Budgets

You can create and assign a budget to a Cost Report. Once a budget is assigned, it’s easy to see how costs are trending for a particular service, business unit, or team. Each budget runs on a budget period that can run anywhere from a single day up to multiple years, so budgets align to how your team actually plans. You can also create budget alerts to alert you based on configurable thresholds.

To get started with budgets, you can also view video demos on Vantage University .

Budget Types

In Vantage, you can create either Standard or Hierarchical budgets:

Standard Budget

This type of budget has one level with a defined budget period and one or more periods of budgeted amounts associated with it. For example, you could use this type of budget to track costs for a single department or project.

Hierarchical Budget

This type of budget is made up of multiple child budgets that roll up to a parent budget.

For example, an application team can create individual budgets for AWS, Azure, and Databricks usage and then create a single budget for their application that combines all three of these child budgets. If the AWS budget changes, the parent application budget is automatically updated.
Similarly, the organization’s FinOps team can consolidate multiple AWS budgets from various teams into a single, comprehensive parent budget to measure all AWS spend.

Hierarchical Budgets have the following characteristics:

You can create a budget hierarchy with a maximum of 10 levels.
A Hierarchical Budget does not have its own budget period or amounts. Instead, it aggregates the periods and amounts of its child budgets. If a child budget has no allocated budget for a specific period, that period contributes nothing to the parent’s total.
Every child budget under the same parent must cover the exact same current period, both the same length and the same dates. For example, you can combine budgets that are all monthly and start on the same day, but you can’t mix a monthly budget with a weekly one, and you can’t combine two monthly budgets if one starts on the 1st and the other on the 15th (their periods don’t line up). If a budget’s period doesn’t match, Vantage won’t let you add it as a child.
A child budget can be used only once within a given hierarchy.
- Example: You create a hierarchy with a parent budget for the “Marketing Organization” and child budgets for “Social Media Campaigns,” “Event Marketing,” and “Content Creation.” The child budget for “Social Media Campaigns” cannot also appear under “Event Marketing” within the same hierarchy to avoid duplication in budget calculations.
A child budget can belong to multiple separate hierarchies.
- Example: Suppose your organization is structured both by departments and projects. A child budget for “Mobile App Redesign” might belong to the “Product Development” department’s hierarchy, while also appearing in a completely separate hierarchy for cross-functional “Q1 Strategic Initiatives.” This allows you to manage and report on budgets across different organizational contexts.

Budget Periods

Every Standard Budget runs on a budget period, which is defined by a start date and a period length. Rather than choosing a named cadence, you enter a number and a unit (Days, Weeks, Months, or Years), for example, 1 Week for a weekly budget, 1 Month for a monthly budget, 3 Months for a quarterly budget, or 1 Year for an annual budget. Vantage automatically generates the sequence of periods from the start date, and you assign a budgeted amount to each period.

A budget period measured in months or years can’t exceed how far back your account retains cost and usage data. This retention window is defined by your Vantage contract. If you choose a period longer than your retention window, Vantage displays an error similar to: “interval exceeds your account’s 6-month cost data retention window.” Period lengths measured in days or weeks are always allowed.

Budgets Screen

To access the main Budgets screen in the console:

From the top navigation, click Financial Planning.
On the left navigation, select Budgets.

All existing budgets are displayed here. You can also edit or delete budgets from this screen.

The Budgets landing page with several budgets displayed, each showing its current period dates and current period performance.

The main Budgets screen lists budgets in an expandable tree. Hierarchical budgets are labeled and can be expanded to reveal the child budgets that roll up under them. The following columns are available:

Column	Description
Name	Links to each budget’s configuration screen.
Current Period	The date range of the budget’s active period (for example, Aug 1, 2026 – Aug 31, 2026).
Current Period Performance Summary	A progress bar comparing actual spend against the budgeted amount for the current period.
Cost Report	The attached Cost Report. Only terminal child budgets can be associated with a Cost Report.
Status (optional)	The current-period utilization state (see Utilization states). Enable it from Manage Columns.
Created By (optional)	Who created the budget. Enable it from Manage Columns.

