Weekly Spend Cards & Approvals

Spend Cards are generated weekly for every AI workload that has a claimed IAM role and a token estimate. They put actual AI spend in front of the people accountable for it and require a two-tier sign-off before the period closes.

Who Sees What

Role	What they see	What they do
Product Owner (E4)	Spend Card per workload under their Product	Accept or Dispute each card
Portfolio Manager (E3)	Rolled-up Portfolio Spend Card after all E4s have acted	Approve or escalate
FinOps Lead	All disputed cards, flagged lines, and unactioned cards past due	Review disputes and resolve

The Spend Card

Each Spend Card shows:

• Workload name and the model(s) it used during the period

• Actuals vs estimate — total spend for the period against the estimate set in Spaces

• Breakdown by model, region, and token type (input, output, cache-read)

• Variance — overspend or underspend against estimate, highlighted if above the configured threshold

• Period — start and end dates for the card

Product Owner Actions (E4)

Cards appear in your Spaces dashboard at the start of each week covering the prior period.

To accept a card:

1. Open the Spend Card for the workload.

2. Review the actuals vs estimate and the token-type breakdown.

3. If the spend matches your expectations, click Accept.

The card moves to the Portfolio Manager's queue for approval.

To dispute a card:

1. Open the Spend Card.

2. Click Dispute.

3. Select the lines you are disputing and enter a reason for each.

4. Click Submit Dispute.

The dispute is routed to the FinOps Lead with the flagged lines highlighted. Chargeback continues during an open dispute unless your allocation mode is BI-only — disputes are tracked in parallel with allocation, not in place of it.

Unactioned cards: If a card is not accepted or disputed within the configured window, it escalates to the FinOps Lead automatically. Cards do not auto-accept.

Portfolio Manager Actions (E3)

After all Product Owners under your Portfolio have accepted their cards, your Portfolio Spend Card becomes available for approval.

To approve a Portfolio card:

1. Open the Portfolio Spend Card in your dashboard.

2. Review the rolled-up spend across all Products in your Portfolio.

3. Click Approve.

If one or more E4 cards are still open (not yet accepted or disputed), the Portfolio card is not available for approval until they are resolved.

If a dispute is in progress: The Portfolio card shows the disputed workload with a dispute flag. You can approve the Portfolio card while the dispute is in flight — the dispute is a separate thread and does not block Portfolio approval.

Disputed Cards — FinOps Lead Flow

When a Product Owner disputes a card, the FinOps Lead receives a notification and the dispute appears in the AI Governance → Disputes view.

1. Open the dispute to see the flagged lines and the Product Owner's reason.

2. Review the CUR detail for the flagged lines.

3. Take one of the following actions:

   • Resolve — Mark the dispute resolved with a note. The card is updated and the Product Owner is notified.

   • Adjust Estimate — If the dispute reflects a mismatch between the estimate and real consumption patterns, work with the Product Owner to update the estimate in Spaces for the next period.

   • Escalate — Route to a named person outside FinOps Center if the dispute requires an organizational decision.

Variance Thresholds

Spend Cards highlight variance when actuals exceed the estimate by more than the configured threshold. The default threshold is 20%. Cards with variance above threshold are flagged with a visual indicator and moved to the top of the E3 approval queue.

To change the variance threshold, go to AI Governance → Settings → Spend Card Thresholds.