What are the features of bill management, view bills and bill details -

Features of bill management

Bills provide a monthly summary of your consumption on Alibaba Cloud, detailing the usage of cloud resources. Bill management provides the following features: bill overview and bill details.

Feature

Scenario

Description

Issuance time

Bill overview

This feature provides a monthly summary of your bills that are aggregated from the detailed consumption data of cloud services. You can reconcile bills, issue invoices, and complete payments based on the information provided by the bill overview.

You can set the billing overview cycle to one or more months. After you set the billing cycle, you can view the bill amount of each month you selected, aggregate bills from different perspectives, export monthly bills, and settle payments in a unified manner.

The amount and status of the monthly bill for the current month are continuously updated before the month ends.

The final monthly bill of a month is issued after 12:00 (UTC+8) on the second day of the following month. If you want to complete repayments and issue invoices, the final monthly bills that are generated after 12:00 (UTC+8) on the second day of the following month shall prevail.

Bill details

This feature provides the details of the bills generated for the cloud resources you use within a billing cycle. You can review the calculation process of the resource usage, bill amounts, and discounts in each bill.

Bill details provide detailed information of a bill. A bill is generated for each deducted fee. You can view the cloud service, cloud resource information, list price of each billable item, discounts, resource usage, and payable amount for each bill.

The details of bills generated in the current month are continuously updated as the pay-as-you-go or subscription fees of cloud resources increase. For example, a bill is generated each hour for a pay-as-you-go cloud resource that is billed on an hourly basis.

The final details of all bills generated in the current month are issued at 12:00 (UTC+8) on the third day of the following month. The bill details generated before the final issuance time are for reference only. If you need to reconcile bills, the final bill details shall prevail.

If you have other requirements for bills, such as secondary bill splitting or cost analysis for enterprise management, refer to the following table.

Feature	Scenario	Description	Issuance time
Usage details	Download cloud resource usage details.	You can export the original usage details of cloud resources.	The cloud resource usage in the current month is continuously updated. The final usage details for the current month are issued after 12:00 (UTC+8) on the second day of the following month.
Bill splitting details	This feature displays fine-grained bills after you perform bill splitting. This feature is suitable for secondary bill splitting or cost analysis for enterprise management.	You can split bills in a fine-grained manner to allocate cloud resource fees to meet requirements such as enterprise management, cost analysis, or resource-level cost control. Note The bill splitting details generated before the final issuance time are for reference only. If you need to reconcile bills, the final bill splitting details shall prevail. You must first activate this feature. Bill splitting details are displayed 24 hours after you activate this feature. The bill splitting granularity of cloud resources is different from the metering and billing granularity of cloud resources. For example, the billing granularity of Object Storage Service (OSS) buckets is region but the bill splitting granularity of OSS buckets is bucket. As a result, the bill splitting feature does not provide the calculation process of resource usage, bill amounts, and discounts.	The bill splitting details of bills in the current month are continuously updated as the pay-as-you-go or subscription fees of cloud resources increase. For example, a bill is generated each hour for a pay-as-you-go cloud resource that is billed on an hourly basis. The bill splitting details are updated as hourly bills are generated. The final bill splitting details for the current month are issued at 12:00 (UTC+8) on the fourth day of the following month. The bill splitting details generated before the final issuance time are for reference only. If you need to reconcile bills, the final bill splitting details shall prevail.
Cost allocation	This feature allocates costs by department for an enterprise.	You can allocate costs generated within a specific time period. This feature allows you to allocate the pay-as-you-go or subscription fees of cloud resources generated within a billing cycle into costs in shorter time periods based on specific rules.	The cost allocation details of bills generated in the current month are continuously updated as the pay-as-you-go or subscription fees of cloud resources increase. The final cost allocation details for the current month are issued at 12:00 (UTC+8) on the sixth day of the following month.