Bills record your monthly spending on Alibaba Cloud for reconciliation and payment. You can log on to the Expenses and Costs console to view your bills.
Understand Alibaba Cloud bills
A bill contains your spending information on Alibaba Cloud for a specific calendar month. This includes spending details, outstanding balances, billing cycles, and cloud resource usage.
The Alibaba Cloud bill feature provides the following information. The bill for the current month is updated in real-time. However, the final data is available only after the bill is generated for the following month:
Type | Purpose | Generation time | Access link |
Monthly bill | View the total amount payable for the current month. You can export a summary PDF of your spending. Use this as a document for reconciliation, settlement. | 12:00 on the 3rd of the following month | |
Spending details | View detailed spending for each resource. Use this for cost verification and analysis. You can export the details as a CSV file. | 12:00 on the 3rd of the following month | |
Split bill details | Split bills by department or project for internal management. Use this for internal cost allocation and budget management. This is not used for settlement. | 12:00 on the 4th of the following month |
The new Expenses and Costs console is currently in invitational preview for some users. The console automatically redirects you to your currently selected version. To access the other version, you can switch it manually in the console.
View bills
By default, an Alibaba Cloud account has permissions to access bills.
Resource Access Management (RAM) users must be granted the AliyunBSSReadOnlyAccess (read-only permission for Expenses and Costs) permission.
View monthly bills
Legacy Console
Go to User Center - Monthly Bill Overview to view a summary of your spending by billing cycle (the month of the bill). You can also switch accounts to view the spending summary of a linked financial account.
The page displays the following information:
The monthly bill for the selected account. This is the bill data for the actual settlement with Alibaba Cloud.
The spending trend for the last 6 months and the product spending distribution by billing cycle for the selected account.
New console
Go to the Overview of Monthly Bill page to view a summary of your bill. This includes key fields such as Tax-inclusive Payable Amount, Paid Amount, and OutStanding Amount.
Tax-inclusive Payable Amount: The final amount you need to pay for your cloud resources for the current month. This amount is calculated after all discounts, subscription deductions (such as savings plans), and coupon deductions are applied.
Paid Amount: The amount you have actually paid. This is the sum of payments made by cash, vouchers, and prepaid cards.
OutStanding Amount: The remaining unsettled amount. The formula is: OutStanding Amount = Tax-inclusive Payable Amount - Paid Amount.
The status of the bill for the current month is Being billed. If a bill from a previous month has an outstanding balance, its status is Not fully settled. After the bill is paid in full, the status changes to Cleared.
On the Billing Overview page, you can switch between different dimensions to view summarized data, such as By Product, By Resource Purchase Account, By Organization (for enterprise accounts only), By Service Entity, and By The Status Of Hit Discounts.
On the Billing Overview page, you can click Export Bill in the upper-right corner to export a Monthly Bill in PDF or a Cost Summary in CSV.
View spending details
Legacy Console
You can use detailed bills to view your spending information on Alibaba Cloud, such as the billable items, unit prices, usage, prices, and resource plan deductions for products. You can also adjust the statistical items and period, and filter and export the relevant data as needed.
Data is updated on a T+1 basis and includes unsettled (not yet billed, accumulating) pay-as-you-go data for the current month.
You can filter and view data by the following dimensions:
Resource Group: Select a configured resource group to filter the data.
Instance Name/Instance ID: Search for the bill details of a resource by its instance name or ID.
Statistical Item: Query bill details by billable item, instance, product, account, or cost center.
Statistical Period: Query bill details by billing cycle, day, or itemized detail.
If you are logged on with a main financial account, you can view the data of linked financial accounts by filtering by account.
New console
The Bill Details page lists the spending details for each billable item (such as instances, storage, and traffic) for each billing cycle. You can also aggregate the data by instance for analysis.
You can click 
in the upper-right corner of the list to customize the displayed fields.
If you want to view which cloud products generated spending each day, you can set the Bill Generation Date or Statistical Period to Day and view the Amount Payable column in the spending details.
Click the 
button on the right to export the spending details. You can export data from the last 18 months.
View split bill details
Legacy Console
Cost allocation involves reassigning cloud resource fees based on management needs. Fees are split to a finer granularity, such as instances or buckets, or aggregated by dimensions, such as cost centers or tags. This serves as a reference for internal cost splitting and allocation.
To use the split bill feature for the first time, you must manually enable it on the Split Bill page. The feature is free of charge. After you enable it, you can view the split data the next day.
Custom analysis: Filter data by criteria such as billing cycle, product, instance ID/name, and attached resource ID/name. You can also view data by billing cycle, day, or itemized detail.
Customize columns: Click the Customize Columns button in the upper-right corner of the report to select and save the fields that you want to display. This setting only affects the display in the console and does not affect the exported content.
Export split bills: Click the Export Bill CSV button in the upper-right corner of the report to export Currently Selected or All Content. On the Export Records page, you can download the exported file.
New console
Cost allocation involves reassigning cloud resource fees based on management needs. Fees are split to a finer granularity, such as instances or buckets, or aggregated by dimensions, such as cost centers or tags. This serves as a reference for internal cost splitting and allocation.
You must enable the Split Bill feature before you can use it for the first time. Go to the Split Bill page and click Enable Now. This feature is free of charge. After you enable the feature, you can view the split bill data on the next day.
Custom analysis: Customize analysis dimensions based on filter criteria such as product, commodity, and time.
Customize columns: Click the
button in the upper-right corner of the report to customize and save the fields. Customizing columns only affects the fields displayed in the console and does not affect the exported report.Export split bill details: Click the
button in the upper-right corner of the report to export the details. You can download the exported file from the Export Details page.
To subscribe to bill data and store it in OSS or MaxCompute, see Subscribe to bills.
Reconcile bills
Legacy Console
When reconciling cloud resource bill fees, you can use the following formula in Bill Details to calculate the amount payable (pre-tax):
Amount Payable (Pre-tax) = List Price - Discount Amount - Coupon Deduction - Savings Plan Gross Deduction Amount.
List Price: Also known as the official list price, this is the original spending amount calculated based on the list price.
Discount Amount: The discount amount generated from contract discounts, official website promotions, and other offers.
Coupon Deduction: The amount deducted by coupons.
Savings Plan Gross Deduction Amount: The gross list price of the pay-as-you-go cloud resources that are covered by a savings plan.
After you calculate the Amount Payable (Before Tax), you can verify the accuracy of the Amount Payable (Payment Currency) in Monthly Bill Overview. Because of rounding, where digits from the 3rd to the 10th decimal place are discarded, the Amount Payable (Payment Currency) is usually less than or equal to the calculated Amount Payable (Before Tax). You can confirm the exact amount by clicking View Details for the Monthly Bill Overview entry.
New console
You can use your bill to sequentially check your purchased resources, discounts, coupons, and the amount payable.
Check purchased resources
You can use the bill to check if the listed products, commodities, or resources match your actual purchases. You can log on to the console to view the resource distribution. Pay special attention to usage differences across regions to ensure billing accuracy.
On the Bill Details page, you can use the Resource or Product information in the bill details list to identify which cloud resource generated the cost.
Check discounts
On the Overview of Monthly Bill page, switch to the By The Status Of Hit Discounts tab to check if any discounts are applied to the monthly bill.
Click View Details to view the overview of Hit the Discount.
On the Hit the Discount page, you can view the details of the discount.
On the Missed Discount page, click View Details to go to the Discount Reconciliation page and View Cause.
Check coupon usage
On the Bill Details page, you can view the total amount deducted by coupons in the Coupon Deduction Amount field in the consumption details.
Check the amount payable
After you confirm that the purchased resources, discounts, and coupon usage in your bill are all correct, you can use the following formula to verify the final amount payable:
Amount Payable = Gross Amount - Subscription Deduction Amount (Savings Plan Deduction Amount) - Discount Amount - Coupon Deduction Amount
Pay bills
Legacy Console
We recommend paying your monthly bill by bank transfer.
On the Account Overview page, you can enable the Automatic Payment feature. Then, you can pay the monthly bill by initiating a remittance to the bank account on the monthly invoice. When Alibaba Cloud receives the remittance, it automatically pays the unpaid monthly bills in chronological order, from oldest to newest, until all monthly bills are paid or the remittance is fully used.
If the Automatic Payment feature is disabled, you must manually pay the monthly bill after Alibaba Cloud receives the remittance. Follow these steps:
Go to Payment Details, click the Pending Payment tab, select a pending monthly bill, and view the monthly bill details.
After you confirm the monthly bill details, click the Pay button.
Enter the amount to be paid, select a payment method, and then click the Pay button.
New console
Your monthly bill is generated at 12:00 on the 2nd of the following month. After it is generated, you can make the payment in the following ways:
Automatic settlement: If your account has sufficient credit and automatic settlement is enabled (enabled by default for individual users), the system automatically settles the outstanding bill. No manual action is required.
Manual Repayment: If your spending credit is insufficient, you can go to Overview of Monthly Bill, click Pay Bill next to OutStanding Amount, and select Top-up & Remittance (Funds are automatically applied to your outstanding balance upon arrival) .
You cannot pay a bill that is being generated.
In a multi-account management scenario, a main financial account can use the Overview of Monthly Bill→Pay Bill→Transfer path to make a repayment transfer to a financial sub-account with an "Unsettled" status. After the funds are received, the system automatically settles the bill.
Set bill alerts
If you are using the new console, you can set spending alerts for your subscribed pay-as-you-go products to avoid budget overruns due to unexpectedly high costs:
In Message Center, you must confirm that you have set a recipient for Account Balance Messages. If not, you must configure it first.
Log on to the console and choose Bills > Overview of Monthly Bill.
In the upper-right corner of the Billing Overview page, click Configure Daily Bill Alert.
On the Settings page, select Alert Item, enter the Alert Threshold, and click the Add button to add an alert.
After you enable alerts, a text message reminder is sent once a day when the daily bill for a specified product (up to 10 products are supported) exceeds the alert threshold. For products billed monthly, a reminder is sent only once after the bill is generated at the beginning of the next month.