AI COGS
AI is a line of COGS. Most companies don't book it that way.
P402 records cost basis, attribution, and verifiable evidence per AI call. Built for the controller closing the books, not the engineer chasing a bug.
For controllers, accounting leads, and finance ops in companies booking AI spend against revenue.
The problem
AI spend should be COGS. The data does not support it.
Cost-of-goods-sold accounting requires per-unit cost attribution. AI provider invoices give you a monthly total: no SKU, no unit, no traceable basis. The CFO can't book it as COGS without a defensible audit trail.
Without a per-unit cost basis, the engineering team and the finance team disagree about what AI actually costs. The disagreement is structural: they're looking at two different data sources.
What P402 does
One ledger. Owner, budget, policy, outcome, evidence.
direct_cost_usd, route_savings_usd, cache_savings_usd, retry_cost_usd, broken out per event so the basis is reconstructable from the ledger.
Every event ships with a downloadable evidence bundle: model, provider, tokens, cost, policy, outcome, retention, fingerprints. Audit-ready.
CSV and JSON exports keyed on department, project, customer, feature. Joinable in the GL tool of your choice.
Retention windows are per-tenant, configurable, and stamped on every event. The auditor sees what was kept, why, and for how long.
Proof
direct, route_savings, cache_savings, retry: each a column, each a row in evidence.
Evidence bundle is generated per event, not per batch.
Cost recorded to four decimal places. No floor, no truncation.
Questions
ai cogs: FAQ
Is the evidence bundle a signed document?
It is a verifiable artifact tied to your tenant's ledger. Cryptographic signing is on the roadmap (Phase 7); current bundles already carry tenant-scoped row IDs and retention metadata sufficient for most audit reviews.
How do we map cost to revenue?
Bind revenue_usd to the same event the cost lands on (e.g., when your billing system processes the customer charge). Margin is computed in the ledger, not in a downstream join.
Can we use this for transfer pricing?
Yes. department_id and project_id are first-class. Intra-group transfers can be modeled by tagging events with the consuming entity.
Is the data GAAP-compliant out of the box?
P402 produces audit-ready data; GAAP compliance depends on how your accounting team books it. Bring your controller. Most map to either COGS, R&D, or G&A based on attribution.
What about consumption tax / VAT on AI spend?
Provider VAT lands on the provider invoice, not on the per-event cost. Use the evidence bundle as the unit ledger; reconcile against the provider invoice quarterly.