Chargeback and showback

Chargeback (Finance → Chargeback, /finance/chargeback) splits each month’s AI spend between your organisation’s cost centres. It splits the same ledger total that Finance, Home and Costs show — it never reads spend any other way — and whatever it cannot place is shown as Unallocated, so cost centres plus unallocated always equal the ledger.

Prerequisites

The Finance module.
Spend to split: see AI spend. Department rows need a connected directory (Microsoft Entra ID); API key rows need a billing connector that lists keys.

Permissions

Cost centres span projects, so only the organisation role counts.

Permission	Allows
View costs (`costs.read`)	Statements and their CSV and PDF exports; seeing cost centres and rules.
Change cost settings (`costs.manage`)	Cost centres, mappings and their CSV import, allocation rules, and the showback/chargeback setting.

Every change is recorded in the audit log; every export is recorded as data access.

Cost centres and mappings

A cost centre has a name, the code your finance system uses (for example CC-4100) and an optional owner. Map to it any of:

Kind	Value
Department	A department as the directory names it.
Team	The same directory field, for organisations that call departments teams.
Project	A Shield360 project: all of its spend that nothing more specific places.
API key	A vendor key’s id (never the key).

Each thing belongs to one cost centre; mapping it again moves it.

Import from CSV

Import mappings from CSV takes a file with this header:

kind,value,cost_centre_code,cost_centre_name
department,Engineering,CC-4100,Engineering
project,Data platform,CC-4200,Data
api_key,key_01HZX,CC-4100,

cost_centre_name creates a cost centre whose code is not yet known. Projects may be given by name or id. Check validates every line first; nothing is written unless every line is valid.

How a month is split

For every environment of every project, the month’s cost ledger is split in this order:

Department rows (each department’s seats and priced usage) go to the department’s or team’s cost centre, else to the project’s, else they are unallocated.
The ledger’s shared part — unassigned seats, plan charges and bills no person can be given — pays a mapped API key’s bill first, up to what the shared part holds. Beyond that the key’s usage is already inside the department rows, and taking it again would count it twice; the statement notes it.

What is left of the shared part is split by the project’s allocation rule, else the rule for all projects:

Split	How
Evenly	Each chosen cost centre carries the same share.
By usage	In proportion to what each chosen cost centre carries directly in the month.
Fixed percentages	The percentages set; what they leave stays unallocated.

With no rule it follows the project’s cost centre, else it is unallocated.

Where the people’s figures exceed the billed total, the difference is shown as an unallocated adjustment, never spread as a credit.

Every line says how it was placed: the ledger row, the mapping or rule, and the split.

Showback or chargeback

Mode	What a cost centre is shown
Showback	Everything its AI use cost, for information.
Chargeback	What is charged: the part backed by bills, receipts and contracts. Shield360’s estimates for unbilled vendors are shown on each line and not charged until billed.

The estimated part of each line is its share of the ledger’s estimated part, pro rata.

The statement

Pick a month. A month not yet over is shown to date and says so. The statement shows:

Ledger total, Allocated, Unallocated and Of which estimated, with the reconciliation written out.
Each cost centre with its lines (How it was calculated).
Unallocated lines; a manager can assign a department or key to a cost centre from here.
Each environment’s ledger, its estimated part, latest bill day and whether its own checks pass.
Environments whose ledger could not be read, named and left out of every figure rather than counted as zero.

Statement → PDF and CSV carry the same figures and every line’s working.

Export and deletion

Cost centres, mappings, rules and the setting are in the organisation export and are deleted with the organisation.