Operating Expenditure
Also known as: OpEx, Operating Budget
Recurring spending consumed within the budget year, including subscriptions, services, supplies, and staffing, owned by the department whose budget it hits.
Operating expenditure is the budget a department manager actually controls month to month. Software subscriptions, support contracts, consumables, and staffing all sit here.
For technology vendors this is usually the better target, because approval authority is more distributed and the annual capital calendar does not apply. But the amounts a department head can approve without escalation are often small, and a subscription that grows year over year draws budget scrutiny that a one-time purchase does not.
A subscription is not automatically easier to buy. It is easier to start and harder to keep: it reappears in every budget cycle for as long as it exists, which means it must keep justifying itself. Capital gets approved once and then largely disappears into depreciation.