Cost Centers
This feature allows you to create Cost Centers within SHI One that represent different showback and chargeback entities within your organization. This enables reporting in SHI One to provide insight into consumption data across all cloud platforms by these Cost Centers.
It also customizes the ways organizations are billed for their AWS cloud spend.
- Allows creation of Cost Centers that can be consistent reporting categories across multiple clouds.
- Allows for a multi-cloud reporting experience.
- Allows generation of reports that can you use for internal cost reporting, alignment of cloud spend to Business Units, Departments, Projects, Applications, etc.
- Allows generation of reports that you can further use within your internal accounting system for chargeback purposes.
Currently only available for AWS, when you purchase your AWS Cloud through SHI.
- Customize your Invoices to receive separate invoices per each Cost Center.
- Align Purchase Order numbers to each Cost center for automated internal cost allocation on your SHI Invoice.
Need to have a contract with at least one cloud platform (AWS/Azure/GCP).
Best results for multicloud experience to have at least two contracts to see consumption across all clouds.
Customized invoices require a contract with AWS.
You need Admin privileges to set up Cost Centers. Navigate to Settings -> Cost Centers, then in the upper righthand corner click New Cost Center to create a new Cost Center and assign specific cloud platform accounts to the entity.
When setting up a Cost Center, the following fields are available:
- Display Name: The name of the Cost Center in SHI One
- ID, optional: Optional field if your organization utilizes internal naming, department codes, etc.; this ID will not display anywhere in SHI One
- Description, optional: Optional field if you wish to add a description
- Billing PO Number, optional: By default all Cost Centers are billed collectively on one single invoice; Billing PO Numbers allow AWS Cost Centers to be billed to separate invoices
- If you require only one single invoice for all Cost Centers, the Billing PO Number field must be left blank
- If the Billing PO Number field is populated, each Cost Center using that unique Billing PO Number will be billed to a separate invoice
- Scroll to the Billing PO Numbers section below for more information
Once you have filled out the desired fields, scroll down and select the accounts in the left column that you want to assign to this Cost Center, then click the > arrow to move those accounts to the right column. When you've added all the desired accounts, click Create.
By default all Cost Centers on an account are billed collectively on one single invoice. When Cost Centers are given different Billing PO Numbers, each unique Billing PO Number will be billed to a separate invoice.
Cost Centers can have different names for reporting but use the same Billing PO Number for billing, or vice versa. This grants more flexibility and customization for organizations who have different needs for reporting and billing.
Any changes to PO Numbers made on or before the 12th of the month will be reflected in the previous month's AWS bill. For example, a change on July 5th would impact June consumption's billing that is invoiced on July 13th. A change on July 14th would impact July consumption's billing that is invoiced on August 13th.
Currently Billing PO Numbers are available only for AWS accounts.
Once Cost Centers are set up, you can access reporting in two places:
- The multicloud consumption dashboard is found by navigating to Cloud -> Multicloud Consumption
- Spend by Cost Center is found by navigating to Cloud -> cloud provider -> Consumption/Reports
Tabs have also been added to the individual cloud consumption reports labeled 'By Cost Center' which show that specific cloud platform's consumption by Cost Center.
