Cloud Billing is a collection of tools that help you track andunderstand your Google Cloud spending, pay your bill, and optimizeyour costs.

This document covers the following topics:

• Anintroduction to Cloud Billing tools.

• Anintroduction to Cloud Billing accounts,and the relationship between Cloud Billing accounts andGoogle payments profiles. Your Cloud Billing account pays for yourusage of Google Cloud and Google Maps Platform resources and services.

• Anoverview of resource management in Google Cloud.The way you organize your Google Cloud resources depends on yourorganization's structure, and affects how you analyze your costs in theCloud Billing reports.

About Cloud Billing tools

The tools in Cloud Billing help you monitor your usage costs, forecastyour spending, and identify opportunities to save on costs.

Get started

• Take an interactive tour of Cloud Billing. If you're new toGoogle Cloud, this tutorial walks you through the basics ofunderstanding and managing your costs using the Google Cloud console.

  Launch the Cloud Billing tour

• View your billing reports and cost trends. The billing report helps youanswer questions like "Which Google Cloud services (such as Compute Engine or Cloud Storage) cost me the most?".

  Launch the Cloud Billing reports tour

Monitor costs

• Export your billing data to BigQuery. Export your usageand cost data to a BigQuery dataset, and use the dataset fordetailed analyses. You can also visualize your exported data in tools such asLooker Studio.

  We recommend enabling the BigQuery export as early as possible,so that the data reflects your Google Cloud usage from the beginning.

  Launch the Cloud Billing export to BigQuery tutorial

• Create a budget and set up spending alerts. Use budgets to track youractual Google Cloud spend against your planned spending. Then, set upalerts to stay informed of your spending.

  Launch the tutorial to learn about creating budgets

• Review anomalies for your projects. Anomalies are spikes or deviations inusage costs that differ from your expected spend, when compared to historicalspending patterns. The Anomalies dashboard displays all cost anomaliesassociated with your projects, within the linked billing account.

  Learn more about cost anomalies

Optimize and control costs

• View the FinOps hub for recommendations and utilization insights.With the FinOps hub, you can monitor and communicate your current savings,explore recommended opportunities to optimize costs, and plan youroptimization goals.

  Learn more about the FinOps hub

• Sign up for Committed use discounts (CUDs). If your workloads havepredictable resource needs, you can purchase a Google Cloud commitment,which gives you discounted prices in exchange for your commitment to use aminimum level of resources for a specific term.

  Learn about CUDs for the services that you use.

  Get recommendations for CUDs.

  If your organization has already signed up for CUDs,learn about analyzing the effectiveness of your commitments.

• Automate cost controls with programmatic notifications. Use programmaticnotifications to automate cost control responses when you get a budget oranomaly alert, such as forwarding alerts to other channels, or controllingyour resource usage by adjusting quotas.

  Launch the tutorial for automated responses to budget notifications

  Learn more about programmatic notifications

About Cloud Billing accounts and Google payments profiles

ACloud Billing account is set up in Google Cloud and defineswho pays for a given set of Google Cloud resources andGoogle Maps Platform APIs.Access control to a Cloud Billing account is established by IAM roles.

A Cloud Billing account is connected to aGoogle payments profile.

Your Google payments profile includes a payment instrument to which costs arecharged.

monetization_on Cloud Billing account

payment Google payments profile

A Cloud Billing account: Is a cloud-level resource managed in the Google Cloud console. Is connected to a Google payments profile, which includes a payment instrument, defining how you pay for your charges. Tracks all of the costs (charges and savings) incurred by your Google Cloud usage in all projects linked to the Cloud Billing account. Results in a single invoice per Cloud Billing account, except when split invoicing applies. Operates in a single currency. Defines who pays for a given set of resources. Hasbilling-specific roles and permissions to control access to billing-related functions (established by IAM roles).

A Google payments profile: Is a Google-level resource managed atGoogle payments center. Connects to all of your Google services (such as Google Ads, Google Cloud, and Fi phone service). Processes payments for all Google services (not just Google Cloud). Stores information like name, address, and tax ID (when required legally) of who is responsible for the profile. Stores your various payment instruments (credit cards, debit cards, bank accounts, and other payment methods you've used to buy through Google in the past). Functions as a document center, where you can view invoices, payment history, and other important documents. Controls who can view and receive invoices for your various Cloud Billing accounts and products. HasGoogle payments-specific users and permissions to control access to payments-related functions.

Important: If you have a project that is not linked to an active, valid Cloud Billing account, you will not be able to use the products and services enabled in your project. This is true even if your project only uses Google Cloud services that are free.

Cloud Billing account types

There are two types of Cloud Billing accounts:

• Self-serve (or Online) account

  • Thebillable status of a self-serve account is eitherFree trial account orPaid account.
  • Payment instrument is a credit or debit card or ACH direct debit,depending on availability in each country or region.
  • If the billable status of the account isPaid account, costs arecharged automatically to the payment instrument connected to theCloud Billing account.
  • You can sign up for self-serve accounts online.
  • Thedocuments generated for self-serve accounts include statements, payment receipts,and tax invoices, and are accessible in the Google Cloud console.

