Azure Cost Management and Billing updates – May 2021 | Azure Blog and Updates

Since raw usage and charges include all details about the billed usage, you’ll notice a few differences that may go unnoticed in the portal. As you know, detailed usage includes resource, subscription, and product details in each row. With the addition of cost allocation, you’ll also find a new costAllocationRuleName column to indicate which cost allocation rule is applied for any adjustments. This column will be empty for all of the actual, billed charges.

When you’ve applied a cost allocation rule, you’ll also see 2 additional records. The first will remove the cost from the original subscription, resource group, or tag. The second will add it to the targeted subscription, resource group, or tag.

Looking at the above example, each record adds up to no cost in the original subscription and a new resource in the target subscription. Pretty simple. Just make sure to filter out records with a cost allocation rule when reconciling your invoices with usage data.

Learn more about cost allocation and let us know what you’d like to see next.

Management group exports in Azure Government

Learn more about organizing subscriptions into management groups and automating usage and charges downloads with Cost Management exports.

Reminder: Cloudyn retiring on June 30

If you’re a Cloud Solution Provider still using Cloudyn, we’ve already reached out to you, but as a reminder, you (and your customers) will be able to view, manage, and optimize costs using Azure Cost Management once you transition to Microsoft Customer Agreement and an Azure plan. Again, Cloudyn will be retiring on June 30, 2021, and will no longer be accessible. We thank you for your patronage and look forward to supporting you and your financial goals with Azure Cost Management.

Selecting relative dates in the cost analysis preview

You can already select the last 7, 30, or 90 days or 1, 3, 6, or 12 months with the date picker. Now you can pick any arbitrary number of days, weeks, or months to fine-tune your view to exactly what you need to cover. Selecting the last 28 days, as an example, will give you a view of your cost over a steady, 4-week period without daily fluctuations caused by more or fewer weekends, depending on the day of the week.

Relative dates are always before the current period. For instance, the last three days will be yesterday and the two previous days, but will not include the cost of the current day. To include the current period, simply select the Include today option. The same applies for weeks and months. The exact date range is shown to help you confirm what it is today.

Once again, this new flexibility is based on all the great feedback you’ve shared when using cost analysis in the portal. This is still early days for the cost analysis preview, but these options will become even more valuable over time as charts, filters, and saved views are added. Keep using the preview and let us know what you’d like to see next.

Help improve usability for Azure reservation and savings features

What’s new in Cost Management Labs

• Updated: Improved custom date selection in the cost analysis preview – Now available in the public portal
  
  Select one month, a range of months, or start and end dates for a range of days in the cost analysis preview. New this month is the ability to also select a relative date range of days, weeks, or months. Share feedback about this preview.
• Create up to 100 views per scope – Now available in the public portal
  
  You already know you can create and save customized views within cost analysis. Now you can create up to 100 private and 100 shared views per scope in cost analysis, giving you even more flexibility to build out the views you need to analyze your costs.
• View cost for your resources
  
  The cost for your resources is one click away from the resource overview in the preview portal. Just click View cost to quickly jump to the cost of that particular resource.
• Remember last-used scope
  
  Azure Cost Management now remembers the last scope you used, making it easier than ever to pick up where you left off. You can see the preview in Cost Management Labs.
• Change scope from the menu
  
  Change scope from the menu for quicker navigation. You can opt-in using Try Preview. Share feedback about this preview.
• Open configuration items in the main menu
  
  This is an experimental option to show the selected configuration screen as a nested menu item in the Cost Management menu. You can opt-in using Try Preview from Cost Management Labs. Share feedback about this preview.
• Streamlined Cost Management menu
  
  Only show settings in Configuration. Remove Cloudyn, Exports, and Connectors for AWS from the Cost Management menu. You can opt-in using Try Preview from Cost Management Labs. Share feedback about this preview.

Of course, that’s not all. Every change in Azure Cost Management is available in Cost Management Labs a week before it’s in the full Azure portal. We’re eager to hear your thoughts and understand what you’d like to see next. What are you waiting for? Try Cost Management Labs today.

New ways to save money with Azure

This month, you have four new generally available offerings to help you optimize your costs:

New videos and learning opportunities

For those visual learners out there, there are two new videos:

Want a more guided experience? Start with Control Azure spending and manage bills with Azure Cost Management and Billing.

Documentation updates

Here are a couple documentation updates you might be interested in:

What’s next?

These are just a few of the big updates from last month. Don’t forget to check out the previous Azure Cost Management and Billing updates. We’re always listening and making constant improvements based on your feedback, so please keep the feedback coming.