Use case
How to allocate AI cost to teams or cost centres
Finance wants AI spend broken out by cost centre the same way every other line item is. That requires tagging it at the source.
Send x-spendline-tags with a cost-centre key, cost_center, costCenter, or department/team, on proxied calls. Spend then rolls up by that dimension the same way it rolls up by customer.
How Spendline does this
Tags work alongside customer attribution rather than replacing it: a call can carry both x-customer-id and a cost-centre tag, letting the same ledger entry answer "which customer" and "which internal team should this be charged to" at once. This is the same underlying attribution mechanism used for per-customer cost, applied to an internal allocation dimension instead of an external one.
Why it matters
AI spend that shows up as one undifferentiated line on a company card statement cannot be allocated to the budget that actually owns it. Tagging at the point of the call is what lets finance charge back AI cost to a cost centre with the same rigor as any other expense category, instead of guessing at a split after the fact.
Frequently asked questions
What are the accepted tag keys?
cost_center, costCenter, department, or team are recognized cost-centre keys in x-spendline-tags, use whichever matches how your finance system already names the dimension.
Can a call be allocated to more than one dimension at once?
Yes. Customer attribution and cost-centre tagging are independent and can both be present on the same call, so spend can be sliced by customer, by internal team, or by both together.
See where this stands in your own setup
This page describes the mechanism. The 5 minute assessment scores your own attribution, enforcement, and reconciliation setup, so you know exactly which of these problems you actually have today.
Run the 5 minute assessment