Help Center/ Cost Center/ User Guide/ Budget Management (New Edition)/ Budgets

Updated on 2024-11-26 GMT+08:00

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Budgets

Cost Center supports you with budget templates and custom budgets. You can use templates to quickly create budgets, or you can create custom budgets if your use case is complex and involves a lot of different details.

Budget Templates

By using a budget template, you can create a budget more simply and quickly. There are templates for monthly budgets for service types, monthly budgets for business units, and zero spend monthly budgets.

Creating a Monthly Budget for Service Types

You can create a monthly budget for only specific or for all service types, and you configure alerts to warn you if your budget has been exceeded or is forecasted to be exceeded.

Log in to Cost Center.
Choose Budget Management > Budgets.
Click Create Budget.
Select Monthly Budget for Service Types and click Create Budget.

Configure Budget Name, Budget Scope, and Budgeted Amount, select recipients, and click Save.

**Table 1** Parameters for creating a monthly budget for service types
Parameter	Description
Custom parameters: You can customize the following parameters, in which the budget name and alert recipients have been preset as those for common scenarios.
Budget Name	Enter a unique budget name.
Budget Scope	Specify the service types for your budget. NOTE: After you specify the budget scope, Cost Center will track your costs on a monthly basis.
Budgeted Amount	Net original costs (actual payments) after cash coupons are applied. Before the billing date, this is the estimated amount without any cash coupons applied.
Recipients	The contacts who will receive alerts. The account contact is the default recipient. Up to 10 recipients can be added for each budget. If you want to add or modify recipient information, go to the Recipient Management page in the Message Center. NOTE: Recipients will receive an alert when: The actual cost exceeds 85% of the budgeted amount. The actual cost exceeds 100% of the budgeted amount. The forecasted cost exceeds 100% of the budgeted amount.
Preset parameters: Common budget parameters have been preset so that you can create a budget more simply. If you need to modify the budget, go to the budget list, locate the budget, and click Edit in the Operation column.
Budget Type	The type of the budget you created
Reset Period	Monthly
Budget Duration	Recurring
Start Time	The month when you created the budget
Allocation	Fixed
Cost Type	Net original costs (actual payments)
Thresholds	Alerts will be sent when the actual cost exceeds 85% or 100% of the budgeted amount, or the forecasted cost exceeds 100% of the budgeted amount.

If needed, you can locate a budget and click Edit in the Operation column to modify the budget details and scope. For details about budget parameters, see Creating a Custom Budget.
Confirm budget details and click Save.

Creating a Monthly Budget for Business Units

You can create a monthly budget for specific business units (linked accounts, enterprise projects, cost tags, or cost categories) and configure alerts to warn you if your budget has been exceeded or is forecasted to be exceeded.

Log in to Cost Center.
Choose Budget Management > Budgets.
Click Create Budget.
Select Monthly Budget for Business Units and click Create Budget.

Configure Budget Name, Budget Scope, and Budgeted Amount, select recipients, and click Save.

**Table 2** Parameters for creating a monthly budget for business units
Parameter	Description
Custom parameters: You can customize the following parameters, in which the budget name and alert recipients have been preset as those for common scenarios.
Budget Name	Enter a unique budget name.
Budget Scope	Specify the business units (linked accounts, enterprise projects, cost tags, and cost categories) for your budget. NOTE: When you select Linked Account: If you are using a master account and want to create a budget for your member accounts, select these member accounts from Linked Account. If you are not using a master account, you can only create a budget for the account you are using. When you select Enterprise Projects: If you are using a master account, you can select enterprise projects by linked account, except the default enterprise project and those not categorized. If you are not using a master account, you can only create a budget for enterprise projects in the account you are using.
Budgeted Amount	Net original costs (actual payments) after cash coupons are applied. Before the billing date, this is the estimated amount without any cash coupons applied.
Recipients	The contacts who will receive alerts. The account contact is the default recipient. Up to 10 recipients can be added for each budget. If you want to add or modify recipient information, go to the Recipient Management page in the Message Center. NOTE: Recipients will receive an alert when: The actual cost exceeds 85% of the budgeted amount. The actual cost exceeds 100% of the budgeted amount. The forecasted cost exceeds 100% of the budgeted amount.
Preset parameters: Common budget parameters have been preset so that you can create a budget more simply. If you need to modify the budget, go to the budget list, locate the budget, and click Edit in the Operation column.
Budget Type	The type of the budget you created
Reset Period	Monthly
Budget Duration	Recurring
Start Time	The month when you created the budget
Allocation	Fixed
Cost Type	Net original costs (actual payments)
Thresholds	Alerts will be sent when the actual cost exceeds 85% or 100% of the budgeted amount, or the forecasted cost exceeds 100% of the budgeted amount.

