COST03-BP01 - Configure detailed information sources

Implementation guidance

Configure the AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR), and optionally detailed billing features, to capture the most granular cost and usage data available. Detailed information sources are the foundation of accurate cost monitoring: without resource-level, hourly data you cannot reliably attribute spend, detect anomalies, or measure the impact of optimization work.

Establish granular data sources

AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR): Enable the CUR with resource IDs and hourly (or finer) granularity. The CUR is the most comprehensive cost and usage dataset AWS provides and is the authoritative source for detailed analysis, chargeback, and custom reporting. Deliver it to Amazon S3 and, where needed, query it with Amazon Athena (the AWS analytics service, not an internal agent) or load it into Amazon QuickSight.

Resource-level detail: Turn on resource IDs in the CUR so each line item can be traced back to a specific resource. Include cost allocation tags and split cost allocation data (for example, Amazon ECS/EKS) so shared costs can be attributed accurately.

Hourly and daily granularity: Capture usage at hourly granularity where it matters (for example, to evaluate Savings Plans/Reserved Instance coverage or to investigate spikes), and daily granularity for trend reporting.

Centralize and standardize collection

Consolidated billing: Use AWS Organizations consolidated billing so cost and usage data for all member accounts flows into a single management-account CUR, giving you one authoritative source across the organization.

Consistent delivery: Deliver detailed data to a central, access-controlled S3 location on a regular schedule so downstream analysis, dashboards, and allocation processes always read from the same source of truth.

AWS Services to Consider

Related Resources