Where your numbers come from
Two questions come up constantly: is this my real data? and why hasn’t my change shown up? This page answers both.
There are exactly two states
Section titled “There are exactly two states”CloudMonitor never mixes real and example data on a screen. It’s in one of two states, and you can always tell which.
| State | Badge | What you’re seeing |
|---|---|---|
| Demo mode | Demo mode in the top bar | Sample data from a fictional company, app-wide. Nothing is your spend, and changes aren’t saved |
| Normal | none | Your own data — or an honest empty state, or an error |
The important half is the second row. When CloudMonitor can’t load something, it says so. It does not quietly fall back to sample numbers. An empty report is either genuinely empty or genuinely broken, and it will tell you which.
Demo mode is switched on per person under Profile & preferences, so a colleague seeing different numbers to you may simply have it on.
When things update
Section titled “When things update”Cost data arrives on a schedule, not continuously. Cloud providers publish usage with their own lag, so the most recent day or two is usually incomplete everywhere — including in the provider’s own console. A dip at the right-hand edge of a trend chart is almost always this, not a real drop.
Configuration you change is saved immediately. Creating a cost group, editing a rule, setting a budget — those persist as soon as you save.
But reports catch up on the next update. This is the distinction that trips people up: your configuration and your reporting are two different things, and the second follows the first.
The Pending marker
Section titled “The Pending marker”A cost group created since the last update is selectable right away and marked Pending:
Added recently — not included in reporting yet. You can select it now; it will show costs after the next update.
Filter a report to a pending group and you get an explanation rather than an empty page. Nothing is wrong; the spend simply hasn’t been attributed to it yet.
The same applies to allocation rules. Write a rule today and the spend it captures moves on the next update, not on save.
Microsoft 365 data syncs daily, which is why a new connection shows Authorization pending until the following day.
What “live” means, area by area
Section titled “What “live” means, area by area”Most of CloudMonitor reads your own data. Some parts show worked examples where a feed isn’t connected yet, and those are listed on What isn’t available yet.
The general shape:
- Cost reporting — the Ledger, the Cost by… breakdowns, Explorer, Cost Groups, Unallocated Costs, Commitments — reads your data. These reconcile with each other to the cent, because they’re the same underlying rows.
- Findings — anomalies, savings recommendations, WAF findings — are produced from your data, with triage decisions saved against them.
- Configuration — cost groups, rules, budgets, virtual tags, users — is yours and saved immediately.
When something fails to load
Section titled “When something fails to load”You’ll get an error strip at the top of the screen naming what failed. That’s deliberate: one visible message beats a panel that quietly shows nothing.
If you see one, the numbers on screen may be incomplete. Reload before drawing conclusions, and if it persists, raise it — it’s an outage, not a usage question.
Two numbers that should always agree
Section titled “Two numbers that should always agree”A useful self-check: open The Ledger and your Overview with the same Period, provider and cost group selected. The totals should match.
If they don’t, the near-certain cause is a filter difference — most often the cost basis, since the Overview’s trend chart is always effective cost. Check that before anything else.