Cost allocation
Cloud cost allocation to teams, products and cost centres
Ordered rules match AWS, Azure and Google Cloud costs by account or subscription, resource group, resource name or tag, and assign them to a segment. Cost that no rule claims stays visible as unallocated.
Permanent Free plan with no time limit
The ownership gap
Provider structure is not organizational responsibility
Accounts are not teams
Cloud accounts and subscriptions rarely match the way engineering and finance discuss ownership.
Tags are incomplete
Tags help, but shared services, inherited infrastructure, and missing metadata still leave spend unassigned.
Showback needs repeatability
A one-off spreadsheet split cannot explain how the same rule will treat the next billing period.
Rule anatomy
A rule that another reader can inspect
Each rule matches cost with a filter and assigns it to one segment, or marks it shared. Rules apply in order, the first match wins, and a changed rule recalculates past months as well.
When
- Tag "team" equals "platform"
Then
- Assign the cost to the platform segment
- Count it in budgets scoped to that segment
- Show it on the segment's line in cost reports
- Cost row
A cost row from the provider's billing data
- Rule 1
Does its condition match?
- Yes
For example tag team equals platform: the rule's segment, the platform segment, counted in its budgets and shown on its line in cost reports
- No
The next rule in order
- Yes
- The next rule
Does its condition match?
- Yes
The rule's segment
- None matches
Unallocated: visible on its own line
- Yes
- Changes
A changed rule recalculates past months as well
In the product
A repeatable allocation model
Segments
Each segment names an owning team, a product and a cost centre. Shared cost has its own bucket.
Rule conditions
Match cost by account or subscription, resource group, resource name or tag, with equals, starts with, ends with or contains.
Shared-cost allocation
Mark spend as shared and spread it across segments in proportion to their direct spend, so the total stays exact.
Tag coverage
See how much of your spend carries tags, overall and per tag key, before you write rules on them.
Showback
Group cost reports by segment to show each team, product and cost centre its spend, with unclaimed cost on one unallocated line.
Same rules in budgets and reports
Group a saved report by segment, or scope a budget to a segment through the Public API and Terraform; both read the same rules.
Related pages
- Team management
Teams, roles and access for the people who own the cost.
- Budgets
Budgets for the workspace or a segment, tracked against actual spend.
- Cloud cost reporting for finance teams
Allocated amounts in euros or GBP, budgets and scheduled reports for finance.
- The allocation terms in the glossary
Segment, allocation coverage, shared cost, showback and chargeback, defined.
- The showback for teams guide
Step by step in the product, on the documentation portal.
From the handbook
- How cloud billing works
Billing accounts and hierarchies
- How cloud billing works
Support plans and how they are billed
- What cloud services cost
Identity and security services: what they cost
- Allocation and ownership
Why cost allocation comes before optimisation
- Allocation and ownership
Allocation by account, subscription and project
- Allocation and ownership
Segments and hierarchies in cost allocation
Make ownership part of the cost data
Start on the permanent Free plan and build allocation rules around the teams, products and cost centres you already use.
Permanent Free plan with no time limit