AWS Billing and Cost Management provides visibility into your cloud spending by offering both high-level billing summaries and detailed cost analysis tools. Using these features, you can track charges across services, identify spending trends, and receive email notifications when your actual or forecasted costs exceed thresholds you define.

• Accessing Billing and Cost Management
• Monthly Billing Summaries
• Detailed Billing Information
• Creating Billing Alerts
• Cost Allocation Tags
• Understanding AWS Charges
• Best Practices
• Additional Resources

Accessing Billing and Cost Management

You have two options to access the Billing and Cost Management console:

Option 1: Direct Billing Console Access (Recommended)

Use the link below to go directly to the Billing and Cost Management console:

https://login.cloud.uiowa.edu/billing-aws

1. Login using the link above.
2. If you have access to more than one account or role, you will be redirected to a page to select the account and role. You can only access a single account at a time. If you need to access billing data for additional accounts, then you can use the sign-in link above to come back to the account and role selection page later.
3. After selecting your account and role, you will be automatically redirected to the Billing and Cost Management console.

Option 2: Standard AWS Console Navigation

1. Login to the AWS console using this link: https://login.cloud.uiowa.edu/aws
2. If prompted, select your account and role.
3. After selecting your account and role, you will be redirected to the AWS console home page. To access the Billing and Cost Management console:
   • Click in the search box in the top left of the page
   • Search for "bill"

   • Select "Billing and Cost Management" from the search results 

     

Note: If you are unable to sign in or do not see all of your AWS accounts, you may not have the necessary permissions. Ask the account owner to submit an AWS Console Access Change Request. AWS account access can be granted for Billing and Cost Management services only, full administrative access, or a custom role with specific permissions.

Monthly Billing Summaries

To view a summary of your AWS charges for a specific month, select Bills under the Billing and Payments section of the Billing and Cost Management console.

The Bills page provides a high-level overview of your AWS spending, including:

• Total charges for the selected billing period
• A breakdown of costs by AWS service
• Credits, refunds, and other billing adjustments (if applicable)

Scroll down the page to view detailed charges by service. You can expand individual services to see additional details about the resources and usage contributing to those costs.

To view charges for a different billing period, use the billing period selector in the upper-right corner of the page and choose the desired month.

Tip: If you need deeper analysis, such as spending trends over time or filtering costs by account, region, or project, use Cost Explorer from the Billing and Cost Management navigation menu.

Detailed Billing Information

To view detailed billing information that can be customized and filtered, select Cost Explorer from the left navigation menu in the Billing and Cost Management console.

Cost Explorer allows you to analyze your AWS spending over time and answer questions such as:

• Which AWS services are generating the most cost?
• How has spending changed over the last month, quarter, or year?
• Are there any unexpected increases in spending?

Using Cost Explorer

1. In the Billing and Cost Management console, select Cost Explorer.
2. If prompted, enable Cost Explorer. (This is typically a one-time setup.)
3. Use the available filters and grouping options to customize your view.

Common ways to analyze costs include:

• Group by Service – View spending by AWS service (Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, etc.).
• Group by Region – Identify where resources are generating charges.
• Group by Tag – Analyze costs by project, department, application, or other tagging strategies.

You can also adjust the date range and choose between daily or monthly granularity to better understand spending trends.

Creating Billing Alerts

AWS Budgets can send email notifications when your actual or forecasted spending exceeds thresholds that you define.

Creating a Budget

1. In the Billing and Cost Management console, select Budgets from the navigation menu.
2. Click Create budget.
3. Select Customize (advanced).
4. Select Cost budget and click Next.
5. Enter a budget name that clearly identifies the purpose of the budget.
6. Specify:
   • Budget period (typically Monthly)
   • Budget amount
   • Any optional filters, such as specific services or tags
7. Click Next.

Configuring Notifications

1. Specify one or more alert thresholds.
   • Examples:
     • 50% of monthly budget
     • 80% of monthly budget
     • 100% of monthly budget
2. Enter the email address(es) that should receive notifications.
3. Choose whether notifications are based on:
   • Actual spend – Alerts are sent after spending reaches the defined threshold.
   • Forecasted spend – Alerts are sent when AWS predicts spending will exceed the threshold before the end of the billing period.
4. Review the budget settings and click Create budget.

Recommended Alert Thresholds

For most users, the following configuration provides good visibility into spending:

These notifications can help identify unexpected charges early enough to investigate and take corrective action.

Cost Allocation Tags

AWS Billing and Cost Management can report costs using Cost Allocation Tags. These tags allow spending to be grouped and analyzed by categories such as department, project, environment, application, or funding source.

Cost allocation tags can only be created and activated at the AWS Organization level. Because individual member accounts cannot create their own cost allocation tags, ITS Cloud Services has pre-created a set of generic tags for customer use:

• ui:tag001
• ui:tag002
• ui:tag003
• ...
• ui:tag020

Each customer is free to assign their own meaning to these tags. For example:

One customer might use ui:tag001 to represent a department, while another might use it to represent a principal investigator, business unit, or cost center. The meaning and values assigned to these tags are entirely customer-defined.

Note: ITS Cloud Services does not allocate monthly cloud charges based on resource tags. AWS account charges are billed at the account level. These tags are provided to support customer reporting, budgeting, and internal chargeback processes.

Applying Tags to Resources

Most AWS resources support tagging either during creation or after deployment.

To add or modify tags:

1. Open the AWS Management Console.
2. Navigate to the AWS service containing the resource.
3. Select the resource.
4. Locate the Tags section.
5. Add one or more ui:tag### values as appropriate.
6. Save your changes.

Establish a consistent tagging strategy to ensure that reporting remains accurate and meaningful.

Viewing Costs by Tag

Once resources have been tagged, the tag values can be used within AWS Cost Explorer and other Billing and Cost Management reporting tools.

To analyze costs by tag:

1. Open AWS Billing and Cost Management.
2. Select Cost Explorer.
3. Choose the desired date range.
4. Under Group by, select Tag.
5. Select the desired ui:tag### key.

Cost Explorer will display spending grouped by the tag values assigned to your resources, allowing you to track costs by project, department, application, environment, or any other categorization you have chosen.

Understanding AWS Charges

AWS bills are generated based on resource consumption. Common billable resources include:

• Virtual machines (Amazon EC2)
• Databases (Amazon RDS)
• Object storage (Amazon S3)
• Backup storage
• Data transfer between services or regions
• Load balancers and networking services

Many AWS services charge based on actual usage rather than fixed monthly fees. As a result, costs can fluctuate from month to month depending on resource utilization.

If you notice unexpected charges:

1. Review the Bills page to identify which service generated the charges.
2. Use Cost Explorer to determine when costs increased and which resources may be responsible.
3. Verify that unused resources have been stopped or deleted.
4. Contact ITS-Cloud-Services@iowa.uiowa.edu if you need assistance interpreting charges.

Best Practices

• Review your billing information regularly.
• Create budget alerts.
• Use resource tags to make cost allocation and reporting easier.
• Investigate sudden increases in spending as soon as they are identified.
• Remove or stop unused resources to avoid unnecessary charges.

Regular monitoring through AWS Billing and Cost Management helps ensure there are no surprises at the end of the billing cycle and provides visibility into how cloud resources are being used in your account.

Additional Resources

AWS provides detailed documentation for Billing and Cost Management features. The following resources may be helpful:

• AWS Billing and Cost Management User Guide
• AWS Cost Explorer User Guide
• AWS Budgets User Guide
• AWS Cost Allocation Tags