Getting Started with Cost Center

Viewing Cost Analyses

1. Log in to Cost Center.
2. Choose Cost Analysis.
3. Set search criteria to view desired cost data.

   

   • Period: You can view your cost data by day or month within a given time range.
   • Grouped By: You can use different dimensions, for example, to identify the most frequently used service types, view the cost distribution in a specific region, and learn the linked accounts with highest costs.
   • Filters: You can select any combination of filters to control which datasets are displayed.
   • Cost Type: For original costs or net original costs, the data is displayed nearly in real time. For amortized costs or net amortized costs, it may take 24 to 48 hours to display the most recent data.
   • Export: You can click Export to download the Cost Analysis - Overview file.

Creating a Budget

You can create a budget to follow your original costs and specify an alert threshold.

1. Log in to Cost Center.
2. Choose Budgets.
3. Click Create a Budget.
4. Select Cost Budget (used as an example in this procedure) or Usage Budget, and click Next.
5. Configure the budget details and define the budget scope, and click Next.

   

6. Configure alert thresholds and recipients, and click Next.
7. Confirm your budget settings and click Save.

Setting Preferences

Some functions in Cost Center are disabled by default. You need to enable them before they are available for use. Enabling such functions is free of charge. After you enable a function, it will be available to you on the following day.

Changing Pay-per-Use to Yearly/Monthly

This function is enabled by default. It can be disabled at any time, but only by an enterprise master account.

Splitting Shared Costs

For cloud services that are used by multiple domains or IP addresses, you can enable cost splitting to split the costs by tag or enterprise project configured for the domain names or IP addresses.

1. Log in to Cost Center.
2. Choose Preferences.
3. Turn on the toggle for Amortized cost.

   

   

   • Once enabled, cost splitting cannot be disabled.
   • After you enable cost splitting, you can go to the Cost Analysis page to view the split amortized costs after the 4th or 5th day of the following month.

Activating Cost Tags

If you want to use tags to group costs, you need to activate the tags first. Then, you can allocate cost data by cost tag on the Cost Analysis and Budget Management pages. You need to plan and activate the cost tags as early as possible, because if the tags can only be used to organize resource costs generated after the activation.

1. See Creating Predefined Tags, and create predefined tags on Tag Management Service (TMS).
2. Log in to Cost Center.
3. Click Cost Tags.
4. Select the tag you want and click Activate.