> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://getlago.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Governance overview

> See who inside a customer's organization drives their usage and spend.

> [!NOTE]
>
> **PREMIUM ADD-ON** ✨
>
> Governance is available upon request only. Please [**contact us**](mailto:hello@getlago.com) to get access to this premium feature.

A customer pays one invoice, but many teams, people, agents and API keys share it. Governance breaks a subscription's usage and spend down along your customer's own organization, so you can see who consumed what.

You define the structure: departments and teams, cost centers, projects, workspaces, AI agents, API keys, or anything else your customers organize around.

## Why governance

When you sell usage to a whole organization, its admins expect the controls they get from modern AI products:

* **Usage in detail**: who consumed what, at any level you define, such as teams, users, agents, API keys or models.
* **Roll-ups**: users add up to their team, teams to their department, and everything to the account.
* **Enforcement**: limits per team or per user, so one person can't burn the whole budget.

Governance gives you the first two today, on your existing events and plans. Enforcement per team or user builds on the same entities and isn't available yet.

## What you can do

| Capability | Description |
| - | - |
| Model any structure | Nest entities into a tree, such as `department` → `team` → `user`, or add flat dimensions such as `api_key`. |
| Roll-ups | A parent's usage is the sum of its children. Every level adds up to the subscription total. |
| Units or amounts | Read consumption per charge, or priced in the plan currency. |
| Charge breakdown | Split a charge by its filters, for example by model. |
| Unattributed usage | Usage without a tag stays visible in its own row. |

## How it works

1. **Define entities** once for your organization. See [Set up governance](https://getlago.com/docs/guide/governance/setting-up.md).
2. **Tag your events** with the values, for example `"team_id": "eng"`. See [Send attributed events](https://getlago.com/docs/guide/governance/sending-events.md).
3. **Lago attributes each event** to every level of the tree at ingestion.
4. **Query attributed usage** per subscription. See [Query attributed usage](https://getlago.com/docs/guide/governance/query.md).

## Governance is opt-in

Governance never changes what you bill. Events without tags are billed as usual and show as unattributed, so you can start with one entity and add more later.

> [card] [Core concepts](https://getlago.com/docs/guide/governance/core-concepts.md)
>
> Entities, attribution keys and roll-ups.

> [card] [Set up governance](https://getlago.com/docs/guide/governance/setting-up.md)
>
> Define your entities in the dashboard or with the API.

> [card] [Send attributed events](https://getlago.com/docs/guide/governance/sending-events.md)
>
> Tag events with entity values.

> [card] [Query attributed usage](https://getlago.com/docs/guide/governance/query.md)
>
> Read usage and spend per entity.


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