An agent can be owned by platform, requested by marketing, approved by legal, and paid from a central provider account. When the invoice arrives, every team says the charge belongs elsewhere.

The fix is a small ownership model that follows the task.

Shared infrastructure needs clear task ownership before it needs a chargeback formula.

Name the five roles#

Role	Responsibility
Service owner	Keeps the agent, tool connection, and limits working
Task owner	Defines the business request and accepts the result
Budget owner	Decides whether the work fits the plan
Approver	Makes a required content, risk, or spend call
Finance reviewer	Reconciles charges and challenges unexplained ones

One person can hold several roles. Name them anyway, so a staffing change does not erase accountability.

Follow one task across teams#

Take a product launch. Marketing requests six campaign assets, a shared agent reads product notes, legal approves a claim, platform pays the provider invoice, and finance closes the month.

The service owner did not define the campaign, legal did not choose the model path, and finance did not judge the assets. The task owner connects those decisions and answers for the accepted outcome.

Use a responsibility table#

Decision	Service owner	Task owner	Budget owner	Approver	Finance
Agent can access the tool	Responsible	Consulted	Informed	Consulted	Informed
Request starts	Consulted	Responsible	Accountable	Informed	Informed
Spend crosses a threshold	Consulted	Consulted	Accountable	Informed	Consulted
Public claim is accepted	Informed	Responsible	Informed	Accountable	Informed
Charge is reconciled	Responsible for evidence	Consulted	Informed	Informed	Accountable
Access is removed	Accountable	Informed	Informed	Informed	Consulted

Keep the table in the process brief or service definition, where someone will update it.

Decide where the budget lives#

Pick one of three:

Model	Works when	Risk
Team budget	Each request maps cleanly to one team	Shared work can become unattributed
Central budget	A platform group provides a common service	Teams request without seeing cost
Hybrid	Central service covers access and teams fund task usage	Requires a stable allocation rule

Skip detailed chargeback until a charge reliably joins to a task.

Set a fallback for shared work#

When a task crosses teams, require one primary task owner, one budget code or campaign ID, a service owner, the approval class, the split rule if multiple budgets share the work, and the person who closes missing evidence.

If two teams benefit equally, split the agreed unit cost. Never split an unexplained charge just because both teams have a budget.

The spend reconciliation guide gives states for matched, pending, disputed, and missing charges. Use them before allocating a shared amount.

Review ownership when the process changes#

Recheck ownership when a new team begins using the agent, the agent gains a tool connection, the task starts producing public content, the provider or pricing model changes, an approval requirement is added, a team stops accepting the output, or a shared budget crosses its threshold. The service owner does not become the budget owner; the business owner still decides whether the work continues.

Give the budget owner an action#

Attach a next step to every budget limit: ask for approval, pause new tasks, route simple work to a lower-cost path, close requests with no owner, move the work to the correct team, or chase missing provider evidence.

The provider spend guide shows how to tell repeated attempts from finished work. Ownership lets someone act on it.

Report the shared work plainly#

A monthly summary shows spend by service and task owner, the shared or unallocated amount, accepted and published outcomes, approvals and exceptions, missing cost evidence, and the decisions due before the next period.

Finance needs stable IDs, owners, and a visible path for unresolved work, not every prompt.

Deixic shows month-to-date model spend by agent and keeps a tamper-evident history of decisions and results. Use that record to find repeated attempts, review the procedure, and save steps and checks worth reusing. Budgets, allocations, and financial close stay in the systems that own them. See the company layer.