Use the Cost Report and Budget Type filters to narrow the list, and the search field to find a budget by name. Click Manage Columns to choose which columns are shown or to reset to the defaults; you can also reorder columns by dragging one up or down in the list (or focusing it and using the arrow keys). Required columns such as Name stay in a fixed position. Click Import (next to New budget) to upload budgets from a CSV.

Create a Budget - UI Method

The below instructions describe how to manually create a budget in the UI. You can also upload a CSV file to create a budget. See the section below for details.

Begin on the main Budgets screen. From the top right of the screen, click New budget and choose either Standard budget or Hierarchical budget. The options that follow differ for each budget type.

Standard Budget
Hierarchical Budget

The New Standard Budget dialog is displayed. Configure the following:

Name your budget: Enter a descriptive name. You can rename it later.
Select costs to measure your budget against: Select the Cost Report you want the budget to track and be displayed on. See the section below for details. Note: Budgets are scoped to a report within a specific workspace, and access can be controlled via teams.
Set a start date: The first budget period starts on this date, and future periods follow the selected schedule.
Set the period length: Enter a number and select a unit (Days, Weeks, Months, or Years). See Budget Periods for common cadences and limits.

Click Continue to create the budget and open its detail page.

Click to view example image

The Standard Budget dialog with a name, cost report, start date, and period length configured.

Next, add budget periods and amounts. On the Manage tab, in the Budget Periods section, click Add period to add a period, then enter a Budget amount for each period. You can also click Upload a CSV to import periods for this budget. Each period row displays a Start Date, an End date, and a Budget amount.

At the top right, click Save Changes.

Edit Budget Settings

To edit a budget after creation, open it and go to the Manage tab. What you can change depends on the budget type.

Standard Budget
Hierarchical Budget

The Budget Settings section summarizes the current Name, Cost Report, Start Date, and Period Length. Click Edit settings to open the Edit Budget Settings dialog. You can always update the Name and Cost Report. The Start Date and budget frequency (period length) are fixed once the budget has any periods, so those fields are disabled with the tooltip “Start date and budget frequency can’t be edited while budget periods exist.” The Budget Periods section below is where you add, edit, or remove individual periods and amounts.Use the Date range filter above the periods table to control which periods are shown; for a newly created budget it defaults to roughly a six-month window around today. Before any periods are added, the section shows the empty state “You haven’t created any budget periods yet.”

If periods you just added or imported don’t appear in the Budget Periods table, they’re most likely outside the current Date range filter rather than missing. Open the Date range filter widen the range.

A budget’s cadence (its start date and period length) can be changed only while the budget has no periods. Once any period exists, the cadence is locked. Attempting to change it returns the error “Budget cadence cannot be changed after creation.”

Create a Budget - CSV Import Method

If you have existing budgets in spreadsheets or another tool, you can import them all at once by uploading a CSV file.

Expected Format

Budget import files must adhere to the following requirements:

The file must be in a valid CSV format.
The header row of the CSV must start with a unique string or identifier (e.g., Budget Name).
- The remaining values in the header row are budget period start dates. Use YYYY-MM format for monthly periods (e.g., 2026-08 for August 2026), or YYYY-MM-DD for any cadence (e.g., 2026-08-01). Each period column header is the period’s start date, and the period ends the day before the next column.
Each additional row in the CSV must start with the name of the budget. Corresponding values must be expressed as decimals (e.g., 25000.00) for every period with an associated budget. If there is no budget for a period, the value can be blank.
If the budget is a Hierarchical Budget, include the Parent Budget column.
To set a budget’s period cadence, include the optional Start Date, Interval Count, and Interval Unit columns. Interval Unit must be one of day, week, month, or year. If you omit these columns, the budget uses the default monthly cadence.