• Invoiced (or Offline) account

  • Thebillable status of an invoiced account isPaid account.
  • Payment instrument can be check or wire transfer.
  • Invoices aresent by mail orelectronically.
  • Invoices are also accessible in the Google Cloud console, as are paymentreceipts.
  • You must be eligible for invoiced billing.Learn more about invoiced billing eligibility.

Google payments profile types

When you create yourGoogle payments profile,you'll be asked to specify the profile type. This information must be accuratefor tax and identity verification. After you create yourpayments profile,this setting can't be changed. When youset up your Google payments profile, make sure to choose the typethat best fits how you plan to use your profile.

There are two types of Google payments profiles:

• Individual

  • You're using your account for your own personal payments.
  • If you register your payments profile as an individual,then only you can manage the profile. You won't be able to add or removeusers, or change permissions on the profile.

• Business

  • You're paying on behalf of a business, organization, partnership, oreducational institution.
  • You use Google payments center to pay for Play apps and games, andGoogle services like Google Ads, Google Cloud,and Fi phone service.
  • A business profile lets you add other users to the Google paymentsprofile you manage, so that more than one person can access or manage apayments profile.
  • All users added to a business profile can see the payment information onthat profile.

Charging cycle

The charging cycle on your Cloud Billing account determines how andwhen you pay for your Google Cloud services and your use ofGoogle Maps Platform APIs.

For self-serve Cloud Billing accounts, your Google Cloud costsare charged automatically in one of two ways:

• Monthly billing: Costs are charged on a regular monthly cycle.
• Threshold billing: Costs are charged when your account has accrued a specificamount.

For self-serve Cloud Billing accounts, your charging cycle isautomatically assigned when you create the account. You don't get to chooseyour charging cycle and you can't change the charging cycle.

For invoiced Cloud Billing accounts, you typically receive oneinvoice per month, except whensplit invoicing applies. The amount of time you have to pay your invoice (your payment terms)is determined by the agreement you made with Google.

• Find your charging cycle
• Learn more about threshold billing

Billing contacts

A Cloud Billing account includes one or more contacts that are definedon theGoogle payments profile that is connected to the Cloud Billing account. These contacts arepeople who are designated to receive billing information specific to the paymentinstrument on file (for example, when a credit card needs to be updated). Toaccess and manage this list of contacts, you can use theGoogle payments center or you can use theGoogle Cloud console.

Subaccounts

Subaccounts are intended for resellers. If you are a reseller, you canuse subaccounts to represent your customers' charges for the purpose ofchargebacks.

Cloud Billing subaccounts allow you to group charges fromprojects together on a separate section of your invoice. Abilling subaccount is a Cloud Billing account that is owned by areseller's parent Cloud Billing account. The usagecharges for all billing subaccounts are paid for by the reseller's parentCloud Billing account. Note that the parent Cloud Billingaccount must be oninvoiced billing.

A subaccount behaves like a Cloud Billing account in most ways: it canhave projects linked to it, Cloud Billing data exports can beconfigured on it, and it can have IAM roles defined on it. Anycharges made to projects linked to the subaccount are grouped and subtotalledon the invoice, or multiple invoices whensplit invoicing applies, and the effect on resource management is that access control policycan be entirely segregated on the subaccount to allow for customer separationand management.

TheCloud Billing Account API lets you create and manage subaccounts. Use the API to connect to your existingsystems and provision new customers or chargeback groups programmatically.

About resource management for billing

You can configure billing on Google Cloud in a variety ofways to meet different needs. This section introduces the core concepts for yourorganization and for billing, and discusses how to use them effectively.

For information on organizing your resources to effectively monitor your costs,see theGuide to Cloud Billing Resource Organization & Access Management.

About resources

In the context of Google Cloud, a resource can refer to service-levelresources that are used to process your workloads, such as virtual machines anddatabases, or to account-level resources that sit above the services, such asprojects, folders, and the organization.

Resource management

Resource management focuses on how you should configure and grant access tothe various cloud resources for your company/team, specifically the setup andorganization of the account-level resources that sit above the service-levelresources. Account-level resources are the resources involved in settingup and administering your Google Cloud account.

Resource hierarchy

Google Cloud resources are organized hierarchically. This hierarchy letsyou map your organization's operational structure to Google Cloud, andto manage access control and permissions for groups of related resources. Theresource hierarchy provides logical attachment points for access management policies(Identity and Access Management) andOrganization policies.

Both IAM and Organization policies are inherited through thehierarchy, and the effective policy at each node of the hierarchy is the resultof policies directly applied at the node and policies inherited from itsancestors.

The following diagram shows an example resource hierarchy illustrating the coreaccount-level resources involved in administering your Google Cloudaccount.

