AI agent cost tracking per task, checked against the bill

Three numbers, three places

• Provider bill: what Anthropic, OpenAI or OpenRouter charge you. The truth, but with no client or task.
• Reported cost: what an agent says a piece of work cost, with model and tokens. Tied to a task, but only as accurate as the reporting.
• Full cost: reported cost plus the people's time to brief and review the work, at their cost rates. This is what decides if the agent pays for itself.

Step 1: tie cost to the task

Each piece of agent work should report its cost once, on the task or project: model, input and output tokens and cost. In Hourtick an agent does it with log_time and the usage field, with agent_reply, or with the report_cost tool for cost without time. The REST API has POST /api/v1/agent-costs. Costs are stored in USD with the model and tokens, once per report.

Step 2: one currency, one report

People's costs and agents' costs often sit in different currencies. Hourtick converts each row at European Central Bank reference rates for the day it happened, refreshed every six hours. A row without a rate for its day counts as zero and the report says so, so gaps show instead of hiding.

Step 3: check it against the bill

1. Admins connect an Anthropic Admin API key, an OpenAI admin key or an OpenRouter management key in Settings → AI provider costs. Keys are validated first, stored encrypted and never shown again.
2. Map each provider scope to an agent: an Anthropic workspace, an OpenAI project or key, or an OpenRouter key.
3. Every six hours Hourtick reads the last 30 days of bills and compares them with what each agent reported for the same month.
4. If the bill is higher, the difference is added to the agent's cost. If the agent reported more than was billed, it is flagged and never subtracted, so you can find double reporting.

Step 4: set budgets

Give each agent a monthly limit on reported cost and on logged time. When it is reached the agent is paused, gets no new work and its owner and admins are notified. It starts again in a new month or when you raise the limit.

Step 5: look at cost per outcome

Reports → Agent outcomes lists each finished task with the agent's time and cost, the people's briefing and review time, how often it was sent back and who approved it. Admins also see full cost, revenue and margin per task. Divide by finished tasks to get a cost per outcome, and watch minutes of review per agent hour. Hourtick measures agents and tasks, never ranks people.