Reviewing your monthly billing best practices - AWS Billing
Check purchase order balance and expirationReview tax settingsEnable tax setting inheritanceUpdate billing contact informationReview payment currency

Reviewing your monthly billing best practices

AWS uses information that you provide in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console to prepare and issue your invoices with proper header information, such as your preferred payment currency, tax settings, business legal name and address.

If this information is missing or inaccurate, AWS might issue inaccurate invoices that you can't use or process.

Follow this 10-minute checklist before the end of the monthly billing period to review your invoice and ensure that your information is up-to-date in your AWS account.

Check purchase order balance and expiration

As part of the procure-to-pay process, you can use purchase orders to procure AWS services and approve invoices for payment. To avoid issues with billing and payment, verify that your purchase orders aren't expired or out-of-balance.

To check purchase order balance and expiration

  1. Navigate to the Purchase orders page in the AWS Billing and Cost Management console. The purchase order dashboard shows the state of your purchase orders.

  2. Choose a purchase order to see the Purchase order details page.

  3. Review the purchase order Balance and Expiration fields.

Tip

Review tax settings

To determine your account's location for tax purposes, AWS uses the tax registration number (TRN) and the business legal address associated with your account. A TRN is also known as a value-added tax (VAT) number, VAT ID, VAT registration number, or business registration number.

To review tax settings

  1. Navigate to the Tax settings page in the Billing and Cost Management console.

  2. Under the Tax registrations tab, select the account IDs to edit.

  3. Under Manage tax registration, choose Edit.

  4. Enter your updated information and then choose Update.

For more information, see Updating and deleting tax registration numbers.

Enable tax setting inheritance

The management account and member accounts that are part of AWS Organizations can have different TRNs or the same TRN. Unless your organization needs to use different TRNs for member accounts, we recommend that you enable tax settings inheritance.

After you enable this setting from the management account, your tax registration information is added to your member accounts in your organization. This saves you time so that you don't need to enter this information for individual accounts. Tax invoices are processed with consistent tax information, and your usage from member accounts will consolidate to a single tax invoice.

To enable tax settings inheritance

  1. Navigate to the Tax settings page in the Billing and Cost Management console.

  2. Under Tax registrations, select Enable tax settings inheritance.

  3. In the dialog box, choose Enable.

For information about how to manage documents required for US tax exemptions, see Managing your US tax exemptions.

Update billing contact information

Verify that your billing contact information is correct. AWS uses these contacts to contact you about any billing or payment related communications. You can add additional billing contacts in two ways:

  • The Payment preferences page

  • The Accounts page

To add billing contacts from the Payments preference page

  1. Navigate to the Payment preferences page in the Billing and Cost Management console.

  2. In the Default payment preferences section, review the Billing contact email field. AWS uses this contact for any billing or payment related communications.

  3. Choose Edit.

  4. In the Billing contact email - optional field, enter the email addresses that you want AWS to send billing related email notifications, payment reminders and payment support notifications to. You can add up to 15 email addresses.

  5. Choose Save changes.

You can add alternate contacts so that AWS has an alternate email address to contact about issues with your account, even if the AWS account root user contact is unavailable. For the Billing alternate contact, you can specify the email address to receive the invoice. Your alternate contact will be authorized to communicate with AWS for billing, invoice, and payment issues.

The alternate contact doesn't have to be a specific person. For example, you can add an email distribution list if you have a team that manages billing, operations, and security related issues.

To update alternate contact information from the Accounts page

  1. Navigate to the Accounts page in the Billing and Cost Management console and scroll down to the Alternate contacts section.

  2. For the Billing field, review the contact information and confirm the email address where you want your invoices delivered.

For more information about how to use alternate contacts, see Adding or updating alternate contacts.

Review payment currency

The payment currency is the currency that your default payment method will be charged in. This is also the currency displayed on your invoice under your default service provider. Some organizations can't process invoices that are issued in the wrong currency, so it's important to ensure that your payment currency is accurate.

To review your payment currency

  1. Navigate to Payment preferences in the Billing and Cost Management console.

  2. In the Default payment preferences section, choose Edit.

  3. In the Payment currency section, ensure that the Default payment currency is correct.

For more information about payment methods, see Managing credit card and ACH direct debit.