Split bill management (legacy console) - Expenses and Costs

Introduction to the split bill feature

Split billing breaks down your total costs into smaller components based on criteria that you define.

Alibaba Cloud provides the cost center feature. Cost centers allow you to establish a hierarchical structure that reflects your organization.
You can use cost centers with features such as cost allocation tags and allocation rules to efficiently organize and track your cloud spending.
After you configure your cost centers, you can access and analyze the cost data in your split bill.

You can view the specific usage and split costs for each split item in the split bill. You can use this data as a reference for internal cost allocation.

Note

If you use finance trusteeship, the primary Alibaba Cloud account must first enable the split bill feature. After the feature is enabled, RAM users can view split bill data in the User Center.

View a split bill

Important

The split bill is for internal cost allocation reference only and should not be used for financial reconciliation. Split bill data is generated after financial settlement and does not affect your actual billing amount.

The split bill shows the amortized cost for each split item. The system re-amortizes these costs after financial events, such as payments or account adjustments, occur. To ensure that bill amounts maintain a precision of two decimal places, rounding is necessary when costs cannot be divided perfectly. The system randomly assigns any remaining fractional amounts to an instance or billable item. This can cause minor discrepancies in amounts when you view the data at different times.

Log on to the Expenses And Costs console and navigate to the Manage Split - Split Bill page. On this page, you can view how each shared expense is allocated to each attached resource:

The key fields in the split bill are as follows:

Billing Cycle: The month in which the costs were incurred.
Cost Center: The cost center to which the split item's cost is allocated.
Account: The account to which the cost belongs.
Product: The name of the corresponding product.
Usage Period: The start and end time of the usage period. This field is not displayed when data is aggregated by billing cycle.
Instance ID: The instance ID from the bill. This ID represents the billing granularity and may not be the same as the cloud resource's actual instance ID. For example, the instance ID for an OSS bill might be a combination of the region and business type, such as "cn-shanghai;standard".
Instance Dimensions: Includes resource group, instance tags, public IP, private IP, region, and zone. For more information, see your detailed bill.

Note

If you add or modify instance tags, the change affects only the instance tag data in split bills that are generated after the modification.

Split Item ID: The ID of the specific split item, such as an ECS instance ID or the ID of an instance covered by a reserved instance (RI) or savings plan.
Split Item Name: The name of the specific split item, such as an ECS instance name.
Billable Item: The specific billable item, such as "Snapshot chain capacity".
Unit Price: The unit price of the billable item.
Split Usage: The usage of the split item. When aggregated by billing cycle, this field shows the total monthly usage.
Split Item Usage Percentage: The usage of the split item as a percentage of the total usage of all split items. This field is not displayed when data is aggregated by billing cycle.
Payable Amount: The allocated amount for the split item. When viewed by month, this shows the total monthly amount.
Other Payment Methods: Indicates payments made with cash, vouchers, or other credits.

Example:

A reserved instance, "RI-1", has an upfront cost of 5 units and is active from 0:00 to 5:00. It is used by a single instance, "I-1", for 2 hours from 1:00 to 3:00. The unit price is 1.

The cost allocation process is as follows:

From 0:00 to 1:00, the Split Item Name is "UNSPLIT_ITEM", and the Payable Amount is "1".
From 1:00 to 2:00, the Split Item Name is "I-1", and the Payable Amount is "1".
From 2:00 to 3:00, the Split Item Name is "I-1", and the Payable Amount is "1".
From 3:00 to 4:00, the Split Item Name is "UNSPLIT_ITEM", and the Payable Amount is "1".
From 4:00 to 5:00, the Split Item Name is "UNSPLIT_ITEM", and the Payable Amount is "1".

On the Split Bill page, you can perform the following operations:

Filter data: Click Billing Cycle to select a time range. Click Instance Name to filter by Instance Name, Instance ID, Split Item Name, or Split Item ID, and then enter the corresponding value to search for data.
Change the view: In the Statistical Period section, select By Billing Cycle or By Day to view summarized bill data. Select By Detail to view detailed bill data.
Customize columns: On the right side of the page, click Customize Columns to choose which columns to display in the list.
Export the bill: On the right side of the page, click Export Bill (CSV). In the dialog box that appears, click Current Selection to export the data that is filtered in the list. Click All Content to export all data for the primary account and its linked accounts in the selected billing cycle.

After you complete the settings, click OK to export the data.

The following table shows the relationship between splittable products and their corresponding split items as of March 2021.

Product Code	Split granularity	Description
oss	bucket	Allocates billable item costs for OSS to each bucket.
cbwp	eip	Allocates billable item costs for CBWP to each EIP.
snapshot	ecs	Allocates snapshot chain costs to each ECS instance.
cdn	domain	Allocates network costs to each domain name. The split usage for a single domain name is based on its usage under the current account's billing method. If the split item usage for Domain Name A is denoted as A, then the split item usage percentage for Domain Name A = A / SUM(A, B, C, ...).
pcdn	domain	Allocates network costs to each domain name.
dcdn	domain	Allocates network costs to each domain name. The split usage for a single domain name is based on its usage under the current account's billing method. If the split item usage for Domain Name A is denoted as A, then the split item usage percentage for Domain Name A = A / SUM(A, B, C, ...).
live	domain	Allocates network costs to each domain name. The split usage for a single domain name is based on its usage under the current account's billing method. If the split item usage for Domain Name A is denoted as A, then the split item usage percentage for Domain Name A = A / SUM(A, B, C, ...).
vod	domain	Allocates network costs to each domain name. The split usage for a single domain name is based on its usage under the current account's billing method. If the split item usage for Domain Name A is denoted as A, then the split item usage percentage for Domain Name A = A / SUM(A, B, C, ...).
newdysms_digital	SMS template	Allocates text message costs to each SMS template.
dysms_system	SMS template	Allocates text message costs to each SMS template.
dysms_operation	SMS template	Allocates text message costs to each SMS template.
dysms_intl	SMS template	Allocates text message costs to each SMS template.
RI	ECS instances, etc.	Allocates reserved instance costs to each instance that it covers.
savingplan	Each covered instance	Allocates savings plan costs to each instance that it covers.

Usage notes

In the split bill, you can view the cost center to which each split item belongs.
The Split Item Name field typically shows a user-defined identifier, such as a bucket name, domain name, or the Elastic IP (EIP) of a public bandwidth package. However, in some special cases, costs are categorized differently:
- Instance-based cloud products: A hyphen (-) in the Split Item Name field indicates that no such item exists.
  Note
  After you assign a cost center, you can view the allocation results by navigating to Expenses And Costs > Bill Management > Bill Details > Billing Details.
- Splittable cloud products: The Split Item Name field has the following special values:
  1. "UNSPLIT_ITEM": Indicates that the cost for this resource has no split items.
  2. "UNKNOWN_ITEM": Indicates that the split item for this resource cost is empty.
  Note
  For more information, see the documentation about how to allocate resources in a cost center.
For reserved instance and savings plan costs, the Split Item Name field has the following special meanings:
- "UNSPLIT_ITEM": Indicates that the reserved capacity expired unused.
- "UNKNOWN_ITEM": Indicates that the reserved capacity has not yet reached its active start time.
- After an RI is split or merged, the resulting RI itself does not have a cost. The split amount is also 0. The cost remains on the instance before the adjustment.