Set spending budgets, configure alert thresholds, and track budget execution in real time. The system alerts you when actual or forecasted spending exceeds a threshold.
Overview
Budget Management helps you monitor cloud spending and avoid unexpected charges by setting budgets for organizations, departments, projects, or specific cloud services.
After you set a budget amount and alert rules, the system sends alerts through email, and internal messages when a threshold is triggered.
Use Estimate-to-Actual Analysis to compare forecasted and actual spending trends and make dynamic adjustments.
Budget Management supports two budget types:
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cost budget: Monitors costs generated by resources. Set monetary budgets and alert thresholds for annual, quarterly, or monthly periods by dimensions such as accounts and products. The system alerts you when actual or forecasted cost reaches the threshold.
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usage and coverage budget: Monitors utilization and coverage of savings plans and reserved instances. Set utilization and coverage budgets and alert thresholds for annual, quarterly, or monthly periods by dimensions such as accounts, regions, and instances. The system alerts you when utilization or coverage reaches the threshold.
Alerts notify you but do not restrict resource usage. Take action based on your business needs.
Create a budget
Activate Budget Management before first use. Log on to the Expenses and Costs console. In the left-side navigation pane, select Budget Management, and then click Activate for Free. After activation, it may take up to 24 hours for data to become available, and the feature requires existing consumption data in your account.
To create a budget: select a budget type, set a name, define scope and period, configure threshold alerts, and save.
Cost budget
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Log on to the Expenses and Costs console. On the Budget Management page, click Create Budget.
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Select a budget type: On the Create Budget page, select Cost budget, and then click Next.
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Set Budget: Configure the Basic Information and Budget Plan for your budget.
Configure the budget's Basic Information.
Parameter
Description
Budget Name
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Enter a name that reflects the budget's purpose.
Enterprise/Organization/Account
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For an MA account with enterprise finance or multi-account setup enabled, you can create a budget for the MA account or a member account.
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A member account under enterprise financial management can only create a budget for itself.
Budget Scope
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Set the budget scope by dimensions such as cost center, owner account, region, product, product detail, and consumption type.
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For a single budget, you can click Add to create multiple scopes.
Cycle
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Aggregation period for budget data: yearly, quarterly, or monthly.
Start and End Dates
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Select start and end dates based on the aggregation period. Keep the range within 24 aggregation periods.
Remarks
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Optional notes about the budget.
After configuration, a chart shows historical spending and a future spending forecast.
Configure the Budget Plan.
Parameter
Description
Budget Plan Type
Choose one of the following based on your aggregation period and date range:
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Fixed Amount: A fixed amount applied to every aggregation period. The spending amount corresponds to the Payable Amount on your bill.
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Variable value: Custom budget amounts for each aggregation period. The number of customizable periods depends on the aggregation period type:
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Monthly aggregation period: Up to 12 aggregation periods.
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Quarterly aggregation period: Up to 4 aggregation periods.
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Yearly aggregation period: Up to 3 aggregation periods.
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Total Budget
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Auto-calculated from start/end dates, aggregation period, and plan type. Not editable.
Confirm the budget details and click Next.
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Set Alert: Configure alert rules and notification methods. Click +Add Alerts to add an alert. Up to five alert groups per budget.
Parameter
Description
Alert Object
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Actual cost (this period): Compares the actual cost of the current period with the period budget.
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Predicted Value of Current Cycle: Compares the forecasted cost of the current period with the period budget.
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Accumulative Predicted Value: Compares the cumulative forecasted cost from budget start to the current date with the total budget.
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Accumulated actual: Triggers when cumulative actual cost from start to present exceeds the threshold.
Threshold Type
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Fixed Value: Alert triggers when spending exceeds a specified amount.
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Percentage: Alert triggers when spending exceeds a specified percentage of the budget.
Threshold
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Alert triggers when the actual value exceeds this threshold.
Alert Remarks
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Optional notes about the alert.
Message Settings
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Configure alert recipients in the Message Center. Ensure recipients have verified email addresses to receive notifications.
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Confirm budget information: Review the budget details and click Submit to create the budget.
After creating a cost budget, actual and forecasted values become available in two days (T+2).
The system sends a cost budget alert only once, one day (T+1) after the threshold is exceeded.
Alerts are not sent before the budget's effective period begins. A newly added alert becomes effective at 12:00 (UTC+8) on the following day (T+1).
Usage and coverage budget
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Log on to the Expenses and Costs console. On the Budget Management page, click Create Budget.
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Select a budget type: On the Create Budget page, select Usage or coverage budget, and then click Next.
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Set Budget: Configure the Basic Information and Budget Plan for your budget.
Configure the budget's Basic Information.
Parameter
Description
Budget Name
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Enter a name that reflects the budget's purpose.
Enterprise/Organization/Account
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For an MA account with enterprise finance or multi-account setup enabled, you can create a budget for the MA account or a member account.
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A member account under enterprise financial management can only create a budget for itself.
Deduct Resources
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Supports savings plans, reserved instances, and Storage Capacity Unit (SCU).
Usage or coverage budget
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Usage (%): Measures resource use efficiency. Higher utilization means the resource is more fully utilized.
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Coverage: Measures the proportion of pay-as-you-go usage covered by discounts. Higher coverage indicates greater savings.
Budget Scope
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Set the budget scope by dimensions specific to the benefit type, such as region, resource type, or instance ID.
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For a single budget, you can click Add to create multiple scopes.
Cycle
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Aggregation period for budget data: yearly, quarterly, or monthly.
