Guide
CAPEX and OPEX: what the difference changes for your project
CAPEX buys an asset that lasts, OPEX pays for running the business. The split decides who approves your budget and how it hits the accounts.
CAPEX (capital expenditure) is money spent to acquire or build something that will serve the organization over several years: a machine, a building, a piece of software developed in-house. OPEX (operating expenditure) is money spent to run the business day to day: salaries, subscriptions, maintenance, consumables. The same euro spent on a project does not have the same consequences depending on which side of that line it falls.
Why the split matters on a project
A CAPEX amount is capitalized on the balance sheet and depreciated over the useful life of the asset, so it weighs on the income statement gradually. An OPEX amount is expensed in full in the year it is incurred. For the same project, the CAPEX/OPEX mix therefore changes the effect on this year’s result, the approval path, and often the funding envelope the project draws from.
Where the line falls on an IT project
A perpetual licence and an internal development that creates a durable asset are usually CAPEX; a SaaS subscription, hosting and support are OPEX. Internal effort is the delicate part: development hours can often be capitalized, while analysis, training and running costs cannot. The rule is set by your finance department — what matters for the project manager is to know it before building the budget, not after.
The shift from CAPEX to OPEX
Cloud and subscription models have moved a large share of IT spend from CAPEX to OPEX. That gives more flexibility and fewer up-front commitments, but it also means costs never stop: a project that once ended with an investment now leaves a recurring monthly charge behind it. Any serious business case compares the two over the same horizon rather than only the first year.
Tracking both in the project budget
A budget that mixes the two categories cannot be arbitrated. Splitting cost lines by nature — investment versus running — lets you answer the two questions a sponsor actually asks: how much do we commit, and what will we still be paying next year.
How FoxPlan handles it
In FoxPlan, budget lines carry their own cost and revenue, so a project can hold its investment and its running costs side by side, compare planned against actual, and roll everything up to portfolio level with the resulting margin. The CAPEX/OPEX view is then a reading of the same data, not a separate spreadsheet to maintain.
