Compute | Chargeback & Budget
Chargeback & Budget lets you track, allocate, and budget infrastructure costs across the business units and data platforms in your organization, based on actual usage and spend.
Why this matters
In a budget-driven environment, knowing what a data platform costs in aggregate isn't enough — you need to know which department or team is responsible for that spend, and whether it's tracking against a budget. Chargeback & Budget attributes costs to the units that incur them and lets you set and monitor budgets against that attribution, so overspend is visible before it becomes a surprise.
The page has three tabs: Cost Analysis, Organization Unit, and Budgets.
Cost Analysis
Cost Analysis shows overall cost trends for a selected time period (for example, the last 3 or 6 months), broken down by organization unit, in both tabular and graphical form. Use it to spot cost patterns and inform budgeting decisions, with filters and visualizations to dig into specific spend.
Organization Units and Cost Centers
An Organization Unit (OU) represents a division of your company — engineering, sales, marketing, or any other department. OUs let you model your organization's hierarchy in ADOC. A Cost Center (CC) represents the specific expenses an OU incurs — for example, an Engineering OU might have Cost Centers for data platform licensing (AWS, GCP, Snowflake) and database licensing (Oracle DB, MS SQL).
Create a Cost Center
Navigate to Compute > Chargeback & Budget > Organization Units tab.
Select Create, then Cost Centre.
Enter the Cost Centre name, Owner, Viewer, and Org Unit and Description.
Select Next.
On the Data Source Details page, configure:
Data Source – The data source this Cost Centre applies to.
Data Source Name – The specific instance, if you have multiple instances of the same data source.
Select Account – The scope of the Cost Centre:
Entire Account – The entire data source account belongs to this Cost Centre.
Services/Resources – Only the resources or services you select belong to this Cost Centre. Expenditure from those resources is billed only to it.
Tags Pair – Only the tag key-value pairs you select belong to this Cost Centre. Expenditure associated with those tags is billed only to it.
Select Create.
The new Cost Center appears on the Data Sources List page, showing every data source linked to it. Select Add Data Source to link additional data sources to the same Cost Center.
Using Tag Pairs: With Snowflake or Databricks, you can create a Cost Center based on tag key-value pair combinations instead of entire accounts or specific resources. This lets you track cost by tag rather than by account structure — useful when your cost boundaries don't map cleanly to accounts or resource lists. After adding tags for a data source, the Cost Analysis tab reflects the total cost attributed to those tags.
Creating an Organization Unit
Navigate to Compute > Chargeback & Budget > Organization Units.
Select Create, then Organization Units.
Enter the following:
Organization Name – ADOC automatically prefixes "OU" to the name.
Parent Organization Unit (optional) – Makes this OU a child of another OU.
Owner – The OU's owner.
Viewer – The OU's viewers.
Cost Centre(s) (optional) – Existing Cost Centres to include under this OU. Select Add Cost Centre to create a new one inline.
Description (optional) – A description of the OU.
Select Create.
Setting a budget's scope to an Organization Unit also applies that budget to every Cost Centre within it.
Editing Organization Units and Cost Centers
OUs and CCs are listed under their parent OU. Select the + button next to an OU to view its child OUs and CCs.
To add a child OU, select Add a child organization Unit on the parent OU.
To edit an OU, child OU, or CC, select its edit icon.
To delete an OU, child OU, or CC, select its delete icon.
Budgets
Budgets let you set a spending limit for an Organization Unit or Cost Center, track actual spend against it, and get notified as spend approaches the limit.
Column | Description |
|---|---|
Budget Name | The name of the budget. |
Scope of Budget | Organization Unit or Cost Center. |
Duration | The total duration of the budget. |
Budget | The budgeted amount. |
Spend | Total expenditure incurred so far. |
Budget vs Spend | The percentage difference between budgeted and actual spend. |
Create a budget
You can create multiple budgets, spanning different Organization Units, Cost Centers, and time periods.
Select Create Budget and enter a Budget Name.
Set the budget duration: Set a start date and, optionally, an end date — leave the end date unset to keep the budget running indefinitely. Set the time interval (Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly). For example, a $100,000 budget on a Monthly interval applies $100,000 as the total for each month within the budget's date range.
Set the budget scope and amount:
Select Organization Unit or Cost Center as the scope — a single budget can't span both.
Select the Organization Unit(s) or Cost Center(s) to include.
Enter the total Budget Amount.
By default, the full amount applies to each unit you selected. To divide it instead, enable Set the custom budget amount for each Organization Unit and specify each unit's share.
Set thresholds and notifications:
Warning threshold – A percentage of the budget at which spend is flagged as approaching the limit.
Critical threshold – A percentage of the budget at which spend is flagged as nearly exhausted.
For example, on a $10,000 budget, you might set a Warning threshold at 80% ($8,000) and a Critical threshold at 90% ($9,000). ADOC calculates the dollar amount automatically from the percentage you enter.
You can also set a threshold based on Forecast rather than actual spend — if your projected spend based on current consumption is expected to exceed the budget, you're notified in advance rather than after the fact.
Select one or more Notification Channels. When the budget reaches the Warning or Critical stage, everyone on the selected channels is notified, and an incident is created on the Alert Management page.
Select Submit. The budget appears on the Budgets list, and an alert is generated automatically when it reaches a configured threshold.
Edit a budget
You can add or remove Organization Units and Cost Centers from an existing budget.
You cannot change a budget's name, time interval, start date, or start year, and you cannot change its scope between Organization Unit and Cost Center.
What's next
Compute | Recommendations – Recommendations that can help reduce spend tracked here.
Compute | Reports – Build a Spend Report summarizing chargeback and budget data.
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