Budget methods
You can set the budgeted amount of your cost or usage budget in one of the following ways. You can set one of these budgets no matter whether you're budgeting in a traditional sense—tracking to plan, for example—or if you want to monitor spend and receive alerts when costs increase beyond your threshold.
- Fixed
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With a fixed budget, you can monitor the same amount every budget period. For example, you can use a cost budget with the fixed method to monitor your costs against $100 every budget period.
- Planned
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The planned budgeting method is available for only monthly or quarterly budgets. With a planned budget, you can set a different amount to monitor each budget period. For example, you can use a monthly cost budget with the planned method to monitor your costs against $100 in the first month, $110 in the second month, and other amounts in the remaining months.
With a planned budget, you can set the budget amount for up to 12 months or 4 quarters. After 12 months or 4 quarters, your budget amount is fixed at the last budget amount.
- Auto-adjusting
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An auto-adjusting budget dynamically sets your budget amount based on your spending or usage over a time range that you specify. The historical or forecast time range that you select is the auto-adjustment baseline for your budget.
At the beginning of each new period, Amazon Budgets calculates your budget amount from your cost or usage data within the baseline time range. Make sure to select a time range that best matches your expectations for your account’s Amazon costs or usage. If you select a time range with lower usage than you typically expect, then you might get more budget alerts than you need. If you select a time range with higher usage than you typically expect, then you might not get as many budget alerts as you need.
For example, you can create an auto-adjusting cost budget with a baseline time range of the last six months. In this scenario, if your average spending each budget period in the last six months was $100, your auto-adjusted budget amount in the new period is $100.
If Amazon Budgets updates your budget amount based on changes in your spending or usage, all budget alert notification subscribers get a notification that the budget amount changed.
Note
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When calculating your auto-adjusted budget amount, Amazon Budgets doesn't include periods at the beginning of your baseline time range that don't have cost or usage data. For example, assume that you set your baseline time range as the last four quarters. However, your account had no cost data in the first quarter. Then, in this case, Amazon Budgets calculates your auto-adjusted budget amount from only the last three quarters.
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You see a temporary forecast while you're creating or editing a budget. After you save your budget, your auto-adjusted budget is set for the first time.
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