Attribution & Finance
Chargeback
Billing each internal team for the AI spend it actually caused, moving the cost onto that team's budget. It makes teams feel their own usage, which is the fastest way to curb waste.
Example
Finance produces a monthly chargeback report: Sales $6,200, Support $4,800, Engineering $7,000. Each number lands on that team's own budget line, so the support lead now has a reason to care that a chatbot is over-provisioned.
Related terms
Showback
The lighter cousin of chargeback: showing each team what it spent without moving the money. It creates visibility and accountability without the friction of internal billing.
Cost attribution
Tying each dollar of AI spend to who spent it and why — the person, team, project, or agent responsible — rather than seeing one lump sum on a provider invoice. Attribution is the difference between "we spent $40,000 on AI" and "the research team's document pipeline spent $40,000."
GL allocation
Mapping AI spend to the right lines in your general ledger — the accounting system of record — so it lands in the correct cost center, department, or project code instead of one catch-all "software" bucket.