---
title: "Cost Center Mapping"
description: "Attribute cloud costs to projects, teams, and research groups"
---

## Cost Center Mapping

Cost center mapping in Tracer gives organizations full transparency into where their compute budget is going. Instead of a single, opaque cloud bill, Tracer maps every cost to the right project, team, grant, or principal investigator automatically.

## How It Works

Tracer enables precise cost attribution by mapping compute spending to cost centers, projects, teams, grants, or any custom organizational dimension.
- Accurate per-project and per-team cost attribution for finance, ops, and R&D
- Improved budget forecasting and accountability for research and compute spend
- Greater cost efficiency through clear visibility into resource usage
- Easier optimization and fair cost allocation across teams and projects


Each pipeline run is tagged with relevant metadata, enabling real-time and historical reporting across multiple dimensions. Finance teams, researchers, and administrators can easily see who is spending what, compare groups, and manage budgets proactively.

With built-in tagging, attribution, and budget tracking, Tracer turns cloud billing data into clear, auditable cost insights. This eliminates guesswork and enables fair, data-driven cost allocation across your organization.