Standard Budget Format

The below example of three Standard Budgets shows a readable view, CSV file format, the budget import screen, and the final budgets in Vantage. Team 3 does not have a budget for 2026-10, and therefore, no budget period is added for Team 3 during that timeframe. On the import, the period start and end date are set based on the column headers.

Standard Budget
CSV File
Import Screen
Imported Budgets

Budget Name	2026-08	2026-09	2026-10
Team 1	50000	51000	52000
Team 2	30000	30000	40000
Team 3	45000	50000

Budget Name,2026-08,2026-09,2026-10
Team 1,50000,51000,52000
Team 2,30000,30000,40000
Team 3,45000,50000,

Set the Budget Period via CSV

To import a budget on a cadence other than monthly, add the Start Date, Interval Count, and Interval Unit columns and use YYYY-MM-DD period column headers that align to the cadence. The example below creates a budget on a two-week cadence starting 2026-08-01, with $5,000 budgeted per period.

Standard Budget
CSV File

Budget Name	Start Date	Interval Count	Interval Unit	2026-08-01	2026-08-15
Platform Weekly	2026-08-01	2	week	5000	5000

Budget Name,Start Date,Interval Count,Interval Unit,2026-08-01,2026-08-15
Platform Weekly,2026-08-01,2,week,5000,5000

Hierarchical Budget Format

The below example of a Hierarchical Budget shows a readable view, CSV file format, the budget import screen, and the final budget in Vantage. Note that the parent budgets—Engineering Org, Development Dept, and Infrastructure Dept—do not have any amounts listed since these budgets are composed of the corresponding child budgets—Frontend Redesign, Backend Refactor, New Cloud Environment, and Cost Optimization Task. The associated next-level parent is listed in the Parent Budget column.

Hierarchical Budget
CSV File
Import Screen
Imported Budgets

Budget Name	Parent Budget	2026-08	2026-09	2026-10
Engineering Org
Development Dept	Engineering Org
Infrastructure Dept	Engineering Org
Frontend Redesign	Development Dept	30000	35000	35000
Backend Refactor	Development Dept	40000	45000	50000
New Cloud Environment	Infrastructure Dept	60000	60000	60000
Cost Optimization Task	Infrastructure Dept	20000	30000	40000

Budget Name,Parent Budget,2026-08,2026-09,2026-10
Engineering Org,,,,
Development Dept,Engineering Org,,,
Infrastructure Dept,Engineering Org,,,
Frontend Redesign,Development Dept,30000,35000,35000
Backend Refactor,Development Dept,40000,45000,50000
New Cloud Environment,Infrastructure Dept,60000,60000,60000
Cost Optimization Task,Infrastructure Dept,20000,30000,40000

You can combine the two formats to import a hierarchy on a non-monthly cadence: add the cadence columns to each child row and keep every child on the same schedule. In the example below, both child budgets are weekly starting 2026-08-01, so they roll up cleanly under the parent.

Hierarchical Budget
CSV File

Budget Name	Parent Budget	Start Date	Interval Count	Interval Unit	2026-08-01	2026-08-08
Platform Org
Frontend	Platform Org	2026-08-01	1	week	2000	2000
Backend	Platform Org	2026-08-01	1	week	3000	3000

Budget Name,Parent Budget,Start Date,Interval Count,Interval Unit,2026-08-01,2026-08-08
Platform Org,,,,,,
Frontend,Platform Org,2026-08-01,1,week,2000,2000
Backend,Platform Org,2026-08-01,1,week,3000,3000

Import Budget

Once your CSV file is prepared, follow the steps below to import any type of budget.

From the top navigation, click Financial Planning.

On the left navigation, select Budgets.

From the top right of the screen, click Import. The Import Budget Data modal is displayed.

Click Choose File and select a CSV file.

Click Upload. The Review Imported Data screen is displayed. If no errors are present, click Confirm > OK.

After you confirm, Vantage returns you to the main Budgets screen. Your imported budgets appear in the list, which is sorted alphabetically—use the search bar at the top to quickly find a budget by name.