If needed, you can locate a budget and click Edit in the Operation column to modify the budget details and scope. For details about budget parameters, see Creating a Custom Budget.
Confirm budget details and click Save.

Creating a Zero Spend Monthly Budget

You can create a budget and configure alerts to warn you if your actual payment exceeds $0 USD. This template is suitable for scenarios such as proof of concept (POC) tests and trial uses of cash coupons.

Log in to Cost Center.
Choose Budget Management > Budgets.
Click Create Budget.
Select Zero Spend Monthly Budget and click Create Budget.

Configure Budget Name, Budget Scope, and Budgeted Amount (the default value is 0 and cannot be changed), select recipients, and click Save.

**Table 3** Parameters for creating a zero spend monthly budget
Parameter	Description
Custom parameters: You can customize the following parameters, in which the budget name and alert recipients have been preset as those for common scenarios.
Budget Name	Enter a unique budget name.
Budget Scope	Select all costs, service types, or business units (linked accounts, enterprise projects, cost tags, and cost categories).
Budgeted Amount	The default value is 0 and cannot be changed.
Recipients	The contacts who will receive alerts. The account contact is the default recipient. Up to 10 recipients can be added for each budget. If you want to add or modify recipient information, go to the Recipient Management page in the Message Center. NOTE: Recipients will receive a budget alert if the actual payment exceeds $0 USD.
Preset parameters: Common budget parameters have been preset so that you can create a budget more simply. If you need to modify the budget, go to the budget list, locate the budget, and click Edit in the Operation column.
Budget Type	The type of the budget you created
Reset Period	Monthly
Budget Duration	Recurring
Start Time	The month when you created the budget
Allocation	Fixed
Budgeted Amount	0
Cost Type	Net original costs (actual payments)
Thresholds	Alerts will be sent when the actual payment exceeds $0 USD.

If needed, you can locate a budget and click Edit in the Operation column to modify the budget details and scope. For details about budget parameters, see Creating a Custom Budget.
Confirm budget details and click Save.

Custom Budgets

You can select Dynamic for Allocation only when Reset Period is Monthly or Quarterly. In your dynamic budget, the budgeted amount varies with your cost or usage data generated. Cost Center will notify all alert recipients of the newly adjusted budgeted amount on the 5th day in each month or quarter.

You can create a custom budget to set parameters specific to your use case. For example, you can customize the reset period, start date, and budget scope.

Dynamic budget plans are only supported for cost budgets and usage budgets.

There are four options. For details, see Baseline Time Range.

Last quarter/month actual
Current quarter/month forecast
Last several quarters/months average
Last several quarters/months compound growth rate

Important Notes

Alerts are not supported for the current month for certain monthly-settled cloud services, such as CDN billed by 95th percentile bandwidth, because their usages for the current month will not be billed until the following month.

You can create up to 1,000 budgets.

Each recipient can receive up to 100 alerts per day.

As each budget is monitored every hour, your actual costs or usage may have already exceeded the budget when you receive an alert.

If you are using a master account but have not enabled unified accounting management, you will not be able to create budgets for your member accounts.

Prerequisites

Before you enable budget alerts, configure notification methods for Cost Management in Message Center.

Viewing Budget Summary

You can view your budget summary on the Budget Management > Budgets page in Cost Center, including the following information:

Budgets: the total number of budgets that have been created
Actual Budget Overruns: the total number of budgets that have exceeded the budgets in the current period
Forecasted Budget Overruns: the total number of budgets that are predicted to exceed the budgets in the current period

Click to enlarge

Creating a Cost Budget

You can create a cost budget and specify an alert threshold:

Log in to Cost Center.
Choose Budget Management > Budgets.
Click Create Budget.
Select Custom Budget and click Create Budget.
Select Cost budget and click Next.

Configure the budget name, details, and scope, and click Next.

