Creating cost categories

You can create cost categories to organize your cost and usage information. Regular accounts and the management account in AWS Organizations have default access to create cost categories. Rules aren't mutually exclusive, and you can control the order that the rules apply in. Allow up to 24 hours after creating a cost category for your usage records to be updated with values.

There are five major steps in creating cost categories.

1. Define a name for your cost category (for example, business units, Teams).

2. (Optional) Add a tag to your cost category. For more information about tags, see Tagging AWS resources in the AWS General Reference guide.

3. (Optional) Set the lookback period for your cost category rules. The default will be set to the current month.

4. Write the rules to categorize your costs into cost category values (for example, Team-A, Team-B, Team-C).

5. (Optional) Define rules to split charges between your cost category values.

   For more information about split charges, see Splitting charges within cost categories.

Use the following procedure to create a new cost category.

To create a cost category

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Billing console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/.

2. In the navigation pane, choose AWS Cost Categories.

3. At the top of the page, choose Create Cost category.

4. Under Cost category details, enter the name of your cost category. Your cost category name must be unique within your account.

5. (Optional) To add a tag, choose Add new resource tag and enter a key and value.

6. (Optional) To add a lookback period for your cost category rules, choose the Apply cost category rules starting any specified month from the previous 12 months radio button, and select the month where you want to retroactively apply the rules.

7. Choose Next.

8. Choose Define category values.

   Use either the Rule Builder or JSON editor to define your cost categories.

   For more information about the JSON request syntax, see the AWS Billing and Cost Management API Reference.

9. For Value, enter the name of the cost category value.

10. Choose a Rule Type, either Regular or Inherited value.

11. Choose a billing Dimension from the list. For a regular rule type, you can choose Accounts, Service, Charge Type (for example, recurring reservation fee), Tag key, Region, Usage Type, or Cost Category. (You can choose Cost Category to create hierarchical relationships among your cost categories.) For an inherited value rule type, you can choose Account or Tag key (Cost Allocation tag key).

12. For a regular rule type, choose Operator from the dropdown list. Your options are Is, Contains, Starts with, and Ends with.

    Note

    Contains, Starts with, and Ends with are only supported with Accounts and Tag dimensions. If you use these operators with Accounts, the engine evaluates against account name, and not account ID.

    Choose a filtered value for your Dimension in the attribute selector.

13. Choose a dimension operator for your rule from the dropdown. You can choose between AND and OR. AND is the default operator. Changing the operator impacts all dimensions in this rule.

14. For an inherited value rule type, choose Account or Tag for Dimension. If Tag is the Dimension, choose the Tag key to inherit the cost category value from.

    Note

    The Account dimension uses account names, not account IDs for the inherited cost category value.

15. (Optional) Add a default value. It categorizes all unmatched costs to this value.

16. (Optional) To rearrange the rule order, use the arrows or change the number on the top right of each rule.

17. (Optional) To delete a rule, choose Remove on the top right of each rule.

18. (Optional) Under Define split charges, choose Next.

    For more information about split charge rules, see Splitting charges within cost categories.

    1. Choose Add a split charge.

    2. Under Source value, choose your cost category value.

       Uncategorized cost isn't an option at this time, but is an available source if you edit your cost category. For more information, see Editing cost categories.

    3. Under Target values, choose one or more cost category values you wish to allocate split charges to.

    4. Under Charge allocation method, choose how you want to allocate your costs. Your choices are proportional, fixed, and even split.

       For fixed charge allocation, enter the percentage amount to allocate each target cost category value.

    5. Choose Create split charge.

    6. Choose Add a split charge and repeat steps to define more split charges.

19. Choose Create cost category.