Configuring a budget action - AWS Cost Management

Configuring a budget action

You can attach budget actions to an alert for either a cost budget or a usage budget. To configure a budget action on a new budget, first follow the steps for Creating a cost budget or Creating a usage budget. To configure a budget action on an existing cost or usage budget, first follow the steps for Editing a budget. Then, after you reach the Configure alerts step of creating or editing the budget, use the following procedure.

To configure a budget action

  1. To configure a budget action on a new alert, choose Add an alert threshold. To configure a budget action on an existing alert, skip to step 7.

  2. Under Set alert threshold, for Threshold, enter the amount that needs to be reached for you to be notified. This can be either an absolute value or a percentage. For example, say you have a budget of 200 dollars. To be notified at 160 dollars (80% of your budget), enter 160 for an absolute budget or 80 for a percentage budget.

    Next to the amount, choose Absolute value to be notified when your costs exceed the threshold amount. Or, choose % of budgeted amount to be notified when your costs exceed the threshold percentage.

    Next to the threshold, choose Actual to create an alert for actual spend. Or, choose Forecasted to create an alert for forecasted spend.

  3. (Optional) Under Notification preferences - Optional, for Email recipients, enter the email addresses that you want the alert to notify. Separate multiple email addresses with commas. A notification can have up to 10 email addresses.

  4. (Optional) Under Notification preferences - Optional, for Amazon SNS Alerts, enter the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for your Amazon SNS topic. For instructions on how to create a topic, see Creating an Amazon SNS topic for budget notifications.

    Important

    After you create a budget with Amazon SNS notifications, Amazon SNS sends a confirmation email to the email addresses that you specified. The subject line is AWS Notification - Subscription Confirmation. The recipient must choose Confirm subscription in the confirmation email to receive future notifications.

  5. (Optional) Under Notification preferences - Optional, for AWS Chatbot Alerts, you can configure AWS Chatbot to send budget alerts to an Amazon Chime or Slack chat room. You configure these alerts through the AWS Chatbot console.

  6. Choose Next.

  7. For Attach actions - Optional, choose Add Action.

    1. For Select IAM role, choose an IAM role to allow AWS Budgets to perform an action on your behalf.

      Note

      If you didn't configure and assign the appropriate permissions for the IAM role and for AWS Budgets, then AWS Budgets can't run your configured actions. For simplified permissions management, we recommend that you use the managed policy. This ensures that your AWS Budgets actions work as intended and eliminates the need to update your existing IAM policy for AWS Budgets whenever any new functionality is added. This is because new functions and capabilities are added to the managed policy by default. For more information about managed policies, see Managed policies.

      For more information and examples of IAM role permissions, see Allow AWS Budgets to apply IAM policies and SCPs and target EC2 and RDS instances.

    2. For Which action type should be applied when the budget threshold has been exceeded, select the action that you want AWS Budgets to take on your behalf.

      You can choose from applying an IAM policy, attaching a service control policy (SCP), or targeting specific Amazon EC2 or Amazon RDS instances. You can apply multiple budget actions to a single alert. Only a management account can apply SCPs.

    3. Depending on the action that you chose, complete the fields related to the resources that you want to apply the action to.

    4. For Do you want to automatically run this action when this threshold is exceeded, choose Yes or No. If you choose No, then you run the action manually on the Alert details page. For instructions, see Reviewing and approving your budget action.

    5. For How do you want to be alerted when this action is run, choose Use the same alert settings when you defined this threshold or Use different alert settings. To use different alert settings, complete the Notification preferences specific to this action.

  8. Choose Next.

    Note

    To proceed, you must configure at least one of the following for each alert:

    • An email recipient for notifications

    • An Amazon SNS topic for notifications

    • A budget action

  9. Review your budget settings, and then choose Create budget or Save.

After you create an action, you can view its status from the AWS Budgets page on the Actions column. This column shows your configured actions count, actions waiting for your approval (Requires approval), and your successfully completed actions.