Cost Planning

Flexera One users can track their actual cloud spend against a cloud budget and forecast with Cloud Cost Optimization’s Cost Planning capabilities.

Cost Planning enables users to create a plan for a set period of time and see their cloud spend (as defined by a dimensions hierarchy) against that budget and forecast. Areas where budget does not exist for spend or where overspend exists are highlighted in the plan dashboard. Users can define one or more plan, customize a plan’s date range to match their own fiscal calendar, and specify dimensions to use to group and structure how the plan data is shown. After a plan is defined, you can enter monthly projected forecast and budget numbers for each dimension you define.

The plan dashboard shows a snapshot of budget, forecast, current spend, forecast variance, and budget variance. Graphs on the dashboard show current monthly spend and current cumulative spend against the budget and forecast. Detailed plan data appears in a table at the bottom of the dashboard that groups your plan data by the dimensions you define when you create the plan—like billing center, resource group, or account name. The plan data is grouped into the following two categories: Budgeted and Unbudgeted.

Note:Consider the following:

•

Centralized FinOps Teams—Teams with organization-level permissions continue to view all plan segments along with their spending without any restrictions.

•

Decentralized FinOps Teams—Users with distributed FinOps teams can view only the plan segment they are responsible for, as controlled by Billing Center permissions.

•

Cloud Cost Dimensions—These dimensions align with billing center levels, providing billing center users access to view segments and actual spending related only to their specific billing centers.

Role Requirements for Decentralized Cost Planning

The following roles are required for cost planning:

Role	Description
Manage budgets	Full access to plan dashboards (segments and cloud spend) and view cloud billing data. A user with this role can view, create, update, and delete plans. For complete descriptions of each role available in Flexera One, see Flexera One Roles.
View budgets	Ability to view a list of plans and view plan dashboards. A user with this role can only view plan dashboard segments for which they have cost access. Cost access is granted at the billing center or organization level. When cost access is granted at the billing center level, users can view a decentralized cost plan within that specific billing center. For complete descriptions of each role available in Flexera One, see Flexera One Roles.
View cloud costs	Ability to view plan dashboards. The access levels are as follows: • Organizational access—You can view cloud costs across the organization. • Billing Center access—You can view cloud costs for at least one billing center. A user with this role can only view plan dashboard segments for which they have cost access.

The following sections describe how to view, create, and manage budgets:

•

Viewing the Plan List

•

Viewing a Plan Dashboard

•

Creating a New Plan

•

Editing a Plan

•

Deleting a Plan