GCP Cost Breakdown Reports Guide: How to Access, Create, & Analyze Costs

As cloud computing services become more prevalent in businesses and organizations, it is crucial to monitor and manage the costs associated with these services. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides a powerful set of tools to help users optimize their cloud usage and reduce costs. One of these tools is the GCP Cost Breakdown Reports.

In this article, we will explore how to understand and utilize GCP Cost Breakdown Reports to optimize your cloud costs and improve your resource management. We will dive into the various cost components displayed in the reports, how to interpret and analyze the data presented in the reports, and how to customize the reports to suit your specific needs.

What are GCP Cost Breakdown Reports?

GCP Cost Breakdown Reports are a set of tools that provide granular visibility into the on demand price for instances and how usage-based credits saved you money on your company’s GCP costs. They allow organizations to track and analyze their cloud spending at a detailed level, helping them understand how resources are being utilized, identify inefficiencies, and optimize their costs.

What is the difference between Standard Billing and Cost Breakdown Reports?

Unlike standard billing reports, which provide a high-level summary of expenses, cost breakdown reports provide a more detailed breakdown of costs, allowing organizations to analyze and understand their spending patterns. Cost breakdown reports enable companies to see which services, projects, or teams are driving their expenses and which areas require cost optimization.

GCP cost breakdown reports are available in various types, including:

1. Service Usage report: This report provides detailed information on the usage of GCP services, including the number of API calls, usage time, and other metrics. It enables organizations to identify underutilized or overutilized services and optimize their usage.
2. Project Cost report: This report provides a detailed breakdown of costs at the project level, including expenses for storage, compute, and networking. It helps organizations understand the cost drivers for each project and optimize resource allocation.
3. User Cost report: This report provides a detailed breakdown of costs at the user level, enabling organizations to track individual user costs and identify opportunities for cost optimization.
4. SKU Cost report: This report provides a detailed breakdown of costs by SKU (Stock Keeping Unit), enabling organizations to track expenses for specific services or products and optimize their usage.

By providing a granular view of spending, customizable reports, comparison tools, and forecasting, GCP cost breakdown reports allow businesses to gain a deeper understanding of their cloud usage and identify potential cost-saving opportunities.

Features of GCP Cost Breakdown Reports

GCP cost breakdown reports offer several key features that allow businesses to better understand their cloud usage and identify cost-saving opportunities. Some of these features include:

• Customizable Reports – Businesses can customize their cost breakdown reports to suit their specific needs, including selecting which services to include in the report, setting the report’s time range, and applying filters to the report’s data.
• Cost Attribution – GCP cost breakdown reports provide granular cost attribution, allowing businesses to understand which resources are driving their cloud costs. This can help businesses identify and optimize the usage of expensive resources.
• Historical Cost Data – Cost breakdown reports provide historical cost data, enabling businesses to compare and analyze their current cloud usage against past periods. This feature can be particularly helpful in identifying cost-saving opportunities and forecasting future cloud costs.
• Integration with BigQuery – Cost breakdown reports can be integrated with BigQuery, a powerful data analytics tool. This allows businesses to run more in-depth analyses on their cost data and create custom reports that meet their unique needs.
• Alerting – Cost breakdown reports can be set up to send automated alerts to business users when cloud costs exceed a
  certain threshold. This feature can help businesses quickly identify and address any cost overruns before they become a bigger problem.
• Cost Forecasting – GCP cost breakdown reports also offer cost forecasting capabilities. Using this feature, businesses can project their cloud costs based on current usage trends and adjust their usage or resources accordingly to stay within budget.

How to use GCP cost breakdown reports

The three components for accessing, customizing, and analyzing cost breakdown reports are written step-by-step below:

How to Access Cost Breakdown Reports:

1. Log in to your GCP Console.
2. Select the project for which you want to view the cost breakdown report.
3. In the left navigation pane, select “Billing.”
4. Click on “Reports” and then select “Cost Breakdown.”
   
5. Choose the desired time range and granularity for your report.
6. Click on “Create Report” to generate the report.

How to Customize Cost Breakdown Reports:

1. After accessing the Cost Breakdown report, click on the “Customize” button.
2. Select the desired filters to customize the report. You can filter by service, SKU, location, project, or label.
   
3. Use the grouping function to group your data by project, service, SKU, location, or label.
4. Choose the desired time range and granularity for your customized report.
5. Click on “Create Report” to generate the customized report.

How to Analyze Cost Breakdown Reports:

1. After generating a Cost Breakdown report, you can use various features to analyze the data.
2. Use the “Summary” tab to view the overall cost breakdown of your project.
3. Use the “Trends” tab to view cost trends over a specified time period.
4. Use the “SKU-Level Detail” tab to view cost breakdown by SKU

• The summary bar above the chart provides a split view of cost: actual cost-to-date calculated from the starting date, and the total forecasted cost for the entire date range.
• A cost trend line in the chart indicates the direction your forecast is trending.
• For more details on how to use, access, and analyze Cost Breakdown Reports, visit Google’s documentation.

Best practices for using GCP cost breakdown reports

Cost breakdown reports provide valuable insights into GCP costs, enabling businesses to optimize their cloud usage and reduce expenses. However, interpreting these reports and taking action on the recommendations requires a certain level of expertise. Here are some best practices for using GCP cost breakdown reports:

1. Understand the cost allocation: It is essential to understand how GCP costs are allocated to different resources and services. This understanding helps businesses identify areas where they can save costs. For example, a company that uses virtual machines heavily should monitor the cost of these machines and look for ways to optimize their usage.
2. Monitor usage trends: Cost breakdown reports help businesses monitor their usage trends and identify spikes in costs. Monitoring usage trends enables companies to optimize their cloud resources and reduce costs. For example, a company can schedule their cloud resources to run during off-peak hours to reduce costs.
3. Set up alerts: GCP cost breakdown reports enable companies to set up alerts for unusual spending patterns. These alerts can help businesses identify and resolve issues promptly, reducing costs. For example, a company can set up alerts to notify them when their spending exceeds a certain threshold.
4. Collaborate with teams: Collaborating with teams can help businesses identify cost-saving opportunities. By working together, teams can optimize their cloud usage and reduce costs. For example, a development team can collaborate with a finance team to identify areas where costs can be optimized.
5. Implement cost-saving measures: GCP cost breakdown reports provide businesses with recommendations for optimizing their cloud usage. Implementing these recommendations can help companies reduce their cloud expenses significantly. For example, a company can implement autoscaling to optimize resource usage and reduce costs.

Conclusion

GCP cost breakdown reports are a valuable tool for businesses looking to optimize their cloud usage and reduce expenses. By understanding how to access, customize, and analyze these reports, companies can identify cost-saving opportunities and implement cost-saving measures.

Implementing the best practices mentioned above can help businesses get the most out of their cloud usage and reduce GCP costs. It is essential to regularly monitor and analyze cost breakdown reports to ensure that cloud usage is optimized continuously.