AI Spend Auditor
Every AI charge in one inventory, with renewal dates and expiry flags
The problem
AI spend is the fastest-growing line on a small business card statement and the least inventoried. A $20 subscription here, a $29 add-on there, a Zapier scenario quietly billing per call, and an agency retainer with model costs baked in. Nobody wrote any of it down, so renewals surprise you, two tools do the same job, and when a vendor's intro price expires (as [Gemini 3.7 Flash's will on December 31](/blog/gemini-3-7-flash-price-doubles)), no one connects the announcement to next year's budget.
The tool
Once installed, this skill turns your assistant into the keeper of your AI spend. Paste card statements or name tools from memory, and it builds a standing inventory: what each tool is, what it costs, whether the billing is flat or usage-based, who owns it, and when it renews.
The part no spreadsheet does for you: it maintains a watch list of dates that change your costs, annual renewals, trial conversions, and announced price changes like intro rates with a printed expiry. Tell it "Gemini API prices double January 1" once and it recalculates every affected line and shows you the 2027 number today. It also flags overlap (two tools with the same job description), separates flat-rate spend you can predict from usage billing that can spike, and drafts the cancellation or downgrade email when you decide to act.
What's inside
- A structured inventory built from pasted statements or plain descriptions
- Renewal and expiry watch list, checked at the start of every session
- Before/after math on announced price changes, per line and in total
- Overlap detection across tools and against the assistant you already pay for
- Flat vs. usage-billed split, with a note on which lines can spike
- Cancellation, downgrade, and renegotiation email drafts on request
How to use it
- 1Click "Install skill" on this page and copy the install prompt.
- 2Paste it into your AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, anything that accepts pasted text).
- 3Answer the setup questions: business, who approves spend, where the card statements live.
- 4Paste your last two months of statements, or list every AI tool you can name. Let it ask about the ones you forgot.
- 5Whenever you see a pricing announcement, paste it in. The inventory updates and tells you if you should care.
Example
A 6-person bookkeeping firm pastes two months of statements. The skill finds nine AI-related charges, including a $24/month transcription tool no one has opened since the meeting-notes tool arrived (overlap, flagged), and a per-call charge from an automation platform that tripled in July (usage spike, flagged). It builds the inventory, sets three renewal alerts, and when the owner pastes the Gemini pricing news, it reports that only one line is affected: the client-intake bot an agency runs for them, and drafts the question to send that agency about who absorbs the increase.
Pro tip
Feed it statements, not memory. In client work the forgotten charges average two or three per business, and they are usually the ones that fail the "would you buy it again today" test hardest. Once the inventory exists, run our [AI ROI Reality Check](/toolbox/ai-roi-reality-check) over it quarterly; the two are built to hand off to each other.
Related tools
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