Controlling cost management data access with Billing View
Billing View is a feature that helps you manage and control access to cost management data within your Amazon environment. With Billing View, cost management data is represented as an Amazon resource. Through resource-based policies, you can configure what data is accessible to an account when using Amazon Billing and Cost Management tools. A billing view is identified by a unique Amazon Resource Name (ARN), which can be referenced in identity-based policies to perform specific IAM actions on the cost management data contained in that billing view.
There are three different types of billing views:
| Type | Description | Managed by | Shareable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary billing view | By default, each account has access to its primary billing view, which contains all the cost management data associated with that account. For the management account of an organization, this includes all cost management data incurred by all accounts within the organization. For standalone Amazon accounts not using Amazon Organizations, as well as for member accounts within an organization, the primary billing view contains all cost management data incurred within the individual account. | Amazon | Not shareable with other accounts |
| Billing group billing view | Accounts that have enabled Amazon Billing Conductor also have access to billing group billing views, which correspond to each billing group. For more information about billing groups, see Billing groups in the Amazon Billing Conductor User Guide. | Amazon | Not shareable with other accounts |
| Custom billing view | Customers can create and delete custom billing views. These billing views are derived from the primary billing view by applying filters to specify which subset of data from the primary billing view should be included. | Customer | Shareable with other accounts in an organization |
Billing View allows you to create custom billing views from your organization’s management (payer) account, which you can define to include a set of filtered cost management data you have access to. A custom billing view resource can then be shared with member accounts in your organization. When a custom billing view is shared with an account, that account can then access the filtered cost management data defined in the custom billing view.
You can use custom billing views to grant end users and application owners access to relevant cost management data without requiring access to the management account. Customers with Amazon Organizations enabled can create custom billing views containing a subset of cost management data from the management account's primary billing view, filtered by cost allocation tags or accounts.
Key benefits of using custom billing views include:
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Streamlined access: Enable business unit owners who manage multiple member accounts to access all of their cost management data without needing to access each account individually, saving end users time and eliminating the need for manual data aggregation.
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Reduced management account access: Eliminate the need for end users to access the management account of your organization to access cost management data spanning multiple accounts.
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Native Amazon Cost Management access: Empower end users across your organization to independently visualize, understand, and forecast their Amazon spend using Cost Explorer and the Amazon Billing and Cost Management home page.
By sharing custom billing views with other accounts, application owners can monitor their application-level Amazon spend using Cost Explorer. This eliminates the need for application owners to access the management account or manually aggregate information across multiple accounts. The following sections guide you through the process of creating, sharing, managing, and using custom billing views.