When you open an imported budget, its Manage tab may not show every period right away because the Date range filter defaults to a window around today. If periods look missing, open the Date range filter and widen the range.

Fix Import Errors

If a formatting error is found in your imported CSV file, the import wizard indicates where the error occurred. To fix the error, correct the issue in your source CSV and re-upload the file. In the below example, an error occurred because the CSV file contained duplicate values in the header row.

Error Screen
Source CSV File

Budget Name,2026-08,2026-10,2026-10
Team 1,50000.00,51000.00,52000.00,

When an import can’t be completed, the review screen flags the affected budgets and shows the reason. Budget-specific errors are listed with the budget name first, in the format Budget name: error (for example, New Cloud Environment: Child budgets must share the same current period.). Use the table below to match an error to a fix. Also make sure the file has no extra blank columns and that amounts are plain decimals (e.g., 56000.00, not $56,000.00).

Error	Cause	Fix
`The file is unparseable.`	The upload isn’t valid CSV.	Re-export as CSV and remove any stray characters or malformed rows.
`'202303' has an invalid date format.`	A period column header isn’t `YYYY-MM` or `YYYY-MM-DD`.	Use `YYYY-MM` for monthly periods or `YYYY-MM-DD` for any cadence.
`'2026-10' appears more than once in the header row.`	A period column header is repeated.	Use each period date only once in the header row.
`'Team 1' appears more than once in the file.`	A budget name is duplicated in the file.	Make each budget name unique.
`A budget with this name already exists.`	The name matches a budget already in Vantage.	Rename the budget, or select Overwrite budget periods to replace the existing one (see the video below).
`Child budgets must share the same current period.`	A hierarchy mixes children with different periods.	Give every child under a parent the same cadence and aligned period dates.
`Budget hierarchy is too deep.`	The hierarchy exceeds 10 levels.	Flatten the hierarchy to 10 levels or fewer.
`Child budgets already assigned to another hierarchy.`	A child budget is already a child under a different parent.	Use a different budget, or remove it from the other hierarchy first.
`Cycle detected in budget hierarchy.`	A budget is set as its own ancestor.	Fix the `Parent Budget` references so the hierarchy doesn’t loop.
`Period interval unit is not included in the list.`	`Interval Unit` isn’t `day`, `week`, `month`, or `year`.	Use one of `day`, `week`, `month`, or `year`.
`Period interval count must be greater than 0.`	`Interval Count` is 0, negative, or not a whole number.	Use a whole number greater than 0.
`Interval exceeds your account's N-month cost data retention window.`	The cadence is longer than your account’s data retention.	Choose a shorter period, or contact Vantage about your retention window.
`Start date must match the first budget period start date.`	`Start Date` doesn’t match the earliest period column.	Set `Start Date` to the first period column’s date.
`Budget cadence cannot be changed after creation.`	An overwrite tried to change an existing budget’s start date or period length.	Keep the original cadence, or delete and recreate the budget.

Watch: overwrite an existing budget on import

View Budget Performance

For any budget, select the Performance tab to see how the budget is tracking against its budgeted amounts. The Performance tab has three parts: summary cards, a time-series chart, and a per-period table. The details vary slightly depending on whether you are viewing a Standard Budget or a Hierarchical (parent) budget.

Performance Summary Cards

At the top of the tab, summary cards provide an at-a-glance view of the current period:

Card	What it shows
Current Period Utilization (labeled Rollup Utilization for Hierarchical Budgets)	The current period’s date range, the amount spent versus the budgeted amount (e.g., $18,000 spent of $40,000), a progress bar, and a footer summarizing how much of the budget has been used and how much of the period has elapsed (e.g., 45% of budget used · 39% of period elapsed).
Current Performance	The dollar amount you are currently over or under budget, labeled Over as of today or Remains as of today.
Projected Performance	The dollar amount you are projected to be over or under budget by the end of the period, labeled Over at period end or Will remain at period end. The projection extrapolates your current spend pace across the full period (it is not the Cost Report’s forecast).
Child budgets at risk or over (Hierarchical Budgets only)	The number of child budgets that are over budget or at risk, with a breakdown below the count (e.g., 2 over · 1 at risk).

