In the provider portal, you define cost tags to associate resource usage with particular business entities. For example, the Application, Test, and QA tags represent cost centers. Resource requesters, in contrast, might independently create a variety of tag names when defining a resource, for example, "App", "AppService", or "appl" when they really mean "Application."

Important: This information applies to both the Cloud Cost Management and Cloud Insights Billing apps. All references to Cloud Cost Management also apply to Cloud Insights Billing.

Using tag categories ensures accurate cost reporting

The system uses tag categories to enable multiple tag names to represent costs against a single entity. For example, multiple users might independently have created the "App", "AppService", and "appl" tag names to represent "Application". With a tag category of "Application", any costs for items tagged App, AppService, or appl are correctly assigned as costs against "Application". Because each of the three tags is considered as contributing to costs for the Application category, costs are accurately reported.

Updates to billing information

Cost categories are updated with new cost tag values each time billing data is downloaded. Each successful execution of a Billing Download job updates tagged costs. Recent updates that you make to tag category definitions such as adding a tag name to a category might not be reflected in cost reports. To apply the latest tag category definitions to cost data without running a Billing Download job, select Cloud Cost Management Workspace > Operations > Cost usage tags > Tag categories > Reapply tag categories.