Optimization

Checklists and templates

All Academy readers·5 modules · 36 min total

About this course

Sometimes you do not need a course — you need an answer. This collection is built for the moments when something is wrong and you need to diagnose it now, or when you want to improve one part of your cost workflow without reading a full guide. Each checklist and template is designed to be used immediately, not studied.

What you will learn

  • How to run a fast health check across your entire cost workflow
  • How to diagnose a sudden OpenAI bill spike using incident-style triage
  • How to score your budget process and identify the next 30 days of improvements
  • How to set up a repeatable weekly review template you can use immediately

How to use this course: Work through the modules in order for the full picture, or jump to the lesson that matches the problem in front of you right now. Each module is a standalone read — estimated total time is 36 minutes.

Course modules

5 lessons · 36 min total read time

18 min

AI cost audit checklist

Run a fast health check across tracking, monitoring, attribution, and optimization hygiene.

25 min

Why your OpenAI bill is high checklist

Run an incident-style triage for prompt size, retries, background jobs, embeddings, and model tier changes.

37 min

Why your OpenAI bill is so high and what to do about it

Work through the most common causes of sudden OpenAI spend growth and the fixes teams apply first.

410 min

Cloud and AI budget health check

Score your budget process and identify the next 30 days of improvements.

56 min

Weekly AI and cloud cost review template

Use a repeatable review template when you need a practical operating document, not a conceptual guide.