---
title: Your Overview
canonical: "https://cloudmonitor.ai/docs/using-cloudmonitor/reports/overview/"
description: "The home page: where spend stands, where it is heading, and anything that wants your attention. You can rearrange it."
---

The Overview is the page CloudMonitor opens on and the one you'll glance at most. It answers three
questions at once: what are we spending, where is it going, and is anything wrong?

## What's on it out of the box

Four numbers across the top:

- **Effective cost** and **Billed cost** side by side — the two ways of counting the same period. See
  [effective cost vs billed cost](/docs/using-cloudmonitor/effective-vs-billed-cost/).
- **Total savings** — what optimization has actually earned.
- **Services** — how many distinct services you're paying for. A number that only ever goes up is
  worth a conversation.

Then the cards: **Spend over time**, **Spend by provider**, **Cost by cost group**,
**Budget health**, **Recommendations** and **Cost anomalies**.

Each number carries its own explanation — hover it to see exactly what's being counted. That matters
more than it sounds, because "spend" has several defensible definitions and this tells you which one
you're looking at.

## The one exception to the cost basis

The **Spend over time** chart is always effective cost, even if your personal setting is billed. The
reason: a billed-cost trend spikes in whatever month you happened to buy a commitment, which makes
the chart useless for spotting real change. The invoiced figure is on the tile above it, so you get
both — you just don't get a misleading line.

CloudMonitor grays out the cost-basis chip here rather than letting you toggle it, and says why when
you hover.

## The filters apply

Period, provider, cost group and virtual tags all narrow the Overview. Scoping it to one cost group
turns it into that team's home page, which is the fastest way to answer "how are we doing?" for a
part of the business.

## Making it yours

**Edit homepage** turns on arranging mode. From there:

- **Add widget** opens the full catalog with a switch per widget. Each one explains what it shows and
  which filters it honors.
- Drag to reorder. Tiles reorder among tiles, cards among cards.
- The **×** on a widget removes it.
- **Reset to default** puts it back.

**Done** commits, **Cancel** restores what you started with.

Your layout is yours alone — it doesn't change what anyone else sees, and it follows you between
devices.

:::tip[Unpinning a widget genuinely removes its work]
CloudMonitor only fetches data for widgets you've pinned. Removing the recommendations card doesn't
hide a query, it stops making it. If your Overview feels slow, a shorter homepage is a real fix
rather than a cosmetic one.
:::

## Your view changes what leads

The **View** setting on [your profile page](/docs/using-cloudmonitor/profile-and-preferences/)
changes the Overview's title and which numbers lead:

| View | Leads with |
|---|---|
| **Practitioner** | Optimizable spend, idle and orphaned resources, potential savings, open anomalies |
| **Leadership** | Spend, forecast, realized savings, budget variance |
| **Cost centre** | Your groups' spend, budget remaining, tag coverage, chargeback readiness |

It's presentation, not permission — switching never changes what you're allowed to see.

## If it looks empty

Check the Period first: a window with no data produces an empty page that is working correctly. If a
single card is empty rather than the whole page, it usually means there's genuinely nothing there —
no open anomalies is good news, and the card says so.