Viewing Cost Analyses

Preconfigured Reports

Cost Center comes preconfigured with some reports for typical cost analysis scenarios. You can also create custom reports to meet your own requirements. You can add the frequently used reports to your favorites for faster cost analysis.

Preconfigured reports cannot be deleted, but you can copy or add them to your favorites.

Cost Analysis View

You can set the cost type, time, and filters to view your cost data. If needed, you can also modify advanced settings to meet your specific requirements. In addition, you can export the desired cost and usage details for downloading and viewing.

Display Dimensions

By default, Cost Center provides you with the analysis of original costs (amount due).

Cost Type

Before the billing date, the preceding costs are only estimated amounts without any cash coupons applied.

Specifying a Time Range

You can view your cost data at a specific granularity within a given time range.

Setting Filters

You can select any combination of filters to control which datasets are displayed.

If you select multiple filters, only results meeting all filtering criteria will be displayed. However, if you select multiple items for any given filter, results meeting any of the items selected will be displayed.

You can select up to 50 items for each filter. Under the Cost Category or Cost Tag filter, you can select up to 20 items for a level-1 option and up to 50 items for a level-2 option at a time.

As shown in the following figure, the option marked with the red box is considered a level-1 option, and the options marked with the blue box are considered level-2 options.

You can use the filters listed below for cost analysis.

Advanced Settings

Costs

When Cost Type is set to Original costs (amount due), you can select or deselect Include discount. If you select this option, discounts will be included, and the cost is equal to the list price.

Show PoP cost/growth

• PoP cost = Total cost of the current period – Total cost of the previous period
• PoP growth is calculated as follows:

  

You can select Show PoP cost/growth to see the details.

Show list price

The list price is the price of a product without any discounts applied. If you select this option, the list price will be displayed only for analysis of original costs in stacked charts.

Cost and Usage Summary

Total cost: total cost in each day or month. If the time range you selected includes a point in time in the future, the total cost includes the forecasted cost. If the time range does not include any point in time in the future, the total cost does not include the forecasted cost.

Average historical monthly cost: the average of historical cost per month

Average forecasted monthly cost: the average of forecasted cost per month

For details, see Table 3.

If the time range you selected covers both historical and future points of time, the cost data in the chart on the Cost Analysis page will be marked with an asterisk (*).

• No "*": historical costs
• *: the forecasted cost for the current day or month
• **: the forecasted cost for the future days or months

In Cost Center, you can also view cost data in stacked charts, bar charts, and line charts.

A maximum of 11 data records can be displayed in a chart. If you select 11 or more data records, the top 10 data records and Other are displayed by default. Other indicates the total number of the remaining data records.

• Stacked chart
  Figure 1 Stacked chart
  

• Bar chart
  Figure 2 Bar chart
  
• Line chart
  Figure 3 Line chart
  

• Donut chart
  Figure 4 Donut chart
  

Creating a Custom Report

1. Access the Cost Analysis page.
2. Click Start Custom Analysis.
3. Configure filters in the displayed page.
   

   For details about the filters, see Setting Filters.

4. Click Save in the upper right corner.
5. Specify a name for the report, and click Save.

   

Viewing Multi-Dimensional Cost Breakdowns

1. Access the Cost Analysis page.
2. Select the preconfigured Multi-Dimensional MTD Costs report.
   

   

   • The Multi-Dimensional MTD Costs report does not include forecasted costs.

3. On the Cost Analysis page, set search criteria. The cost data within the selected time range will be displayed in the specified dimension.

   

   1. Adjust the display dimensions.
      1. Click Add to define your desired dimension. You can add up to three dimensions.
      2. Click Up or Down next to each dimension to change their display order. Note that the first dimension cannot be moved up, and the last one cannot be moved down.
      3. To delete a dimension, click Remove next to it.

      The following display dimensions are available: Linked Account, Service Type, Enterprise Project, Cost Tags, Cost Categories, Region, and Billing Mode.

      

      • The default display dimensions for a master account with associated member accounts are Linked Account, Service Type, and Enterprise Project.
      • The default display dimensions for a common account are Service Type, Enterprise Project, and Region.
   2. View the cost Sankey diagram.
      1. By default, the MTD original costs are displayed. You can change the time range. This analysis report does not include forecasted costs.
      2. In the Sankey diagram, you can view your cost breakdowns and flows.
         • The branch width of each summary dimension is equal to that of the total cost. Each branch represents the cost breakdown in a particular dimension.
         • The width of each branch represents costs incurred. The wider the branch, the higher the costs.
         • The flow of each branch reflects the cost breakdown in each summary dimension.
         

         Up to 10 cost branches can be displayed for each dimension. The 11th and later branches are all displayed as Other.

   3. View cost data in the table.
      1. Click in the table to expand multi-dimensional cost data.
      2. Click Export to export the multi-dimensional cost data.
   4. Switch cost analysis views.

      Select another analysis view from the drop-down list. You can switch among Favorite Reports, Recommended Reports, and Recent Reports.

4. Click Save As in the upper right corner of the page to save the analyses as a report so that you can easily view cost analyses with the same filters.

Viewing Cost Analyses

1. Access the Cost Analysis page.
2. Select a recommended report or a custom report.
   

   Huawei Cloud provides recommended reports for quick cost analysis.

   You can save your cost analyses as custom reports if needed.

3. Set search criteria to view desired cost data.

   

   • If you set Cost Type to Original costs (amount due) or Net original costs (actual payments), the nearly real-time data is displayed.
   • If you set Cost Type to Amortized costs (amortized amount due) or Net amortized costs (amortized actual payments), the displayed data may have a delay of one to two days.
   • To download the Cost Analysis - Overview file, click Export to access the Export History page.

4. Click Save in the upper right corner of the page to save the analyses as a report so that you can easily view cost analyses with the same filters. When you view a saved report later, Cost Center displays the same type of report, but updated with the most recent data.

Viewing Usage Analyses

1. Access the Cost Analysis page.
2. Select the preconfigured Pay-Per-Use ECS Monthly Costs and Usage report.
3. In the report view, Cost Center by default displays the cost data with Service Type set to Elastic Cloud Server (ECS) and Usage Type set to Elastic Cloud Server ECS - Duration.
   

   You can only set a single usage type to analyze usage.

   

   • To view the ECS usage data from another perspective, switch the display dimension. For example, if you want to view ECS usage analysis data by resource name/ID, set Grouped By to Resource Name/ID.
     

     

     1. By default, the current month's cost data is displayed. You can view monthly costs by Resource Name/ID from up to the last three months.
     2. If you want to export and analyze historical cost data by resource name/ID from the last three months, choose Cost Insights > Cost Details Export. With this same search criteria, you can also export cost data of the last 38 months. For details, see Exporting Cost Details.