Introducing multi-source custom billing views: unified cost management across multiple organizations on AWS

Today, we are excited to announce new capabilities within AWS Billing and Cost Management that enable you to create custom billing views containing cost and usage data from multiple organizations. You can now share custom billing views with AWS accounts outside your organization and combine multiple custom billing views to create consolidated multi-source views. These features allow you to access cost management data across multiple organizations through AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Budgets from a single AWS account.

Why use multi-source custom billing views

Your business can span multiple organizations (payer accounts) on AWS. Until today, you could only access cost management data for each of these organizations independently. With multi-source custom billing views, you can now create consolidated views containing cost management data from multiple organizations. These views can be accessed in Cost Explorer and Budgets, allowing you to visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage across organizations while improving planning and cost control with budgeting.

Whether you’re managing subsidiaries, acquired companies, or business units operating as separate organizations, multi-source custom billing views provide the unified financial visibility you need without requiring you to consolidate your AWS billing or account structures.

Prerequisites

Before getting started with multi-source custom billing views, you need to:

Enable AWS Cost Explorer in each organization
Migrate to fine-grained access controls for AWS Cost Management
Have permissions to create custom billing views from the management account of each organization
Have permissions to use AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM) to share billing views across accounts

For more information on required permissions, see Using identity-based policies (IAM policies) for AWS Cost Management.

Accessing cost management data spanning multiple organizations from a single account

Imagine your company has acquired a different company, which also uses AWS. Your company manages organization AnyCompany A, and the company you have acquired manages organization AnyCompany B. As the FinOps admin of your company, you want to be able to access all cost management data for your company across both organizations from a single account. To achieve this, you can create a multi-source custom billing view by taking the following steps.

Step 1: Create a custom billing view from organization AnyCompany B

First, create a new custom billing view containing all of the cost and usage data corresponding to organization AnyCompany B. From the management account of organization AnyCompany B, navigate to the Billing and Cost Management console and choose Billing View under the Cost Management Preferences page. From there, create a new custom billing view, choose “No Filter (all data)” under “Filter cost management data by”. This custom billing view will contain cost and usage data for the entire organization, inclusive of discounts, credits and refunds.

Figure 1. Creating a custom billing containing all the cost management data for organization AnyCompany B

Step 2: Share the custom billing view with management account for organization AnyCompany A

Once the view is created, share it with the management account of organization AnyCompany A. You can share the view by accessing the Sharing tab after creating the view and choosing Share. From the sharing page, choose “Share with any account”. Choose the managed permission AWSRAMPermissionBillingViewFullAccess managed permission. This will give the recipient permission to use this view as a source for other views. This can be used to combine the cost and usage data for multiple organizations. Enter the account ID 111122223333 (management account for organization AnyCompany A) and choose Share. This will share the created custom billing view with the selected account.

Figure 2. Sharing a a custom billing view with account 111122223333

Step 3: Accept the resource share from the management account for organization AnyCompany A

From 111122223333, the management account for organization AnyCompany A, accept the resource share invitation. This can be done from the Billing and Cost Management console under “Billing view invitations” within the “Billing View” page. Select the invitation from the management account for organization AnyCompany B and accept it. Note that you have 12 hours to accept the invitation – after 12 hours, the invitation expires and can no longer be accepted. This can also be done from AWS RAM. See accepting and rejecting resource share invitations to learn more.

Figure 3. Receiving a resource share invitation from the Billing and Cost Management Console

Step 4: Create a custom billing view for organization AnyCompany A

From 111122223333, create a custom billing view containing the cost and usage data corresponding to organization AnyCompany A, following the same steps described in step 1.

Figure 4: Creating a custom billing view for organization AnyCompany A

Step 5: Create a new multi-source custom billing view combining AnyCompany A and AnyCompany B‘s data

From 111122223333, create a new multi-source view using the views created in steps 1 and 4 as its source of data. To achieve this, create a new custom billing view choosing “Create multi-source view”. Choose the views created in Step 1 and Step 4. Choose “No Filter (all data)” under “Filter cost management data by” to include all cost management data for both organizations, or filter the cost and usage data by account ID or cost allocation tag. Review the information and choose “Create”. This custom billing view will contain cost and usage data for both organization AnyCompany A and organization AnyCompany B.

Figure 5. Creating a multi-source view

Now, account 111122223333 has access to the cost management data for AnyCompany A and AnyCompany B combined from a single pane of glass, and you have completed the setup. The custom billing view can be used in Cost Explorer, Billing and Cost Management Dashboards, and Budgets to monitor, analyze, and forecast spending patterns across both organizations. This view can also be shared with other accounts, such as a member account reserved for FinOps activities, allowing them to access the cost management data for all organizations from a member account.

Each custom billing view can include up to 20 source billing views. In the console, navigate to your custom billing view’s view details page and choose the Configuration details tab to see all sources listed under Source views. You can use the billing:ListSourceViewsForBillingView API:

aws billing list-source-views-for-billing-view \
    --arn "arn:aws:billing::111122223333:billingview/custom-multi-source-view"

{
    "arn": "arn:aws:billing::111122223333:billingview/custom-multi-source-view",
    "sourceViews": {
        {
            "arn": "arn:aws:billing::444455556666:billingview/custom-custom-bv_anycompany_b",
            "type": CUSTOM,
            "associationStatus": ACTIVE
        },
        {
            "arn": "arn:aws:billing::111122223333:billingview/custom-bv_anycompany_a",
            "type": CUSTOM,
            "associationStatus": ACTIVE
        }
    }
}

Understanding costs associated with accessing multi-source custom billing views

Accessing multi-source custom billing views through the Cost Explorer console or AWS Budgets is free. If you’re using the Cost Explorer API to query your data programmatically, you’ll be charged $0.01 per source for each API request. For example, if your custom billing view contains two sources, each API call costs $0.02.

Conclusion

Custom billing views now enable you to create consolidated views of cost management data spanning multiple organizations, providing the financial visibility you need to effectively manage AWS spend across your entire business. By leveraging existing AWS cost management tools like Cost Explorer and Budgets, you can monitor and optimize costs across organizations without building custom data pipelines or maintaining complex reporting infrastructure. To get started with multi-source custom billing views, visit the Billing View user guide and create your first custom billing view from the Cost Management Preferences page in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.

AWS Cloud Financial Management