Posted On: Aug 23, 2023

AWS Cost Allocation Tags now has two additional metadata fields, Last Used Month and Last Updated Date. You can use these fields to know when tag keys were last used or updated.

AWS Cost Allocation Tags is a feature within the AWS Cost Management suite that enables you to use resource tags for cost allocation. You can activate resource tags as Cost Allocation Tags in the billing console. Once activated, Cost Allocation Tags help you track your AWS costs at a detailed level, and are available for use in many Cost Management Services e.g. to analyze costs in AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Cost and Usage Report, or controlling the spend limit based on a tag using AWS Budgets. 

The two new metadata fields (Last Used Month and Last Updated Date) provide useful information that can help you determine which resource tags are appropriate for Cost Allocation. For example, if Last Used Month is not current, it could mean that tag is not being actively used and can be deactivated as a Cost Allocation Tag. Similarly, if the Last Updated Date indicates that a tag was activated as a Cost Allocation Tag a long time ago, it may be a good idea to determine if that tag is still relevant for cost allocation. 

To access these 2 new metadata fields, you need to update your permission policies. See Migrating access control for AWS Billing. To learn more about these new date fields, please visit Understanding dates for cost allocation tags.