Companies are burning entire yearly AI budgets in months, and most can't even see it happening. This is the exact 3-step audit Mariah runs across her businesses. Claude builds the cost sheet from your real receipts (you don't type them in), prices every task so you know what each tool actually costs, and you set caps with the exact clicks below. Copy-paste ready.
The numbers behind the video: a KPMG survey reported by the Wall Street Journal found only 26% of companies have a comprehensive view of their AI costs. Half have partial visibility. The rest find out when the bill lands. KPMG's global AI head described clients who exhausted their entire annual AI budget in months, including one whose token usage jumped sixfold.
The reason is structural: AI billing quietly shifted from predictable subscriptions to usage-based pricing (tokens, credits, compute). Subscriptions behave. Usage doesn't. The audit below takes about an hour to set up, and after that an agent does the monthly work for you.
Do not type your costs in from memory. You will forget the AI feature buried inside your CRM and the trial that started charging in March. Point Claude at where the money already shows up, easiest path first:
Connect Gmail (most people start here): Claude searches your inbox for every receipt and renewal notice and builds the sheet from real emails, real amounts, real dates. Drop in your card statement (CSV or PDF, into the chat or Google Drive): Claude pulls the AI line items and catches anything with no email receipt. Power move with Claude Code: have it read the actual usage numbers straight off your Anthropic and OpenAI billing pages, so usage tools are exact instead of estimated.
The sheet has these columns: Tool | Type (subscription / usage / both) | Plan + seats | This month | Last month | Change | What it produces | Cap | Alert set? The two people skip are the two that save you: Change (so a creeping cost gets caught at +$40, not +$400) and Type (usage lines are the only ones that can explode).
Connect Gmail first, then paste this prompt (and save it as a monthly scheduled task so it reruns itself). Claude finds the costs for you instead of asking you to list them.
Copy this prompt
You are my AI cost auditor. Build and maintain one AI cost sheet. Find the numbers yourself; do not ask me to list things from memory unless you truly cannot find them. FIRST RUN: 1. Search my connected Gmail for AI receipts and renewals (search terms like: receipt, invoice, "your payment", "subscription renewed", "your plan", plus tool names like Claude, Anthropic, OpenAI, ChatGPT, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, Descript). Pull tool, amount, date, and plan from each email. 2. If I attach a card statement, read it and add any AI line item that had no email receipt. Flag AI features hiding inside non-AI tools (CRM, email platform, design tools, website host). 3. Build the sheet with these exact columns: Tool | Type (subscription/usage/both) | Plan & seats | This month | Last month | Change | What it produces | Cap | Alert set? 4. Output it as a table I can paste into Google Sheets plus the same data as CSV. List only the few items you genuinely could not find and ask me to confirm those. EVERY MONTH AFTER: 1. Re-scan Gmail (and any new statement) for this month's charges. Update the sheet and calculate Change for every line. 2. FLAG in order of urgency: any line up more than 15% month over month (with the dollar amount); any usage-based line with no cap or no alert; any line whose "What it produces" has been empty for 2 straight months (name the cancellation candidate). 3. Close with the verdict: total AI spend, change vs last month, spend with a measurable return vs spend without, and the single action that most improves next month (a cap to set, a tool to cancel, a duplicate to consolidate).
A total spend number is useless on its own. What you actually want to know is the cost of the work: what does one blog post, one edited video, one agent run cost you? Most people have no idea, so they cannot tell the $60 tool that replaces $900 of freelance editing from the $40 one that does nothing.
The prompt below takes the sheet from Step 1 and prices it: cost per output (monthly cost divided by what it made) and cost versus doing it by hand (a freelancer's rate, or your own hourly rate). It ranks every tool from best return to worst and names the dead weight.
Paste this right after the sheet exists. It turns a list of charges into a ranked ROI report, so you know exactly what each tool buys you.
Copy this prompt
Using my AI cost sheet, price the work each tool does. Be concrete; estimate out loud when you have to and say so. For every line: 1. Ask me (or read from the sheet) roughly what it produced this month: number of posts, videos, hours saved, agent runs, whatever fits. One quick number is fine. 2. Calculate COST PER OUTPUT = monthly cost / units produced. For usage-based tools, also estimate COST PER RUN so I know what a single job or agent run costs me. 3. Calculate the MANUAL ALTERNATIVE: what would this output cost from a freelancer, or in my own time at $[my hourly rate]? Show the gap. 4. Label each line: KEEPER (return clearly beats cost), WATCH (unclear), or CUT (cost with no real return). Then output a ranked table, best return at the top, worst at the bottom, and tell me in one line where my AI money is working hardest and where it is leaking.
The 2-month rule
If a tool cannot show an output for two months straight, it is a cancellation candidate and Claude should say so out loud. Subscriptions survive on forgetfulness; the sheet removes it.
Subscriptions behave. Usage is what blows up budgets, so cap every usage-based account the day you add it. Here is exactly where:
Anthropic Console: Settings then Workspaces, open your workspace, go to the Limits tab and choose Change Limit to set a monthly spend cap, then Add notification for an email alert at, say, 80%. Under Extra Usage, turn Auto-Reload off (or cap it) so credits don't silently top themselves up.
OpenAI: in your org settings open the project, click Limits, set a Monthly budget and Add Alert. Know this: OpenAI's budget is now notification-only, it does not stop API calls, so treat it as a warning, not a wall.
The backstop nobody tells you about: auto-reload is the real budget killer, so switch it off wherever you can. For any tool that won't enforce a true cap, put it on a virtual card with a fixed monthly limit (Privacy.com, Revolut, or your bank's virtual cards). That is the one cap that physically cannot be exceeded. And if a tool has neither cap nor alert, your monthly scheduled audit from Step 1 is the alert.
One hour, then it runs itself
Build the sheet once, schedule the monthly prompt, set your caps. After that the audit is a 10-minute read each month, and your AI spend becomes a number you manage instead of a bill you discover.
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