Cost accounting methods and allocation logic for Agent-generated reports

On November 5, 2026, a Juejin article titled "Cost Accounting and Allocation Logic When Agents Generate Reports" laid out a method for accounting for LLM costs in AI agent workflows.

The piece begins from a specific scenario: when an agent generates a report, the report body and any charts it contains may draw on the same underlying model requests. In that case, the article argues, costs cannot simply be summed together, since the two share compute. The proposed method therefore splits expenses into four categories — physical attempts, known estimates, shared allocation, and vendor reconciliation — and keeps a defined handling path for costs that remain unknown. The structure is meant to let teams trace which requests actually occurred, which costs could be estimated with confidence, how shared requests should be apportioned across outputs, and how figures line up against what providers bill.

The article appeared as a single piece of reporting, with no follow-ups or external commentary identified so far, so it stands as a standalone methodology note.