed.

Grade

Two measurements, never blended

The audit-trail grade has two measurements: count coverage (how much of the headline volume came from metered counts) and rate provenance (how much came from finance-signed rates). They are reported as a pair, never averaged into a single letter. The grade is a self-assessment until an independent party reviews it.

Regulatory

Three clocks the methodology tracks

EU AI Act (Aug 2026 provider, Aug 2027 deployer), SEC AI-washing posture, and external audit standards. Any number crossing from internal management metric into regulated representation is gated and disclosed. The audit pack surfaces both the recomputation inputs and the signature.

Size

Four modes by company size

The methodology presents differently depending on company size. At 50 people, the headline is founder-attested. At 5000+, the headline is recomputable from your own data and the attribution chain is peer-reviewed. The system detects size at registration and presents the right mode; an admin can override with a written rationale.

Modes:

  • 50 — Founder-attested avoided hires and cancelled tools. The headline is the founder's word, not derived.
  • 200 — GL deltas countersigned by FP&A. Customer-stated baseline for capacity.
  • 1000 — GL deltas plus a recomputation view, plus the two-measurement grade.
  • 5000+ — Full methodology. Every rate is a derivation, every cash entry has an attribution chain, and the audit pack is the diligence artifact.

Audit trail

What an auditor can verify

  1. The headline number traces to specific GL events in the cash ledger.
  2. Each rate card is the derivation that produced the rate, not the rate alone.
  3. Each cash entry has an attribution chain naming the baseline, the counterfactual, and the residual.
  4. Each baseline has both a shadow-run record and an independent 12-month sample.
  5. The recomputation view lets the auditor re-derive the headline from inputs they trust.
  6. Regulatory flags indicate which numbers have crossed into regulated representation.

Structural value

Three structural changes the monthly ledger doesn't capture

The cash ledger records discrete GL events, month to month. Some of your AI's value is structural instead: it changes the shape of the organization, unlocks a capability you didn't have, or rebuilds a workflow wholesale. Oabo records these as three separate attestations — each signed by a different owner, each on its own clock — and reports them apart from the monthly number.

The three records

Organizational, capability, workflow

Each record is deliberately owned by a different signatory, so no single person attests the whole structural story.

  • Organizational — an operating-model change: seats restructured around an agent. Signed by the CFO. Re-attested every 12 months.
  • Capability — a new capability unlocked, valued against what it replaced (built in-house where it was previously contracted out, or a cancelled SaaS line). Signed by the product owner. Re-attested every 24 months.
  • Workflow — a wholesale workflow change, measured by throughput and cost-per-unit before and after. Signed by the operations lead. Re-attested every 6 months.

Stress test

The organizational number is stress-tested, not asserted

An operating-model change is valued with a discounted cash-flow model over a five-year horizon, then run through a Monte Carlo simulation that varies the retention assumption and the first-year ramp across ten thousand scenarios. The dashboard reports the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile — a range, never a single figure — over conservative defaults the model falls back on when an input is omitted: 70% retention, a linear first-year ramp, and a 10% discount rate.

Expiration

Every attestation has a clock

Structural claims go stale. An organizational attestation lapses after 12 months, a capability after 24, a workflow after 6 — fastest where the underlying reality moves fastest. Past expiry, the claim reverts to potential until its owner re-attests.

Reported separately

Never summed

The three structural numbers stand on their own. They are never added to each other, and never added to the monthly cash headline. They measure different things, attested by different people, on different clocks. A single combined 'structural value' figure would be exactly the kind of number this methodology exists to refuse.

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