Digital products
Cost center 4100
Owner: Product PlatformCost governance
Put Azure cost against the teams that own it.
CloudMonitor applies ordered rules to Azure FOCUS charges. It sends each row to the first matching cost group. Rows with no match stay visible in Unallocated.
Allocation mechanism
The first match decides where each charge lands.
Subscriptions reflect how Azure is deployed. Cost groups map those charges to the products, teams, or cost centers that own the spend.
Organization Contoso Azure estate 100% of FOCUS cost
Ordered rules Subscription Resource group Service Tags
Data and analytics
Cost center 4200
Owner: Data PlatformCorporate services
Cost center 4300
Owner: IT OperationsUnallocated
No rule matched
Visible until resolvedRules run in order, and the first match assigns the charge. CloudMonitor sends rows with no match to the system Unallocated group. It does not drop them or spread them across other groups.
From report to action
Each review starts from the same allocation.
Finance, cost owners, and engineering work from the same allocation model. Access still follows each person’s role and group membership.
- 1
Finance reconciles the group totals.
Review billed or effective cost, budget position, and the remaining Unallocated balance before sharing the numbers.
See the finance workflow → - 2
Cost-group owners explain cost changes.
Use the group’s costs, resources, actions, members, and audit trail to trace a change and see who owns the group.
- 3
Engineering traces the cost to the resource.
Members can inspect their groups and triage anomalies or recommendations assigned to those groups.
See the engineering workflow →
Access boundary
Role and membership decide what a person can see.
A finance analyst, engineering lead, or executive can be an Admin, Owner, or Member. A job title does not grant access to every group.
- Admin
- Sees every group. Creates groups, manages users, and edits allocation rules and workspace settings.
- Cost-group owner
- Sees groups they own. Can edit those groups, their budgets, and their teams.
- Cost-group member
- Sees groups they belong to. Can review cost and triage attributed anomalies and recommendations.
Every user also sees the catch-all Unallocated group.
Govern CloudMonitor without changing Azure resources.
CloudMonitor does not resize, stop, or reconfigure Azure resources. Admins can change organization settings and allocation rules in CloudMonitor. Cost-group owners can manage their groups, budgets, and teams.
Ask Finn
Ask about cost across the organization.
Ask Finn is available to active, licensed organization admins and verified support staff in Support mode. Its service identity can use cost data for the whole organization. The viewer’s cost-group membership does not limit those answers. When the answer path supplies validated context, Finn can show owner details and supporting evidence. It cannot change Azure resources or CloudMonitor settings.
Ask Finn Grounded in CloudMonitor data Read-only
For July billed cost, show budget pressure and open anomalies for the Platform and Payments cost groups. Name each owner and next review.
Add the period, cost group, and selected cost basis.
Build the cost-group view your organization already understands.
Connect your Azure FOCUS export and define the groups and owners. Then review Unallocated before sharing the numbers.
