How to track service costs in Jira Service Management

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If you’re part of an IT team, chances are you’re also expected to deliver real business value, work efficiently, keep end users happy while maintaining cost efficiency. Whether you’re in a small startup or a large enterprise, knowing the cost of the services you provide is crucial when it comes to planning, budgeting, or justifying your work.

But what exactly is a service in Jira Service Management? In practice, services are usually represented as request types: those forms users fill out when they need something like a new laptop or access to a tool. Each request type stands in for a service your team offers, and it’s backed by workflows, SLAs, and clear ownership. That structure makes it easier to route tickets, manage workloads, and (with the right setup) track how much those services actually cost.

In this article, we’ll walk through:

1. What services are in Jira Service Management

2. What a service catalog is and why it matters

3. How to manage a service catalog in JSM

4. How to track service costs in JSM

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What are services in Jira Service Management?

Where exactly are these services stored? In JSM, services are managed through the Services section of a service project and can also be mapped as objects in Assets (formerly Insight). Assets allows you to model services as configuration items (CIs), define relationships (e.g. dependencies, owning teams, infrastructure components), and link them directly to Jira issues. This means you can create a central source of truth for all your services, enriched with metadata and tightly integrated with your request workflows.

This structured approach not only improves triage and ownership but also makes it possible to analyze service performance, track dependencies, and, with the right tools, understand the cost of service delivery.

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What is a service catalog?

A service catalog is the centralized list of all services that an organization offers. It’s the user-facing view of IT or business capabilities: the go-to place for employees to know what they can ask for and how to request it.

In JSM, Atlassian has introduced native support for services and service catalogs to help teams:

• Group tickets by the service they impact

• Understand service dependencies

• Track performance and incidents by service

• Drive accountability by assigning service ownership

A well-maintained service catalog not only supports better operations but also forms the backbone of strategic ITSM practices like change management, incident resolution, knowledge management and, importantly, cost tracking.

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How to manage a service catalog in JSM

Managing a service catalog in JSM involves both technical setup and ongoing governance. Here are the key steps:

1. Define your services

Start by identifying the services your team offers. These will often align with request types (e.g., “Reset Password” or “Provision Software”) and should have a clear owner and purpose as well as a structure and architecture that can be achieved through fields or forms..

2. Use the native Services feature

JSM lets you create and manage services in the “Services” section of a project, where you can define:

• Service name

• Team responsible

• Dependencies

• Related assets or components

This gives your services structure and visibility within the larger service management ecosystem.

3. Link requests to services

Make sure your request types are properly associated with the defined services. This way, every ticket logged in your system contributes to service-level reporting.

4. Monitor and improve

Use Jira dashboards, Assets reports, SLAs, and service metrics to continuously evaluate how your services are performing. Combine this data with business KPIs to identify opportunities for optimization or automation.

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How to track service costs in JSM

If your IT team is using Jira Service Management and wants to better understand the financial side of service delivery, our new app Elements Catalyst makes that possible, without spreadsheets or external tools.

With Elements Catalyst’s Service Info module, under the request type information tab, you can define and display structured financial data directly on Jira issues linked to services, giving both agents and stakeholders the visibility they need to assess cost-effectiveness and promote accountability. Displaying how much a service cost to end users also foster price awareness and ultimately drives optimized IT spendings.

Add cost and price to your services

In Elements Catalyst, service owners can enrich each service in the catalog with two key financial values:

• Cost: how much it actually costs the organization to deliver the service (e.g. internal resources, tools, vendor fees). This is expressed as a monetary value.

• Price: the amount that internal or external users are charged to consume the service.

These values are defined at the service level, not per issue, so they stay consistent and are easy to maintain. Any changes in the price or cost will be automatically reflected on new requests from the moment of the update and onward.

📊 This information feeds into Elements Catalyst's Analytics module, which calculates:

• The total cost of a service

• The average cost per ticket

• The total revenue generated from service usage (based on the Price field)

This helps IT and business leaders evaluate whether a service is financially sustainable, cost-efficient, or a candidate for improvement.

Make cost and price visible where it matters

Once defined, Cost and Price can be displayed directly in the Service Info panel on Jira issues that use request types linked to the service.

Additionally, you can choose to display the price or cost on the Jira Service Management customer portal. With one click, service requesters will see the cost or price associated with the service before they even submit a request, helping:

• Promote cost awareness among employees

• Encourage responsible usage of IT resources

• Foster transparency and trust in service delivery

Support cost-effective decisions and chargeback models

By making this financial data part of the service request experience, teams can:

• Assess whether services are being used wisely

• Identify high-cost services that may need review or rework

• Support chargeback models, where costs are billed back to departments or teams

• Demonstrate service value to stakeholders using data

And because all of this happens inside Jira, there's no need for additional forms, manual calculations, or external approval layers.

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Why it matters: the business impact of cost visibility

Understanding the cost of services isn’t about micromanaging your team. It’s about aligning IT with the business.

By tracking costs with Elements Catalyst, you can:

• Justify IT spending with real data

• Optimize services that are underperforming or too costly

• Support chargeback/showback models

• Improve forecasting and capacity planning

In short, it helps IT move from being a cost center to a value center delivering services with transparency and accountability.

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Final thoughts

If your team is using Jira Service Management and you’re serious about measuring impact, adding cost tracking to your service catalog is a no-brainer.

With Elements Catalyst, you can bring cost visibility into your service delivery process ,without the need for complex workarounds or spreadsheets. Just define your services and start tracking.

👉 Ready to get started?

• Try the app for free

• Ask for a demo of the app

• Read Elements Catalyst documentation