Budget control

Administrators can create budgets to control spending for one or more enterprises and providers. The platform evaluates budgets using the billing data that it also displays on the billing dashboards.

Budgets can trigger action plans when cloud costs pass specified thresholds. A use case for this feature might be “When an enterprise has consumed 50 % of its budget amount in AWS, send an email to the System Administrator.”

Users manage budgets in the Control view. There are new privileges to Access budgets section and Manage budgets, as well as a privilege to View enterprise hierarchy for platforms with multiple levels such as resellers and their customers.

You can create a budget to start from a specific date and optionally reset the budget with a monthly, quarterly, or annual cycle.

A budget belongs to the enterprise that creates it. You can apply the budget to one or more enterprises and providers within your scope. If you have the View enterprise hierarchy privilege, you can also apply the budget to the enterprises beneath these enterprises in the hierarchy.

After you select an enterprise to apply the budget to, the platform lists the providers that have billing dashboard data, so you can select All providers or a set of individual providers.

You can then configure at what level the budget should notify the user or take action. Enter trigger thresholds and the action plans to run when your consumption reaches a specific percentage of the budget amount.

This functionality is designed to make use of the email notifications from action plans but you can select any action plan.

After you enter the action plans, the budget is then ready to Save.

To stop the budget from running the action plans, select the Muted checkbox beside the trigger for the action plan.

When you edit a budget, you can change the name, and the amount and currency. You can also change the entities that the budget applies to and the action plans that it will trigger, and you can mute the action plans.