Domain

• Your company Domain is the primary identity of your organization andestablishes your company's identity with Google services, includingGoogle Cloud.
• You use the Domain to manage the users in your organization.
  • At the domain level, you define which users should be associated with yourorganization when using Google Cloud.
  • Domain is also where you can universally administer policy for your usersand devices (for example, enable 2-step verification or reset passwordsfor any users in your organization).
• The Domain is linked to either aGoogle Workspace orCloud Identity account.
• The Google Workspace or Cloud Identity account is associatedwith exactly one Organization.
• You manage the domain-level functionality using theGoogle Admin Console(admin.google.com).

For more information on the hierarchy of resources, see theResource Manager documentation.

Organization

• An organization is the root node of the Google Cloud hierarchy ofresources.
• All Google Cloud resources that belong to an organization are groupedunder the organization node, allowing you to define settings, permissions,and policies for all projects, folders, resources, andCloud Billing accounts it parents.
• An organization is associated with exactly one Domain(established with either a Google Workspace or Cloud Identityaccount), and is created automatically when you set up your Domain inGoogle Cloud.
• Using an organization, you can centrally manage your Google Cloudresources and your users' access to those resources. This includes:
  • Proactive management: reorganize resources as needed (for example,restructuring or spinning up a new division may require newprojects and folders).
  • Reactive management: an organization resource provides a safety netto regain access to lost resources (for example, if one of your team membersloses their access or leaves the company).
• The various roles and resources that are related to Google Cloud(including the organization, projects, folders, resources, andCloud Billing accounts) are managed within the Google Cloud console.

For more information on organizations, see the following documentation:

• Creating and managing organizations
• Viewing and managing organization resources
• Managing multiple organizations

Folders

• Folders are a grouping mechanism and can contain projects,other folders, or a combination of both.
• To use folders, you must have anorganization node.
• Folders and projects are all mapped under the organization node.
• Folders can be used to group resources that share common IAMpolicies.
• While a folder can contain multiple folders or resources, a given folder orresource can have exactly one parent.

For more details about using folders, seeCreating and managing folders.

Projects

• All service-level resources are parented by projects, thebase-level organizing entity in Google Cloud.
• Projects arerequired to use service-level resources (such asCompute Engine virtual machines, Pub/Sub topics, andCloud Storage buckets).
• You can use projects to represent logical projects, teams,environments, or other collections that map to a business function orstructure.
• Projects form the basis for enabling services, APIs, andIAM permissions.
• Any given resource can only exist in one project.

For more details about projects, see the following documentation:

• Creating and managing projects
• Moving a project
• Migrating projects

Resources

• Google Cloud service-level resources are the fundamental componentsthat make up all Google Cloud services, such as Compute Engine virtualmachines, Pub/Sub topics, and Cloud Storage buckets.
• For billing and access control purposes, resources exist at the lowest levelof a hierarchy that also includes projects and an organization.

Labels

• Labels help you categorize your Google Cloud resources (such asCompute Engine instances).
• A label is a key-value pair.
• You can attach labels to each resource, then filter the resources based ontheir labels.
• Labels are great for cost tracking at a granular level. Information aboutlabels is forwarded to the billing system, so you cananalyze your charges by label.

Note: Newly created labels can take up to a day to appear in Cloud Billing.

For more details about using labels, seeCreating and managing labels.

Relationships between resources, Cloud Billing accounts, and Google payments profiles

Two types of relationships govern the interactions between organizations,Cloud Billing accounts, and projects: ownership andpayment linkage.

• Ownership refers to IAM permission inheritance.
• Payment linkages define which Cloud Billing account pays for agiven project.

Note:Ownership of a Cloud Billing account is limited to a singleorganization.Payment linkage of a project linked to a Cloud Billingaccount is not limited by organization ownership. It is possible for aCloud Billing account to pay for projects that belong to anorganization that is different than the organization that owns theCloud Billing account. For more information on managing theCloud Billing account for your projects, seeEnable, disable, or change billing for a project.

The following diagram shows the relationship of ownership and payment linkagesfor a sample organization.

In the diagram, the organization has ownership over Projects 1, 2, and 3,meaning that it is the IAM permissions parent of the threeprojects.

The Cloud Billing account is linked to Projects 1, 2, and 3, meaningthat it pays for costs incurred by the three projects.

Note: Although you link Cloud Billing accounts toprojects, Cloud Billing accounts are not parents ofprojects in an IAM sense, and thereforeprojects don't inherit permissions from theCloud Billing account they are linked to.

The Cloud Billing account is also linked to aGoogle payments profile, which storesinformation like name, address, and payment methods.

In this example, any users who are granted IAM billing roleson the organization also have those roles on the Cloud Billing accountor the projects.

For information on granting IAM billing roles, seeOverview of Cloud Billing access control.

Related topics

• Organize your resources for effective cost management

• Split invoicing for agency model transactions

• picture_as_pdfA Guide to Financial Governance in the Cloud

• video_libraryVideo library: Best practices for monitoring and managing your costs.

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