Customize your organization’s AWS credit and Reserved Instance (RI) discount sharing using new billing preferences

Posted on: Nov 6, 2017

AWS launches new billing preferences that give you control over how AWS credits and RI discounts are shared among the accounts in your organization. 

Historically, AWS has maximized customer savings by applying credits and RI discounts first to the account that owned the credit or RI lease and then distributing the remainder, if any, to qualifying usage incurred by accounts in the same organization. While this approach had the potential of lowering the overall bill, customers were unable to control if, and how, discounts were applied across organizational lines. 

To provide greater flexibility, customers can now disable AWS credit sharing across all accounts in their organization. This ensures that only the account that owns a credit, or has previously redeemed a credit, receives the associated benefit. Similarly, you can now disable RI discount sharing across your organization to ensure that only the RI owner receives any associated discounts. You can also designate a set of accounts for which RI discount sharing is disabled, while continuing to share RI discounts among the rest of the accounts in your organization.  

To get started, refer to the AWS Credits and Reserved Instances pages in the Billing and Cost Management user guide.