Azure Cost Management and Billing provides visibility into your cloud spending by offering both high-level cost 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 Cost Management and Billing
• Monthly Cost Summaries
• Detailed Cost Information
• Creating Cost Alerts
• Cost Allocation Tags
• Understanding Azure Charges
• Best Practices
• Additional Resources

Accessing Cost Management and Billing

You have two options to access Azure Cost Management and Billing:

Standard Azure Portal Navigation

1. Sign in to the Azure portal using this link: https://portal.azure.com
2. Select the appropriate tenant and subscription if prompted.
3. After signing in:
   • Click in the search box at the top of the page.
   • Search for "Cost Management".
   • Select Cost Management + Billing from the search results.

Note: If you are unable to sign in or do not see all of your Azure subscriptions, you may not have the necessary permissions. Ask the subscription owner Azure Console Access Change Request Form. Access can be granted for Cost Management services only, subscription administration, or through a custom role with specific permissions.

Monthly Cost Summaries

To view a summary of your Azure charges for a specific month, open Cost Analysis within Cost Management + Billing.

The Cost Analysis page provides a high-level overview of your Azure spending, including:

• Total charges for the selected billing period
• A breakdown of costs by Azure service
• Credits, discounts, reservations, savings plans, and other billing adjustments (if applicable)

Use the built-in filters and views to review spending trends across subscriptions, services, resource groups, and regions.

To view charges for a different billing period, adjust the date range selector and choose the desired month.

Tip: Azure Cost Analysis supports advanced filtering and grouping options that allow you to analyze costs by subscription, resource group, resource, location, service, or tag.

Detailed Cost Information

To view detailed billing information that can be customized and filtered, select Cost Analysis from the Cost Management + Billing navigation menu.

Cost Analysis allows you to analyze your Azure spending over time and answer questions such as:

• Which Azure 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 Analysis

1. Open Cost Management + Billing.
2. Select Cost Analysis.
3. Use the available filters and grouping options to customize your view.

Common ways to analyze costs include:

• Group by Service Name – View spending by Azure service (Virtual Machines, Storage Accounts, Azure SQL Database, App Service, etc.).
• Group by Resource Group – Identify which projects or workloads are generating charges.
• Group by Location – Identify where resources are generating costs.
• 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 Cost Alerts

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

Creating a Budget

1. Open Cost Management + Billing.
2. Select Budgets.
3. Click Add.
4. Enter a budget name that clearly identifies the purpose of the budget.
5. Specify:
   • Budget reset period (typically Monthly)
   • Budget amount
   • Scope (Subscription, Resource Group, or Management Group)
   • Any optional filters, such as services, resource groups, locations, or tags
6. 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 Azure predicts spending will exceed the threshold before the end of the billing period.
4. Review the budget settings and click Create.

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

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

Azure resource tags can>

Each customer is free to assign their own meaning to these tags. The meaning and values assigned to these tags are entirely customer-defined.

Note: Azure charges are billed at the subscription level. Tags are provided to support customer reporting, budgeting, and internal chargeback or showback processes.

Applying Tags to Resources

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

To add or modify tags:

1. Open the Azure portal.
2. Navigate to the Azure resource.
3. Select the resource.
4. Locate the Tags section.
5. Add one or more tags 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 Azure Cost Analysis and other Cost Management reporting tools.

To analyze costs by tag:

1. Open Cost Management + Billing.
2. Select Cost Analysis.
3. Choose the desired date range.
4. Under Group by, select Tag.
5. Select the desired tag key.

Cost Analysis 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 Azure Charges

Azure charges are generated based on resource consumption. Common billable resources include:

• Virtual Machines
• Azure SQL Database
• Storage Accounts
• Backup and Recovery Services Vaults
• Data transfer and bandwidth usage
• Load balancers and networking services

Many Azure 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 Cost Analysis to identify which service generated the charges.
2. Use Cost Analysis filters 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 cost 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.
• Review Azure Advisor recommendations for cost optimization opportunities.

Regular monitoring through Azure Cost Management and Billing 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 subscription.

Additional Resources

Microsoft provides detailed documentation for Azure Cost Management features. The following resources may be helpful:

• Azure Cost Management and Billing Documentation 
• Azure Cost Analysis and Reporting Documentation 
• Azure Budgets Documentation 
• Azure Resource Tagging Documentation