**Table 4** Parameters for creating a cost budget
Category	Parameter	Description
Specify Budget Name	Budget Name	Enter a unique budget name.
Configure Budget Details	Reset Period	The reset period for a budget, which can be: Daily: Budget evaluation begins at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the start date and will be reset to zero at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on each day moving forward. Monthly: Budget evaluation begins at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the 1st day of the start month and will be reset to zero at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the 1st day of each month moving forward. Quarterly: Budget evaluation begins at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the 1st day of the start quarter and will be reset to zero at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the 1st day of each quarter moving forward. Yearly: Budget evaluation begins at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the start date and will be reset to zero at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on January 1st of each year moving forward.
	Budget Duration	Recurring: You select a start date on which the recurring budgets will begin renewing. Expiring: You set a time range, outside which expiring budgets will not renew.
	Allocation	Fixed: The budgeted amount is fixed for each reset period. Monthly/Quarterly: The amount is budgeted on a monthly or quarterly basis. Dynamic: The amount is automatically budgeted based on the configured baseline time range.
	Baseline Time Range	There are four options. For details, see Baseline Time Range. Last quarter/month actual Current quarter/month forecast Last several quarters/months average Last several quarters/months compound growth rate
	Budgeted Amount	If Allocation is Fixed, you just set the budget amount to a fixed value. If Reset Period is Daily or Yearly, you just set the budget amount to a fixed value. If Allocation is Monthly or Quarterly, you need to set the budgeted amounts one by one. If the budgeted amount is not set for a period, the amount most recently configured will be applied. For example, if the budgeted amount was not set for May 2021, the budgeted amount of April 2021 would be used for May 2021. If you set Allocation to Dynamic, you do not need to set budgeted amount manually. Because your dynamic budget depends on your cost data, your upcoming budget amounts can fluctuate as your costs change. Cost Center will notify all alert recipients of the newly adjusted budgeted amount on the 5th day in each month or quarter.
Define Budget Scope	Define Budget Scope	Define a budget scope as required. You can use filters such as service type, enterprise project, and region. You will see cost budgets for the last 12 months in the pane on the right. NOTE: If you are using a master account and want to create a budget for your member accounts, select these member accounts from Linked Account.
	Business Entity	Select the business entity that a cloud service belongs to. Example: Huawei Cloud
	Split item name	This parameter is only valid when you set Cost Type to Amortized costs (amortized amount due). If you have enabled cost splitting, you can view the cost data of the specified cloud service by split item. For details, see .
	Cost Type	Original costs (amount due): the costs of cloud services purchased at the list price with available discounts applied. Original costs are equivalent to the amount due in the bill. Before the billing date, this is an estimated amount. Amortized costs (amortized amount due): the effective costs of the prepaid amounts amortized on a daily basis. It may take about 24 to 48 hours before amortized costs are displayed. Before the billing date, amortized costs are only estimates. When you set Cost Type to Original costs (amount due), you can toggle on Include discount to include both discount and truncated amount. In this case, the original cost is equivalent to the list price.

Under Alert Thresholds, configure Thresholds and Recipients and click Next.

**Table 5** Parameters for creating alerts for a cost budget
Parameter	Description
Thresholds	A maximum of five thresholds can be set for each budget. The following alerting conditions are supported: Actual >: If the actual cost reaches a certain amount or a certain percentage of a budgeted amount, an alert will be reported. Forecasted >: If the forecasted cost reaches a certain amount or a certain percentage of a budgeted amount, an alert will be reported. For details about how to create a forecast-based budget, see Creating a Forecasting-based Budget. The threshold can be a certain amount or a certain percentage of the budgeted amount. Amount (USD): If the actual cost reaches a certain amount, an alert will be reported. (%) of budgeted amount: If the actual cost reaches a certain percentage of a budgeted amount, an alert will be reported.
Recipients	The contacts who will receive alerts. The account contact is the default recipient. Up to 10 recipients can be added for each budget. If you want to add or modify recipient information, go to the Recipient Management page in the Message Center.

Confirm budget details and click Save.

Creating a Usage Budget

You can create a usage budget and configure alerts to warn you if the threshold you defined is reached:

Log in to Cost Center.
Choose Budget Management > Budgets.
Click Create Budget.
Select Custom Budget and click Create Budget.
Select Usage budget and click Next.

Configure the budget name, details, and scope, and click Next.

