Cost Account Management

The CloudSpend Admin section contains the set of configuration settings that you can view and configure for your CloudSpend accounts. This section also provides you with a summary of your CloudSpend account details like multiple currency management, scheduled reports, configured tag profiles, and set budgets.

Table of Contents

• Account Settings
  • Customize Report
• Multicurrency Management
  • Why Multicurrency?
  • Use case
  • Multicurrency configuration
  • Configuring a display currency
  • Adding an exchange rate
• Scheduled Reports
• Profiles

Account Settings

Log in to your CloudSpend account navigate to General > Settings to view the Account Settings. 

Here, you can:

• Integrate with Site24x7: Toggle Yes to integrate your CloudSpend account with your Site24x7 monitoring account. This integration will help you view your budgets or accounts in the Site24x7 web client and get alerts in case of budget threshold breaches.
• Customize Report: You can customize how'd you want your organization to receive CloudSpend reports.

Customize Report

1. Logo: Upload your company's logo.
2. Title Background Color: Choose a color based on your preference.
3. Title Foreground Color: Choose a color based on your preference.
4. Company Name: Enter your company name.
5. Sender Email: Add an email address from which you'd like to receive the report emails.
6. Click Save.

 

Multiple Currency Management

CloudSpend's Currency Management feature enables you to view costs in multiple currencies for 25 geographic locations for different transactions. The currency in which a cost account is displayed is called the Display Currency. The Display Currency is set to USD ($) by default.

The currencies that are now available in the Currency Management tab for configuration are:

• Argentine Peso (ARS)
• Australian Dollar (AUD)
• Brazilian Real (BRL)
• Canadian Dollar (CAD)
• Swiss Franc (CHF)
• Chinese Yuan (CNY)
• Danish Krone (DKK)
• Euro (EUR)
• Pound Sterling (GBP)
• Hong Kong Dollar (HKD)
• Indonesian Rupiah (IDR)
• Indian Rupee (INR)
• Japanese Yen (JPY)
• South Korean Won (KRW)
• Mexican Peso (MXN)
• Malaysian Ringgit (MYR)
• Norwegian Krone (NOK)
• New Zealand Dollar (NZD)
• Russian Ruble (RUB)
• Saudi Riyal (SAR)
• Swedish Krona (SEK)
• Turkish Lira (TRY)
• New Taiwan Dollar (TWD)
• United States Dollar (USD)
• South African Rand (ZAR)

Why Multicurrency?

The Multicurrency feature allows you to:

• Monitor your cost account expenses or budget in your preferred currency.
• Easily set and update the exchange rates.
• Track forecasts of your cost account in your preferred currency.
• Facilitate international business with ease.

Use case

Consider you have a cost account with a billing period of three months from March to May. If your base currency is in USD and you change your display currency to Euros in the month of April, then the exchange rate for your display currency is billed according to the previous month's conversion rates. In this case, the exchange rate is configured based on the conversion rates in March. You can also configure the exchange rate for your base currency by navigating to the Currency Management tab > Add Exchange Rate dialog box.

Multicurrency configuration

You can configure your preferred currency at the budget level as well as the cost account level.

• Budget level
  To set the preferred currency for your budget, go to Budget > Configure Budget. Once saved, the currency configured for a budget cannot be reversed.
• Account level
  You can configure the display currency according to your preference for your cost account and it will be applicable across your CloudSpend account. If you try to change the display currency, the exchange rates are fetched from the available billing months configured for the cost accounts.

To add an exchange rate for your cost account, you need to define a base currency first. The exchange rate is the price of the display currency with respect to the base currency. The exchange rate is always configured based on the previous month's conversion rates.

You can view your base and display currency preferences, the currency conversion rates, and the month for which these are applicable in the Currency Management > Exchange Rates section. You can also edit, configure, or delete the currency conversion rates in the Exchange Rates section. You can delete only those exchange rates that you've added or edited.

Configuring a display currency

To configure a display currency:

1. Log in to your CloudSpend account.
2. Choose Admin in the left navigation pane.
3. Click the Currency Management tab.
4. Select the desired currency from the Display Currency field.
5. Click Save.

Adding an exchange rate

To add an exchange rate:

1. Log in to your CloudSpend account.
2. Choose Admin in the left navigation pane.
3. Click the CurrencyManagement tab.
4. Click AddExchangeRate in the Exchange Rates section.
5. In the Add Exchange Ratepop-up window, enter the following details:
   • Applicable For: Select the applicable month to set the conversion rate.
   • Base Currency: Select the required base currency.
   • Display Currency: Choose the desired display currency.
   • Conversion Rate: Enter the conversion rate.
     
6. Click Save.

Scheduled Reports

Slice-and-dice reporting is an ideal way to track spending effectively. Reports customized to your needs will be delivered to your inbox as often as you choose. Use reports to analyze the cost per user, team, project, and resource type based on consumption.

A summary of all the reports that have been scheduled until now or those that can be scheduled will be provided in this section.

1. Accounts

   The default frequency for this report to be scheduled is monthly. You can add a Display Name for the report, and choose an AWS account and email ID to which the report is to be delivered. Click Save to schedule the report.

2. Spend Analysis

   The reporting from the spend analysis tab can be scheduled to deliver on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. You can add a Display Name, and choose an AWS account and email ID to which the report is to be delivered. Click Save to schedule the report.

3. Resource Explorer

   A unique aspect of scheduling reports from the resource explorer section is that you get to choose the grouping criteria based on which reports will be generated. The various grouping criteria are Region, Service, and Accounts. Reports can be delivered on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. You can add a Display name, and choose an AWS account and email ID to which the report is to be delivered. Click Save to schedule the report.

   Learn more about Resource Explorer here.

4. BU Spend Analysis

   Schedule reports exclusively for Business Units (BU) with the spend analysis view by choosing your respective BU from the drop-down. The reports can be scheduled to be delivered on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. You can add a Display Name, and choose an AWS account and email ID to which the report is to be delivered. Click Save to schedule the report.

   Learn more about Business Units here.

5. BU Resource Explorer

   A report scheduled from the BU Resource Explorer lets you group the reports according to the criterion you choose. The grouping criteria available are Region, Service, and Accounts. Group the reports to be delivered to a particular BU by selecting the BU from the drop-down. The reports can be scheduled to be delivered on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. You can add a Display Name, and choose an AWS account and email ID to which the report is to be delivered. Click Save to schedule the report.

6. BU List

   Schedule reports exclusively for your BUs by choosing your respective BU from the drop-down. The default frequency for this report to be scheduled is monthly. You can add a display name, and choose an AWS account and email ID to which the report is to be delivered. Click Save to schedule the report.

Profiles

A consolidated view of all the profiles and policies that have been set up for your CloudSpend account can be viewed here.

1. Tag Profile

   Tags are a powerful feature used to organize your cloud costs. Create customized tags using logical operations based on the usage type of an account.

   For example, consider a project that contains all of the services applicable for an application. One set of tags could represent the components of that application (i.e. front end and back end) and another set of tags could represent common costs across applications (i.e. development, security, and testing).

   Learn more about creating a Tag Profile here.

2. Budget Policy

   The budget policy section lets you view or add budgets for your CloudSpend accounts at an account level or a business-unit level. An advantage of adding a budget policy is that you get to reuse the same budget across multiple teams. By setting up targets for your linked accounts or business units, you can continuously track your cloud expenditure, and choose to receive an email notification when a team overshoots a budget.

   Learn more about creating a Budget Policy here.