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Cost review agent

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Overview

Cost review agent is an AI-powered tool in Cost Analyzer that assembles a comprehensive cost report for a cost management group on demand. Instead of manually pulling data from multiple Cost Analyzer views, it compiles spending trends, top cost drivers, notable resource changes, budget incidents, anomalies, optimization posture, and prioritized recommended actions into a single ready-to-present report from one panel.

Business value

Cost reviews typically require FinOps practitioners to gather data from several different views before a meeting. Cost review agent eliminates that preparation time by generating a complete, structured report in seconds. The report covers the key questions any cost review meeting needs to answer: how much is being spent, where it is going, what changed, what needs attention, and what to do next.

Prerequisites

Required permissions

Access to Cost review agent is controlled by role and feature permissions in Cost Analyzer. Permissions are assigned per role under User management. The AI Agents permission must also be enabled at the account level. See AI Agents in Cost Analyzer for how to enable it.

Role Permission level Access
Account owner, Owner, Contributor - Full access to Cost review agent
Custom role Analysis: Read, Monitoring: Read, Optimization: Read Access to Cost review agent with AI Agents enabled

Users who meet the role requirement but do not have AI Agents enabled, or lack Read access on one or more of the required feature permissions, will see the Cost review agent option in the context menu but the report will not display data for the sections that require those permissions.

How it works

Cost review agent generates an AI-compiled cost report scoped to a single cost management group. The report is built from live data at the time you run it and covers the current and previous calendar months.

Each report is organized into the following sections:

  • Summary cards: four headline figures covering current month spend, projected month-end spend, last month spend, and potential savings from rightsizing and reservations combined.
  • Monthly spend chart: a bar chart showing monthly spend over the past six months, with the peak month highlighted and the current partial month shown separately.
  • Top cost drivers: the top services by spend for the selected month, with percentage change vs. the prior month. Switch between the completed and current month using the month tabs.
  • Cost breakdown: spend by subscription and resource group for the selected month, with amount, share of total, and change vs. the prior month. Switch between Subscriptions and Resource Groups using the tabs.
  • Notable movers: resources that increased, decreased, started charging, or stopped charging between two months. Summary badges show the total count in each category, and the panel lists the top movers in each direction.
  • Group budget incidents: a log of budget threshold breaches in the last 30 days, with open and closed status for each.
  • Anomalies: cost spikes detected by the anomaly detection engine in the recent period.
  • Saved views: a snapshot of up to five pinned analysis views, showing their collection, total spend, period, and grouping dimension.
  • Optimization posture: current rightsizing and reservation savings potential, active schedules count, and owned reservations in scope.
  • Review scorecard: a five-item health summary covering budget health, anomalies, optimization, spend trend, and forecast. Each item shows a status and a brief supporting figure.
  • Recommended actions: a numbered list of actions prioritized by impact, derived from the findings across all sections of the report.

The report footer shows the data timestamp and identifies the content as AI-generated. You can refresh the report to pull the latest data, or save it as a PDF for sharing.

Steps

Open Cost review agent from the cost management group's context menu or from the Cost review agent card on the group's Overview tab.

Run a review

Running a review generates a fresh cost report for the selected cost management group.

  1. Click the Context menu ( ⋮ ) next to the cost management group in the tree view.
  2. Select Cost review agent under Tools.
  3. The report opens and loads automatically. If no review has been run today, click Run review on the Overview tab card instead.

Refresh the report

Refreshing pulls the latest data without closing and reopening the panel.

  1. Click the Refresh icon in the top-right corner of the Cost Review panel.
  2. The report reloads with data current to the moment of the refresh.

Save as PDF

Saving as PDF exports the full report for sharing or archiving.

  1. Click Save as PDF in the bottom-right corner of the panel.
  2. The report downloads immediately as a PDF file.

Example scenario

A FinOps lead at Contoso prepares for a monthly cloud cost review meeting. Before Cost review agent, they would spend 30 to 45 minutes pulling spend totals from the Analysis tab, checking budget incidents in Monitoring, reviewing rightsizing recommendations in Optimization, and cross-referencing anomaly alerts. Now they open the cost management group, select Cost review agent from the context menu, and the full report is ready in seconds. The Review scorecard immediately flags that budget health is at risk due to 17 open incidents, and the Recommended actions list leads with resolving those incidents before the meeting starts.

Limitations

  • The report is scoped to a single cost management group and cannot span multiple groups in one run.
  • Data in the report reflects the state at the time the review was run. It does not update automatically; use Refresh to pull the latest data.
  • Saved views coverage is limited to the five pinned analysis views in the active collection.
  • AI Agents must be enabled at the account level. If AI Agents are disabled, Cost review agent is unavailable regardless of role permissions.

Troubleshooting

  1. Cost review agent does not appear in the context menu
    Cause: The signed-in user does not have Contributor or higher access on the cost management group.
    Fix: Ask an Account owner or Owner to grant Contributor access on the relevant cost management group.

  2. The report opens but some sections show no data
    Cause: The user has the required system role but is missing Read access on one or more feature permissions (Analysis, Monitoring, or Optimization).
    Fix: Ask an admin to assign the missing feature permissions under Settings > User management > Roles.

  3. AI Agents is not enabled and Cost review agent cannot be used
    Cause: AI Agents has not been enabled for the Turbo360 account.
    Fix: Contact your Turbo360 administrator to enable AI Agents. See AI Agents in Cost Analyzer for details.

  4. The report data appears outdated
    Cause: The report reflects data from the last time it was run and does not update automatically.
    Fix: Click the Refresh icon in the top-right corner of the panel to regenerate the report with the latest data.

  5. Recommended actions list is empty
    Cause: No actionable findings were detected across the monitored sections: budget health, anomalies, optimization, and notable movers are all within expected ranges.
    Fix: No action is required. The absence of recommended actions indicates the group is healthy at the time of the review.

FAQs

  1. How often can I run a cost review?
    You can run or refresh a review at any time. There is no daily limit on how many times the report can be generated for a group.

  2. Does Cost review agent store the report history?
    The Overview tab card shows the status of the most recent review run. Full report history is not stored in the portal, but you can save any review as a PDF for your own records.

  3. Can I share the Cost review report with someone who does not have access to Turbo360?
    Yes. Use Save as PDF to download the report and share it externally. The PDF includes all sections visible at the time it was saved.

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