This guide does not explain where each button is — you can see that — but what each figure decides and why it is calculated the way it is. If you are looking to fix something that is not working, go to the troubleshooting guide.
9 sections
- The two controls that change everything
- Overview: the state of things in ten seconds
- KPIs and Variations: what changed
- FinOps plan: from observation to action
- Anomalies and trends
- History and snapshots
- Clients: allocating cost to whoever consumes it
- Managing environments and users
- How to read the colours
The two controls that change everything
Before looking at any figure, look at these two. They explain most of the surprises.
Charge type
Decides what is counted. "Azure usage only" is service consumption; "All" is what appears on the invoice, Marketplace purchases and SaaS included. They are different figures of the same reality, and comparing one with the other never reconciles.
To reconcile with an invoice, use "All". To talk about infrastructure optimisation, use "Azure usage only": Marketplace licences are not optimised by switching machines off.
Period and scope
The period is chosen with 1M · 3M · 6M · 12M. Underneath the title you always see the real range and the scope being read: billing account, profile, or delegated subscriptions. That scope decides whether you see the charges that hang off no subscription — centrally purchased reservations, support, account-level purchases.
Overview: the state of things in ten seconds
This is the landing screen, built to answer "are we doing all right?" without reading a table.
The KPI row
- Total spend for the period — the sum for the range, with the number of active groups and services.
- Current month (projection) — in amber, because it is not a fact: it is an end-of-month estimate. You can choose the method — average of the last 30 days, or spend so far divided by days elapsed.
- MTD vs previous month — compares what you have spent so far against the same number of days of the previous month. Comparing half a month with a whole one would say nothing.
- Most expensive group and closed savings from the FinOps plan.
Cost evolution
The current month appears split: the solid part is what has been spent and the amber hatch is the projection. This is deliberate — drawing it as just another bar suggests a drop that does not exist, because mid-month it always sits below the previous one.
The dotted line is the average of closed months. It excludes the current month: including it would drag it down and it would stop being a reference. Underneath each bar, the variance against the previous month; the current month's is in amber and marked "proj.", because it compares a projection against a fact.
In Daily, the same grammar: period average, anomaly threshold and the projected tail for the remaining days.
By service
A composition bar ordered by spend, with detail on hover, and three cards for the largest services with their variance. The footer states what share the top three concentrate: if they hold 61 %, optimising the fourth moves cents.
Resource groups and Resources in a group
Click a group and the panel beside it drills down per resource. If a panel says "Only data since…", that is correct: that breakdown holds less history than the rest, and you are told instead of being shown a figure that would look like the full period.
KPIs and Variations: what changed
The monthly review screen. The table has one column per month, plus the projection and the variance.
It sorts by what decides. By default it sorts by |Δ €|, the absolute change in euros, not by total cost. A €200 service that has doubled matters more than a €40,000 one that has not moved, and sorting by cost buries it at the bottom. Click any month header to re-sort.
The Δ cell puts the euro figure large and the percentage as a note: the euro is what you act on, the percentage only gives context. A variance below 1.5 % is shown in grey as stable, so the eye does not chase noise.
↘ drills into that row — from service to resource, for example — and 📌 pins that item to the FinOps plan with its current cost as the baseline.
FinOps plan: from observation to action
This is where a savings idea stops being a conversation. Each initiative keeps an owner, a target and a date, plus its cost at the moment it was pinned.
Three states: candidate (spotted, not decided), active (someone is working on it) and closed (finished, with the lesson learned written down).
The savings figure in the Overview KPI is that of the closed ones: the difference between baseline and current cost. Expected savings are not counted, only what has already been saved — the only figure you can take into a meeting without having it argued with.
Anomalies and trends
An anomaly is a day whose spend exceeds the mean plus two standard deviations (μ+2σ) of the closed days in the period. It is not the system's opinion: it is a statistical threshold over your own data, which is why the threshold is shown next to the figure.
At least 14 days of history are needed to compute it. With fewer, the panel does not invent a band: it does not show one.
Trends flag sustained growth, which is different from a spike: a spike corrects itself, a trend does not.
History and snapshots
A snapshot freezes the state of a period so you can come back to it. It serves two purposes: leaving a record of what was presented at a committee, and comparing against a specific moment rather than against "last month".
Cost history is kept even if you change scope or filter: what is stored are the daily facts, not the screen.
Clients: allocating cost to whoever consumes it
For anyone reselling Azure or splitting cost between business units. You define allocation rules — by subscription, resource group, service or resource — and the engine distributes spend across the clients you define.
Allocation is recomputed after every ingestion, so the tab does not sit frozen at the last manual calculation. And it can be exported.
Managing environments and users
Visible only with the owner or admin role.
⚙ Tenants adds environments, shows the 🔗 Access panel with the delegation links, checks whether the customer has delegated yet, and keeps the 🕑 Ingestions log with the outcome of every run.
👤 Users grants access to your team. A user with no environments ticked signs in and sees nothing, so the application will not let you save one that way.
How to read the colours
Colour means something specific, and always the same thing. That is what lets you read a screen without instructions.
| Colour | Means |
|---|---|
| Amber | Data that is not a fact: projections, the current month, a partial period. It is never decoration |
| Red | Adverse variance: spend is going up. Also the anomaly threshold |
| Green | Favourable variance: spend is going down |
| Grey | Variance below 1.5 %: noise, not signal |