Every week, everyone gets some AI to use. On Friday, if someone hasn't used theirs, it goes to someone who ran out.
Instead of giving everyone a fixed AI allowance for the year, set it each week. On Friday, look at who didn't use theirs and who ran out, and move the spare allowance to the people who need it.
Allocate consumption allowances weekly, not annually. Run a fixed Friday review: reclaim unused allowance above a floor, reallocate to users at their cap, and flag sustained heavy users for a licence-versus-metered review. Money follows the work.
Why weekly
Annual and monthly budgets assume use is steady. It isn't. A finance team's use spikes at month end. A project team's use spikes before a deadline. With fixed allowances, some people run out while others' allowances go unused.
A weekly cycle is short enough to respond to that and long enough not to become admin.
The Friday routine
A 20-minute review with the same agenda every week:
- Spend against budget. Total consumption this week compared with the weekly budget.
- Who's at the cap? People who hit their limit, and what they were doing.
- Who's well under? People who used little of their allowance.
- Move it. Reclaim unused allowance above a small floor and give it to the people at the cap for next week.
- Flag patterns. Anyone at the cap three weeks running may be better off on a licence than on metered use, or the reverse.
Making it fair
Publish the rules. Everyone keeps a floor so nobody's allowance is taken entirely. Reallocation is based on use, not seniority. Anyone can ask for more with a one-line reason.
Automating it
Most of this can run on the usage reports you already have. A Power Automate flow can pull the week's figures, draft the reallocation and post it to a Teams channel for the budget holder to approve. The meeting then becomes a quick check rather than a spreadsheet exercise.