Troubleshooting AWS Billing identity and access

Use the following information to help you diagnose and fix common issues that you might encounter when working with Billing and IAM.

I am not authorized to perform an action in Billing

If the AWS Management Console tells you that you're not authorized to perform an action, then you must contact your administrator for assistance. Your administrator is the person who provided you with your sign-in credentials.

The following example error occurs when the mateojackson user tries to use the console to view details about a fictional my-example-widget resource but does not have the fictional billing:GetWidget permissions.

User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/mateojackson is not authorized to perform: billing:GetWidget on resource: my-example-widget

In this case, Mateo asks his administrator to update his policies to allow him to access the my-example-widget resource using the billing:GetWidget action.

I am not authorized to perform iam:PassRole

If you receive an error that you're not authorized to perform the iam:PassRole action, your policies must be updated to allow you to pass a role to Billing.

Some AWS services allow you to pass an existing role to that service instead of creating a new service role or service-linked role. To do this, you must have permissions to pass the role to the service.

The following example error occurs when an IAM user named marymajor tries to use the console to perform an action in Billing. However, the action requires the service to have permissions that are granted by a service role. Mary does not have permissions to pass the role to the service.

User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/marymajor is not authorized to perform: iam:PassRole

In this case, Mary's policies must be updated to allow her to perform the iam:PassRole action.

If you need help, contact your AWS administrator. Your administrator is the person who provided you with your sign-in credentials.

I want to view my access keys

After you create your IAM user access keys, you can view your access key ID at any time. However, you can't view your secret access key again. If you lose your secret key, you must create a new access key pair.

Access keys consist of two parts: an access key ID (for example, AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE) and a secret access key (for example, wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY). Like a user name and password, you must use both the access key ID and secret access key together to authenticate your requests. Manage your access keys as securely as you do your user name and password.

Important

Do not provide your access keys to a third party, even to help find your canonical user ID. By doing this, you might give someone permanent access to your AWS account.

When you create an access key pair, you are prompted to save the access key ID and secret access key in a secure location. The secret access key is available only at the time you create it. If you lose your secret access key, you must add new access keys to your IAM user. You can have a maximum of two access keys. If you already have two, you must delete one key pair before creating a new one. To view instructions, see Managing access keys in the IAM User Guide.

I'm an administrator and want to allow others to access Billing

To allow others to access Billing, you must grant permission to the people or applications that need access. If you are using AWS IAM Identity Center to manage people and applications, you assign permission sets to users or groups to define their level of access. Permission sets automatically create and assign IAM policies to IAM roles that are associated with the person or application. For more information, see Permission sets in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.

If you are not using IAM Identity Center, you must create IAM entities (users or roles) for the people or applications that need access. You must then attach a policy to the entity that grants them the correct permissions in Billing. After the permissions are granted, provide the credentials to the user or application developer. They will use those credentials to access AWS. To learn more about creating IAM users, groups, policies, and permissions, see IAM Identities and Policies and permissions in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

I want to allow people outside of my AWS account to access my Billing resources

You can create a role that users in other accounts or people outside of your organization can use to access your resources. You can specify who is trusted to assume the role. For services that support resource-based policies or access control lists (ACLs), you can use those policies to grant people access to your resources.

To learn more, consult the following:

• To learn whether Billing supports these features, see How AWS Billing works with IAM.

• To learn how to provide access to your resources across AWS accounts that you own, see Providing access to an IAM user in another AWS account that you own in the IAM User Guide.

• To learn how to provide access to your resources to third-party AWS accounts, see Providing access to AWS accounts owned by third parties in the IAM User Guide.

• To learn how to provide access through identity federation, see Providing access to externally authenticated users (identity federation) in the IAM User Guide.

• To learn the difference between using roles and resource-based policies for cross-account access, see Cross account resource access in IAM in the IAM User Guide.