AI cost allocation: attribution, showback, and chargeback

AI cost allocation assigns direct and shared AI-related costs to teams, products, customers, or workloads using an explicit method. AI cost attribution connects usage or costs to an identified source. Showback reports the assigned costs to owners. Chargeback transfers those costs through the organization's accounting process.

The FinOps Foundation's allocation guidance separates allocation, metadata, and shared-cost strategies. Usage reports provide inputs to allocation; teams still need to agree on how costs are assigned and transferred.

Explore Dome: Model Broker · Docs: LLM gateway.

Decide who the costs belong to

Suppose a company runs a sales assistant and a support assistant through the same model provider account. A provider invoice may identify the account without identifying which business team should pay each portion.

Start with the question the cost report needs to answer. Finance may need cost-center totals. A product owner may need cost per customer. An engineer may need usage by agent and model connection. Those views can coexist if the relationships are recorded consistently.

Record the caller's identity and the workload's owner when each request is made. Trying to infer ownership from prompts later is unreliable and may require reading sensitive content you otherwise wouldn't need.

Dome's governed model events include usage and routing information that can contribute to attribution. Whether those records are sufficient for a particular accounting method depends on the fields, coverage, and reconciliation process.

Explore Dome: Audit · Docs: Audit events.

State how shared costs are divided

Consider a hypothetical month with $800 in directly attributable support usage, $400 in sales usage, and $300 in shared infrastructure costs.

With an equal split, support's total is $950; with a usage-based split, it is $1,000. Agree with the teams on which method to use before comparing their totals.

Keep unknown or unallocated costs visible so teams can find and correct missing ownership information. Record changes to the allocation rule so readers can tell whether a monthly total changed because of usage or because of the accounting method.

These numbers illustrate allocation arithmetic; they are not Dome prices or observed customer spending.

Explore Dome: Model Broker · Docs: LLM gateway.

Reconcile before treating the report as a bill

Estimated request cost can differ from the provider invoice because of contracted rates, credits, caching, non-request charges, or the usage units included. Explain how the estimate was calculated and compare it with the relevant billing records.

A showback report can use labeled estimates to help engineering understand spending. Chargeback requires agreement on the amount actually charged, exceptions, and how a team can dispute or correct its bill.

Dome's usage records can feed this workflow. Reconcile them with provider invoices and complete chargeback through the organization's accounting process.

See AI spend governance for ownership and exception decisions, and AI unit economics for measuring the value obtained from spending.

Explore Dome: Audit · Docs: Audit events.