The My Budgets page lists all budgets where the user is the nominated budget manager.

The drop down menu against each budget provides the following options:

• View: Drill into an overview of the budget
• Edit: Change properties of the budget
• Open: Allows costs to be consumed from the budget (if budget is currently closed)
• Close: Closes the budget to any new costs being assigned from the budget (if budget is currently open)
• Rollover: Creates a new budget period with options to copy budget properties
• Delete: Remove the budget

This article provides details for viewing and using budget functionality to monitor and govern cloud expenditure. Refer to the article Managing Budgets for detailed steps required to manage budget life cycles, such as creating, deleting, closing/opening, and rolling over budgets.

Prerequisites

• Administrative access to Buttonwood Central
  or
• User access to Buttonwood Central as a manager of one or more budgets

Budget Overview

The Overview tab provides a summary of the selected budget.

Top Section

This section provides an overview of budget's status as a whole, including:

• Budget: The amount allocated to the budget
• Current Spend: Expenditure associated with the budget period, with the status indicator identifying whether actual spend is within budget
• Projected Spend: Expenditure at the end of the budget period calculated using the current spend pattern, with a status indicator identifying whether the projected spend is expected to fall within budget
• Budget Reserved: Amount of budget proactively reserved for expected expenditure
• Current Reservations: Number of reservations which are currently active as well as the number of expired (past) and future reservations
• Reservations Pending Approval: Requests for expenditure which are awaiting for approval

Middle Section

This section provides a view of the daily spend summarised per provider, as well as the location of deployed resources.

Hover over the Daily Spend graph to view and drill into the spend for that day, or select periods to zoom into.

Hover over the Deployment locations to view details of the cloud provider where the deployments run.

Bottom Section

This section provides details on charges which have been reserved out of the budget, including:

• Reservations: Charges reserved out of the budget with a heat map indicating the actual charge compared to the amount reserved
  • The default view excludes expired reservations, use the Show Expired option to view all reservations from the budget
  • Hovering over any reservation provides an overview including the name, start and end dates, and reservation details - use the available submenu from this popup to view further details of the reservation
• Reservation Heath: Provides an overview of the deviation of reservations to their projected costs - use the submenu to adjust reservations as required:
  • Trim Reservations: Adjusts reservations down where the projected expenditure is less than the reserved amount
  • Expand Reservations: Adjusts reservations up where the projected expenditure is more than the reserved amount
  • Autosize Reservations: Adjust reservations to match the projected expenditure for all reservations whether they are higher or lower 

Budget Details

The Details tab provides an overview of the budget's properties.

Use the Edit drop down menu to manage the budget.

Budget Alerts

The Alerts tab lists the configured alerts for the budget.

Budget alerts allow thresholds to be configured against either the actual or projected budget spend. 

When a threshold condition is met, the event is logged, and an email alert is set to the configured alert recipients to allow for any budget control measures to be actioned.

Adding Alerts

1. Click Add
2. On the Add Alert screen, provide the following information:
   • Threshold: The threshold value as a percentage when the alert should trigger
   • Type:
     • Actual: Actual budget consumption based on billing data ingested from service providers
     • Projected: Projected budget consumption based on billing data ingested from the service providers and usage patterns of resources, up to the end of the budget period
   • Recipient: Who the notification will be sent to, which includes the budget manager, cost centre owner, or a specified user
     
3. Click Save

Additional Operations

The following operations can also be performed on this screen:

1. Edit: Modify the properties of a configured alert
2. Delete: Remove an alert or multiple alerts

Budget Reports

The Reports tab lists the configured reports for the budget.

Budget reports allow configuration of recipients to receive a summary of the budget at a predetermined frequency. The frequency can be configured as daily, weekly, or monthly.

Adding Reports

1. Click Add
2. On the Add Report screen, provide the following information:
   • Frequency: The frequency of the reporting, which includes daily, weekly, or monthly
   • Recipient: Who the notification will be sent to, which includes the budget manager, cost centre owner, or a specified user
     
3. Click Save

Additional Operations

The following operations can also be performed on this screen:

1. Edit: Modify the properties of a configured report
2. Delete: Remove a report or multiple reports

Budget Notification Logs

The Notification Logs tab is an informational screen which lists notifications which have been triggered by configured budget alerts or budget reports.

Budget Reservations

The Reservations tab lists the costs which have been reserved against the selected budget.

Reservations are created in one of the following ways:

• Automatically by Buttonwood Central if application subscriptions are configured
• Automatically by Buttonwood Automate as part of its deployment process
• Manually by a budget manager, for example to pre-allocate a buffer, or for a known upcoming event

For reservations created by Buttonwood Automate, the total cost of the deployment through its entire lease is calculated and reserved against corresponding budget periods. Similarly, for each application subscription configured in Buttonwood Central, the expected cost through its entire subscription period is calculated and automatically reserved against the corresponding budget periods.

Pre-allocating the total cost of services ensures that budgets are never overcommitted.

Adding Manual Reservations

1. Click Add
2. On the Add Reservation screen, provide the following information:
   • Name: A name for the reservation
   • Reservation: An amount to reserve from this budget period
     
3. Click Save

Viewing Reservation Details

1. Click View from the dropdown menu or the reservation name

• Overview

Provides cost details of the reservation as well as a daily spend graph over the reservation lifetime compared to when charges were still accrued

• Details

Provides details of the reservation and the associated budget

• Notes

Lists events and activities for the reservation

• Charges

Lists costs which are associated with the reservation

Additional Operations

The following operations can also be performed on this screen:

1. Edit: Modify the properties of a reservation
2. Delete: Remove one or more selected reservations
   Note: Only manual reservations can be deleted
3. Autosize: Increase or decrease the reservation amount to match the projected expenditure of the resources associated with the reservation

Budget Consumers

The Consumers tab lists users which have access to use the budget.

Users must be assigned as a consumer of a budget in order to deploy blueprints. When a deployment is requested, the user is prompted to select a cost Centre to assign the deployment's cost to. For the  deployment to proceed, the selected cost centre must have:

• an active budget for the requested lease period; and
• room in the budget to reserve out the total cost of the deployment

Adding Consumers

1. Click Add
2. Select the user from the selection box which appears
3. Click Add
4. A message confirms the status of the request
   

Additional Operations

The following operations can also be performed on this screen:

1. Delete: Remove a consumer or multiple consumers

Budget Policies

The policies tab lists reservation approval policies.

Budget managers can create rules which determine when requests for spending against a budget requires manual approval. When a user requests a deployment which matches an approval policy, the budget manager is alerted to the deployment request and is required to approve the associated costs before the deployment is processed. 

Any deployments which do not match configured policies are automatically approved by the system.

Creating an Approval Policy

1. Click Add
2. On the Add Reservation Policy screen, provide the following information:
   
   • Consumer: Select the consumer (or all consumers) who will be affected by the policy
   • Approval Required Reservation Amount: The amount which will trigger the approval
     
3. Click Add

Additional Operations

The following operations can also be performed on this screen:

1. Delete: Remove the selected policy

Budget Charges

The charges tab is an informational screen which lists the costs which have been associated with the selected budget.

Note: Charges not invoiced by the service provider in the organisation's selected currency are automatically converted to provide a normalised view across all charges.