Agent spend attribution

Agent spend attribution is the practice of connecting every unit of AI-agent resource consumption — tokens, API calls, tool invocations, compute — to the specific agent, task, and business cost object responsible for it, so that autonomous spending can be budgeted, booked, and audited like any other cost.

Settlement records prove money moved. Billing records state what a vendor charged. Neither, by construction, names the agent, the task, or the cost object. Attribution is the join that makes those financial questions answerable.

The three-layer model puts telemetry on one side, billing and settlement on the other, and a canonical attribution record in the middle. Open Agent Spend Attribution (OASA) is the draft schema for that middle layer.

Without attribution, agent spend shows up as noise on invoices and payment rails — real dollars with no owner in the books.

Related terms

• Agent FinOps vs. TokenOps
• Settlement vs. billing vs. attribution
• System of record for AI labor
• Agent FinOps
• AI labor
• Spend under management
• Attribution readiness
• Cost per outcome
• AI spend assessment
• Unattributed spend
• Agent inventory
• Chargeback in an AI context
• Zero-Access assessment
• FOCUS
• BilledCost
• EffectiveCost
• ChargeCategory
• ChargePeriod
• ServiceCategory
• Provider, Publisher, ServiceProvider, and HostProvider
• Contract Commitment dataset
• Invoice Detail dataset
• Virtual currency and token columns
• Journal entry
• Suspense account
• Accrual
• Chargeback vs. showback
• Subledger
• Tie-out and reconciliation
• Trial balance
• Dimensions and worktags
• OASA specification
• The Missing Ledger