See budget exhaustion coming before it blocks a team
Enterprise Tier
A hard-enforced budget that runs out mid-sprint looks like an outage to the team it blocks, and a soft-enforced one that quietly overruns defeats its purpose. Both failures are avoidable when budget burn is read on a cadence: the detail view shows how much of a ceiling is gone, how many days remain in the period, and which members are driving the spend, which is enough to intervene at 80% instead of explaining at 100%.
This guide reads the budget detail view produced by Keep each team's spend inside an agreed ceiling. The two layouts described here correspond to the Whole team and Each teammate scopes chosen at creation; the single-user scope reads as a one-row case of the per-member view.
Persona: Platform operator working in the Admin Dashboard, reviewing spend on a regular cadence with the finance and business owners who set the ceilings.
Estimated time: A few minutes per budget, repeated each reporting cycle.
Outcomes
By the end of this guide:
- A budget's current spend, remaining headroom, and time left in the period can be read from its detail view.
- The pooled whole-team layout and the per-member each-teammate layout are each understood, along with the member status indicators.
- Billed spend is distinguished from passthrough usage, and the reason passthrough is excluded from the ceiling is understood.
Prerequisites
- Administrator access to the Admin Dashboard, typically the
super_adminorbilling_adminrole. - At least one budget already created. See Keep each team's spend inside an agreed ceiling.
Open the budget detail
Each budget opens into a detail view split into two parts: a configuration rail on the left and a spend overview on the right.
The left rail is the same for every budget regardless of scope:
- Scope is shown as a pill at the top: Team total for a pooled whole-team budget, Team — per user for a per-member each-teammate budget.
- Budget name is the descriptive label set at creation.
- Spend limit is the ceiling and its cadence:
monthlyfor a pooled budget,each member, monthlyfor a per-member budget. - Status is an Active toggle, and Audit records when the budget was created. Changing any of these is covered in Raise a spend ceiling without interrupting delivery.
The right side is the spend overview, and its shape follows the scope.
Billed spend and passthrough usage
Both layouts lead with billed spend against the ceiling. That is the only figure the meter, limits, and alerts use.
Passthrough usage appears only when members have run Claude Code passthrough mode (Max/Pro subscription through the gateway). The line is labeled passthrough usage (not counted toward budget) and shows an approximate dollar value (≈): the theoretical cost of those requests if the user did not have the subscription plan, priced at standard API rates. It is for scale and comparison only—it never draws down the budget.
| Spend overview | When you see it |
|---|---|
| Simpler view | No Claude Code passthrough traffic: billed against the ceiling, progress bar, Used / Remaining / Days left only. |
| With passthrough | Claude Code passthrough mode configured and used: the same billed meter, plus passthrough usage (not counted toward budget) ≈ …. On a team per user budget, each member row can show billed and passthrough side by side against that member’s cap. |
BYOK (provider API keys) is a separate Step 3 path; it does not add the Claude Code passthrough line described here. Claude Code passthrough mode is covered in the fast track evaluation.
Read a whole-team budget
A whole-team budget pools one ceiling across every member, so its overview leads with a single meter.
- The headline reads the billed spend against the ceiling for the period, for example
$260.75 of $5,000.00 · monthly, with a progress bar toward the 100% mark. - Used is that spend as a percentage of the ceiling, Remaining is the headroom left, and Days left is the number of days before the period resets at the start of the next calendar month.
- Top contributors ranks the members by their share of the team's spend this period. Each row shows the member's billed amount and their percentage of the team total; when Claude Code passthrough mode is in use, passthrough usage appears alongside.
The pooled meter answers the question a cost-centre owner asks first: how much of the team's allocation is gone and how much time is left in the period. The pairing of Used and Days left is the early-warning read: 80% used with 20 days left is a conversation to have this week, not at the reset. The contributor ranking answers the follow-up: which members account for the spend. Because the cap is pooled, an individual's heavy month is absorbed by the team total rather than blocked on its own, so the ranking is for attribution rather than enforcement.
Read a per-member budget
An each-teammate budget applies the same ceiling to every member individually, so its overview leads with the health of the membership rather than a single meter.
- The headline counts how many members are within their limits, for example
7 of 7 members within limits, with a breakdown into over (red), near (amber), and healthy (green). - Total billed is the summed billed spend across all members, Total allotted is the per-member cap multiplied by the member count, and Per-member cap is the ceiling each member carries.
- The Members list shows one row per member, each with that member's billed spend against their own cap and the percentage consumed. When Claude Code passthrough mode is in use, each row also shows passthrough usage (
≈) for scale. The list can be filtered with Search members and ordered with the Spend sort.
The per-member layout is read for exceptions. The near (amber) rows are the early warning this guide exists for: members approaching their cap who can still be contacted before enforcement bites. The over rows need attention now; the healthy majority needs none. Because each member carries the same cap independently, one member exhausting their allowance has no effect on the others.
What to do next
- Raise a spend ceiling: when the burn read here is legitimate and the ceiling no longer fits. See Raise a spend ceiling without interrupting delivery.
- Catch spend drift early: the wider usage review that puts a single budget's burn in context. See Catch spend drift before the invoice does.
- Bill AI spend back to the teams that incur it: turn the spend read here into statements finance consumes. See Bill AI spend back to the teams that incur it.
Where to go next