AI pilot economics · approval log · buyer-safe
A practical register for teams whose AI pilot costs are rising before production approval. It captures LLM usage, GPU/runtime, cloud services, integrations, data work, support effort, budget variance, spend caps, owner decisions and unresolved adviser questions before a scale decision is made.
Download CSV templateView economics decision packAI FinOps advisory
This is a buyer-education and approval-log template, not a real customer case study, testimonial, audit, certification, ROI proof, cost-saving proof, lead, customer or revenue evidence. It does not provide legal, privacy, security, accounting, tax, procurement or financial advice. No outreach was sent.
Makes token, inference, GPU, cloud, integration and support-cost drivers visible before a pilot becomes an uncontrolled production line item.
Separates proof-of-value, engineering qualification, budget approval and contract commitment instead of treating pilot enthusiasm as spend approval.
Requires a dated baseline, denominator, owner and confidence level before any savings, runway or ROI claim is reused in board or sales material.
| Field | What to capture | Owner | Approve only when | Stop/escalate signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Budget baseline | Approved pilot budget, timeframe, currency, expected usage envelope and excluded costs. | Finance owner | The baseline is dated, approved and mapped to the current pilot scope. | No approved baseline, mixed currencies or hidden platform/support costs. |
| Actual spend source | Billing exports, AI-provider usage, GPU/runtime reports, cloud-service cost views and manual support estimates. | FinOps/data owner | Provider totals reconcile and source files are versioned. | Unreconciled usage, missing provider, screenshot-only totals or unowned spreadsheet. |
| Variance driver | Prompt volume, retrieval calls, context size, model tier, batch jobs, GPU utilization, storage, integration retries or human support load. | Engineering/product owner | The top drivers are ranked and technically explainable. | Spend is rising but nobody can name the driver or owner. |
| Scale-cost scenario | Low/base/high estimate for production users, transactions, model mix, latency target, regions and support model. | Product and finance owners | Scenario assumptions are explicit and tied to observed pilot data. | Production forecast copied from a vendor calculator with no pilot evidence. |
| Control decision | Cap, optimize, pause, rollback, require approval, downgrade model, batch workload, redesign workflow or continue under watch. | Accountable executive | Decision has owner, deadline, cap and review date. | Production scale approved while variance remains unexplained. |
| Adviser questions | Procurement, finance, legal, security, privacy, data residency or contract questions that affect spend commitment. | Commercial owner | Questions are answered or explicitly parked before commitment. | New contract, reserved capacity or customer pricing claim without reviewer sign-off. |
Cost anomaly approval runbook · Savings claim boundary worksheet · Go/no-go decision record · More resources