Create and implement an AWS Budget for monthly forecasted cost

Budgets allow you to manage cost and usage by providing notifications or restricting actions when a budget exceeds its threshold (actual or forecasted amounts).

Budgets and notifications are updated when your billing data is updated, which is at least once per day.

NOTE: You may not receive an alarm for a forecasted budget if your account is new. Forecasting requires existing usage within the account.

Create a monthly cost budget for your account

We will create a monthly cost budget which will notify if the forecasted amount exceeds the budget.

1. Log into the console via SSO and open the Billing console. This can be achieved by using the search bar or by selecting My Billing Dashboard from your account dropdown menu.

2. Select Budgets from the left hand menu:

3. Click on Create budget:

4. Ensure Cost budget is selected, and click on Next:

5. To create a cost budget, enter the following details:

   • Period: Monthly
   • Budget effective date: Recurring Budget
   • Start month: (select current month)
   • Choose how to budget: Fixed
   • Budgeted amount: 1.00 (enter a dollar amount a lot LESS than last months cost)
   • Name: CostBudget1
   • Other fields: leave as defaults:

Once you have entered all the details select Next:

6. To create an alert for our budget select Add an alert threshold:

7. For Alert #1 select:

   • Threshold: 100% of budgeted amount
   • Trigger: Forecasted
   • Notification preferences: Input your email address in the Email recipients field
   • Click on Next:

8. Here you can attach actions that can be taken when you budget exceeds its threshold. We will not be attaching any actions for this lab. Select Next to move to the next page:

9. Review the configuration, and click Create budget:

10. You should see the current forecast will exceed the budget (you may need to refresh your browser):

11. You will receive an email similar to this within a few minutes: