Overview
A cost management group is a logical container in Cost Analyzer that brings together one or more Azure subscriptions to reflect your organization's structure. Cost management groups give teams, departments, or business units a scoped, consistent view of their Azure spending and can be nested into child groups to mirror hierarchical reporting structures.
Business value
- Organize Azure spending to match your team or organizational structure
- Delegate cost visibility to specific groups without exposing unrelated data
- Apply custom billing adjustments per group for MSP or chargeback reporting
- Monitor group health at a glance using built-in budget alert indicators
How it works
Every analysis view, budget, report, and optimization recommendation in Cost Analyzer is scoped to the cost management group you select. The tree view displays your cost management group hierarchy: the groups and child groups available to you.
Each cost management group has two views:
- Essentials: key cost metrics: previous month spend, average daily cost, and potential savings
- Dashboard: customizable cost widgets grouped by resource type, location, and other dimensions. The dashboard supports two widget types: Default (scoped to specific subscriptions) and Spend per group (visualizes cost data across child groups of the current cost management group).
On the group Overview, Essentials is the default tab. The Last month summary tab next to it shows the last completed month in amortized cost. See Last month summary.
Health indicator
Each cost management group has a health indicator driven by Group budget monitoring alert incidents for the current date. A group is marked healthy when all open budget incidents for today are closed.
Scope
Scope defines which Azure subscriptions and resource groups are visible within a cost management group. Configure scope at any time from the cost management group context menu. Filter down to specific resource groups, tags, resource types, service names, or locations for precise cost tracking.
A change to a group's scope appears in the cost data by 12 AM UTC the next day.
Cost adjustment
Cost adjustment applies a custom percentage increase to a group's original spend, used by Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to apply custom billing rates or additional charges. Accessible to Account Owners only. Enabling Apply for child groups overrides cost adjustment settings for all child groups.
Account Owners can also set a different percentage for a single chart in Cost analysis. The chart's percentage replaces the group's percentage for that chart only. See Cost adjustment.
Cached data
Cost Analyzer caches data to improve performance and resets it automatically each day. To force a manual refresh, select Reset cached data under Tools in the group's Context menu ( ⋮ ) in the tree view.
Reset the cache when:
- Cost data appears outdated or inconsistent
- You have updated the cost management group scope
- You encounter data errors or delays in the dashboard
Limitations
- Moving a cost management group immediately replaces its access policies with those of the destination group; this can't be reversed.
- Deleting a cost management group permanently removes it. You must type the group name to confirm.
FAQs
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What is the difference between a cost management group and an Azure management group?
These are distinct concepts. An Azure management group is a native Azure construct for organizing subscriptions within a tenant hierarchy for governance and policy purposes. A cost management group is a Turbo360 concept: a logical container you create in Cost Analyzer to group subscriptions for cost visibility, budgeting, and reporting. The two are independent; your cost management groups do not need to mirror your Azure management group hierarchy. -
Can the same Azure subscription belong to multiple cost management groups?
Yes. A subscription can be included in more than one cost management group, which lets different teams or departments view the same subscription's costs within their own group context. Scope filters within each group can further narrow the view to specific resource groups, tags, or resource types. -
Is there a limit to how many levels of child groups I can create?
Cost management groups support nested child groups to reflect hierarchical reporting structures, but the practical depth you should use depends on your organizational structure. Very deep hierarchies can make navigation more complex.