Every month you receive the monthly GCP Bill but don't find it insightful? not enough details? The actual bill is usually just one bottom line cost number and isn’t helpful in analyzing where the spend originates from and which areas are growing within your GCP environment. Luckily Google has given us great tools to understand and see our Cloud Bill in greater detail which we will explore next.
The first place to go to in order to see your detailed cloud bill is the GCP Billing Console. Within the Billing Console you actually have 2 main places that you can go to in order to see the details: the 'Report' tab and the 'Cost table' tab.
The ‘Report’ tab in Google Cloud Billing: you can use the ‘Reports’ tab to see your month to date (MTD) cost and historical billing data with functionality to filter by SKU, Service, Project, etc.
Once you are in the ‘Report' tab you can start with the 'Presets' filter at the top right and select the desired timeframe you want to look at. If you received a bill of which you are not sure how it was determined then you are probably looking for last month’s invoice (so choose the “Last Invoice Month”).
Using the other filters like projects, services, and SKU allows you to drill down to understand where the cost growth originates and what areas have been growing faster than others.
The ‘Cost table’ tab in Google Cloud Billing: The alternative way to view your detailed cloud bill is using the ‘Cost Table’ tab. Similar to the 'Report Tab' option you can choose the last invoice (this one actually allows you to see previous months’ invoices as well).
This view is helpful in case you want to download the details and review or analyze in a different platform such as Excel or Google Sheets. Using the ‘Column display Options’ icon you can decide which columns you want or don’t want to include and then use the 'download' icon to get the detailed bill in excel format.
Make sure you only include columns you think are helpful and be mindful of the line and size limitation when it comes to excel (If you still need this detail and hit excel limitation then consider using Google Sheets or Looker as outlined below).
Don't you wish there was an automated way to see your detailed Billing data?
You may have also noticed getting the detailed billing view is time consuming and manual. Thoughtfully Google has made it easier and offers many alternatives to Google Billing Console where users can view and analyze the same billing data presented in the Console.
A few alternative platforms that make it more easy to analyze, share and automate include Google Sheets, Looker (Step by Step on those coming soon), and any tool that can query data from BigQuery (which is where the detailed billing data is stored).
The first step to unlocking this functionality is to enable 'Billing Export' in GCP Console by following the steps outlined in the applicable section within the GCP Billing Console. The great thing about it - you only have to do it once.
Basically enabling the export means we now have a table with all our billing data that we can query via BigQuery or integrate into any other platform we want such as Google Sheet, Looker, etc.
You can even go the extra mile and build your own visibility tool based on the detailed billing data if Looker and Google Sheets do not provide the visibility and functionality you need. There are also many vendors out there that specialize in visualization and would be more than happy to do it for you. The underlying billing data is no different so it's just a matter of preference and if you prefer to use external tools or build your own to tailor for your need.
Great, so you have the detailed bill - what’s next? There are many ways to analyze and not a single way that works for everyone (and this is likely a topic for an entire new post) but I recommend starting with viewing your cloud spend by Project, then by Services, and by SKU so to get a sense of possible anomalies, determine what your major cost items are, and how your cost fluctuates.
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