Budget routine
A budget routine is the few objects that keep spend in view between reviews: a budget per period, alerts that speak up when something moves, a channel they reach, and a report that arrives every week. Each step links to the page that owns the detail.
Before you start
- A connection with at least a few weeks of history, so trends and forecasts have something to work with.
- The Owner or Editor team role in the workspace, and an organization role that can add notification channels; see Access model.
1. Decide what to budget
A budget in the product measures the whole workspace. If the routine is per team, give each team its own workspace, or create segment budgets through the Public API. See Budgets.
2. Create the budget
Create a monthly budget with an amount based on the last few months. Check a cost report with Show forecast on first, so the amount starts from where spend is heading. See Budgets and Cost amounts.
3. Add a notification channel
Add the Slack channel, Teams channel, webhook or email address where the team wants to hear about cost, and send a test. See Notification channels.
4. Watch for sudden changes
Detected anomalies reach every enabled channel on their own. For a threshold of your own, such as spend rising by a percentage week over week, create a cost alert through the Public API and name the channel. Budget thresholds show in the product only. See Alerts and Insights.
5. Send a weekly report
Save a cost report for the budget's scope over the current month, grouped by Service, and schedule it weekly to the team's email destination. See Share and schedule reports.
6. Review
Once a week, open Alerts for what fired, acknowledge the anomalies you have looked into, and compare the budget's status with the report. Adjust the amount at the start of a period, not in the middle of one.