Start and End Dates
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Select start and end dates based on the aggregation period. Keep the range within 24 aggregation periods.
Remarks
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Optional notes about the budget.
After configuration, a chart shows historical utilization.
Configure the Budget Plan.
Parameter
Description
Budget Plan Type
Choose one of the following based on your aggregation period and date range:
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Budget in Percentage: A fixed budget percentage applied to every aggregation period.
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Variable value: Custom budget percentages for each aggregation period. The number of customizable periods depends on the aggregation period type:
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Monthly aggregation period: Up to 12 aggregation periods.
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Quarterly aggregation period: Up to 4 aggregation periods.
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Yearly aggregation period: Up to 3 aggregation periods.
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Total Budget
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Auto-calculated from start/end dates, aggregation period, and plan type. Not editable.
Confirm the budget details and click Next.
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Set Alert: Configure alert rules and notification methods. Click +Add Alerts to add an alert. Up to five alert groups per budget.
Parameter
Description
Threshold
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Alert triggers when utilization or coverage falls below this threshold.
Alert Remarks
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Optional notes about the alert.
Message Settings
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Configure alert recipients in the Message Center.
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Confirm budget information: Review the budget details and click Submit to create the budget.
After creating a usage and coverage budget, actual values become available in one day (T+1).
View budgets
View budget information
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console. On the Budget Management page, view all created budgets and their information, such as Type, Budget Name, Total Budget, Actual Total Amount, and Status:
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Type: Cost budget or Usage or coverage budget.
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Total Budget: The total budgeted cost, utilization, or coverage from the budget's start date to its end date.
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Actual Total Amount: The actual cost incurred or the actual utilization or coverage from the budget's start date to the current date.
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Estimated Total Amount: The forecasted spending, utilization, or coverage from the budget's start date to the current date.
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Actual Total Amount/Total Budget: Shows the budget's execution progress.
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Budget Scope: Click the View button to see the scope details associated with the budget, such as accounts, products, and regions.
Each budget supports actions such as Edit, Copy, and Delete. You can also export the budget list.
Estimate-to-actual analysis
Select a budget and click Estimate-to-Actual Analysis in the Actions column to compare your budgeted and actual spending.
Forecasts are derived from historical data and may differ from actual costs. Use as reference only.
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Estimate vs. actual trend: Shows the monthly trend of total actual and forecasted spending.
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Current period estimate vs. actual: Shows the total actual and forecasted amounts for the current period as a percentage of the current period's budget. Forecasting is not supported for usage and coverage budgets.
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Budget records: Displays the actual values, budgeted values, and the variance between them for each aggregation period within the budget's date range.
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Occurrence details:
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For a cost budget, click Actual Expenses for a single aggregation period to navigate to and view detailed consumption data for the corresponding date.
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For a usage and coverage budget for a savings plan, click Actual Expenses for a single aggregation period to navigate to and view detailed resource consumption data for the corresponding date.
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Alert settings: Click Set Alert in the upper-right corner of the page to modify the alert settings for the budget.
Legacy console
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console. In the left-side navigation pane, click to perform operations. The overall process is the same as described above.
Creating an effective budget
A well-structured budget provides a clear financial roadmap and enables cost optimization without sacrificing business growth.
Step 1: Analyze historical spending
Review your cloud bills from the past 3-6 months to identify fixed and variable spending patterns:
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Stable costs: Recurring monthly expenses such as long-running servers, reserved instances, and databases. These form your cost baseline.
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Variable fluctuations: Look for periodic patterns like day/night consumption peaks. Identify and exclude one-time spikes (data migrations, performance tests) from the baseline.
Step 2: Adjust for business growth
Coordinate with business and R&D teams to understand upcoming changes:
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New projects or features: New applications being deployed? New cloud services (AI/ML) being introduced? Estimate their initial costs.
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User or traffic growth: Higher traffic requires more computing and bandwidth resources.
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Architectural changes: Service migrations, technology stack upgrades, or architectural refactoring planned?
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Data volume growth: Steadily increasing storage requirements affect storage and backup costs.
Step 3: Refine the budget scope
Break down the overall budget into sub-budgets with clear owners. Consider these dimensions:
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By project/product line: Set a budget for each independent product or project.
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By team/department: Assign budgets to teams like 'Development Team', 'QA Testing Team', and 'Marketing Department'.
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By environment: Separate budgets for Production, Testing, and Development to prevent resource misuse in non-production environments.
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By cost center: Align budgets with internal financial cost centers for large enterprises.
Plan your account structure and cost center framework to align with your budget segmentation.
Step 4: Set amount and buffer
Add a 10%-20% buffer to your historical average plus estimated incremental costs. This covers unexpected performance issues, urgent scaling, or unforeseen usage growth.
Formula: Budget Amount = (Historical Spending Baseline + Future Incremental Costs) × (1 + Buffer Percentage)
Step 5: Configure alerts and feedback
Use alert rules for advance notice of budget progress:
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Set multi-level threshold alerts:
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50% (Informational): Send a reminder email to the project owner that the budget is halfway spent.
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80% (Warning): Alert the team to monitor spending rate and check for anomalies.
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100% (Critical): Alert the owner and finance department that the budget is exhausted and requires immediate review.
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Use forecasted spending alerts. When forecasted spending is predicted to reach 100% of budget, you have time to adjust actual consumption.
Step 6: Review and iterate
Hold monthly or quarterly cost review meetings to analyze budget variances, identify unconsidered cost items, and assess whether business goals are being met. Dynamically adjust the next budget period based on findings.