**Table 6** Parameters for creating a usage budget
Category	Parameter	Description
Specify Budget Name	Budget Name	Enter a unique budget name.
Configure Budget Details	Usage Type	The way a pay-per-use cloud service is billed. Select the usage type you want to budget against.
	Reset Period	The reset period for a budget, which can be: Daily: Budget evaluation begins at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the start date and will be reset to zero at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on each day moving forward. Monthly: Budget evaluation begins at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the 1st day of the start month and will be reset to zero at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the 1st day of each month moving forward. Quarterly: Budget evaluation begins at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the 1st day of the start quarter and will be reset to zero at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the 1st day of each quarter moving forward. Yearly: Budget evaluation begins at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on the start date and will be reset to zero at 00:00 GMT+08:00 on January 1st of each year moving forward.
	Budget Duration	Recurring: You select a start date on which the recurring budgets will begin renewing. Expiring: You set a time range, outside which expiring budgets will not renew.
	Allocation	Fixed: The budgeted amount is fixed for each reset period. Monthly/Quarterly: The amount is budgeted on a monthly or quarterly basis. Dynamic: The amount is automatically budgeted based on the configured baseline time range.
	Baseline Time Range	There are four options. For details, see Baseline Time Range. Last quarter/month actual Current quarter/month forecast Last several quarters/months average Last several quarters/months compound growth rate
	Budgeted Usage	If Allocation is Fixed, you just set the budget amount to a fixed value. If Reset Period is Daily or Yearly, you just set the budget amount to a fixed value. If Allocation is Monthly or Quarterly, you need to set the budgeted amounts one by one. If the budgeted amount is not set for a period, the amount most recently configured will be applied. For example, if the budgeted amount was not set for May 2021, the budgeted amount of April 2021 would be used for May 2021. If you set Allocation to Dynamic, you do not need to set budgeted amount manually. Because your dynamic budget depends on your cost data, your upcoming budget amounts can fluctuate as your costs change. Cost Center will notify all alert recipients of the newly adjusted budgeted amount on the 5th day in each month or quarter.
Define Budget Scope	Define Budget Scope	Define a budget scope as required. You can use filters such as enterprise project, linked account, and region. You will see usage budgets for the last 12 months in the pan on the right. NOTE: If you are using a master account and want to create a budget for your member accounts, select these member accounts from Linked Account.
Define Budget Scope	Usage	Pay-per-use Packages By default, Pay-per-use is selected.

Under Alert Thresholds, configure Thresholds and Recipients and click Next.

**Table 7** Parameters for creating alerts for a usage budget
Parameter	Description
Thresholds	A maximum of five thresholds can be set for each budget. The following alerting conditions are supported: Actual >: If the actual usage reaches a certain usage or a certain percentage of a budgeted usage, an alert will be reported. Forecasted >: If the forecasted usage reaches a certain usage or a certain percentage of a budgeted usage, an alert will be reported. For details about how to create a forecast-based budget, see Creating a Forecasting-based Budget. The threshold can be a certain usage or a certain percentage of the budgeted usage. Usage (Byte): If the actual usage reaches this value, an alert will be reported. (%) of budgeted usage: If the actual usage reaches a certain percentage of budgeted usage, an alert will be reported.
Recipients	The contacts who will receive alerts. The account contact is the default recipient. Up to 10 recipients can be added for each budget. If you want to add or modify recipient information, go to the Recipient Management page in the Message Center.

Confirm budget details and click Save.

Alerts

If the actual cost, usage, utilization, or coverage reaches the configured threshold, specified recipients will receive alerts via the notification methods you configured.
If the actual cost or usage reaches the configured threshold, the recipients will receive the alerts within one hour. Each recipient can receive a maximum of 100 budget alerts a day. Plan your budget appropriately.
Within a budget monitoring period, the alert is sent only once, even if more than one configured thresholds are reached.
Suppose you set the budgeted amount to $100 USD and thresholds to 60%, 70%, and 80%. If the actual cost is $85 USD (85% of the budgeted amount), Huawei Cloud will send only one alert, informing recipients that the current cost exceeds 80% of the budgeted amount.
An alert is sent only once for each threshold in a reset period.
Suppose you set Reset Period to Monthly, budgeted amount to $100 USD, and threshold to 80%. If the actual cost of the current month reaches $80 USD (80% of the budgeted amount), Huawei Cloud will report an alert.

If the threshold of the current month is changed to 90%, the system will check costs based on the new threshold. If the actual cost of the current month reaches $90 USD (90% of the budgeted amount), Huawei Cloud will report another alert.