Standard Budget
Hierarchical Budget

The Performance tab for a Standard Budget, showing Current Period Utilization, Current Performance, and Projected Performance cards above a time-series chart and per-period table.

Utilization States

A status badge on the utilization card (and in the optional Status column on the Budgets screen) reflects one of the following states:

State	Meaning
🟢 On Track	Spending is within budget so far and is projected to stay within budget through the end of the period.
🟡 At risk	Spending is not over budget yet, but at the current pace it is projected to exceed the budget before the period ends.
🔴 Over	Spend has already exceeded the full budgeted amount for the period.
⚪ Not Started	No spend has been recorded for the current period yet.

Performance Chart

Below the cards, a time-series chart plots cumulative Budget against Spend over time. You can:

Adjust the date range with the date range picker.
Change the chart granularity (day, week, month, or year).
Toggle whether variance is displayed as a dollar amount or a percentage.

Performance Table

The table below the chart differs depending on the budget type.

Standard Budget
Hierarchical Budget

Each row is a budget period, with the following columns:

Period: The date range of the period. The in-progress period is tagged with a Current Period badge, and future periods are tagged Forecast.
Budget: The budgeted amount for the period.
Spend: Actual spend for the period. For the current period, this reflects spend to date; the value is highlighted red if it exceeds the budget.
Variance ($) or Variance (%): How far actual spend is over or under the budgeted amount, depending on the variance display you selected.

For the in-progress period, projected spend and variance extrapolate your current spend pace across the full period, since the period is not yet complete. Budgeted amounts are spread evenly across the days in each period, so a partially elapsed period is compared against the prorated portion of its budget. If there’s nothing to show yet, the Performance tab displays a prompt with a shortcut to the Manage tab.

View Budgets on Cost Reports

Once a budget is assigned to a Cost Report, a budget report with current-period performance is displayed at the top of the Cost Report. The budget reflects amortized costs throughout the period, indicating whether spending is above or below the budget so far.

A budget is displayed as a trend line on the Cost Report in the console

Budgets are displayed as a yellow line on the graph in the cumulative, daily, weekly, and monthly views on a Cost Report. The dotted portion of the line corresponds to the future budget, which you can track against your forecasted costs.

Because budget amounts are spread evenly across the days in each period, aggregated views (such as Weekly or Monthly) may show the budget line dip for partial periods at the start or end of the budget period.

Budget Alerts

Budget alerts are automated alerts based on configurable budget thresholds. Create a budget alert for any of your existing budgets to notify you when a percentage of a budget is exceeded. You can configure alerts to notify Vantage users via email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Jira. You can optionally scope an alert to a window at the beginning or end of the budget period (e.g., within the first 10 days of the period). You can create budget alerts for any type of budget—Standard or Hierarchical. For Hierarchical Budgets, the costs associated with the child budgets are aggregated at the parent budget level to determine if a budget alert should be set off.

If you want to send alerts to Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Jira, see the Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Jira integration documentation. Once you’ve set up an integration, follow the steps below to set up a budget alert.

Open the budget you want to alert on. From the top of the budget’s detail page, click Budget Alerts to open the Budget Alerts drawer, which lists any existing alerts for the budget.

The Budget Alerts drawer opened from a budget, listing existing alerts with an Add budget alert button.

Click Add budget alert. The New Budget Alert panel is displayed.

Configure the following parameters:

For Budget, select one or more budgets the alert applies to.
For Alert when spend exceeds, enter a percentage threshold (e.g., 85% of the budget). You’ll receive an alert only if the threshold is reached.
Optionally, for Within first, enter a number of days (between 1 and 31) and choose beginning of the period or end of the period to scope the alert to a window within the budget period.
For Email recipients, select the recipients who are members of your team in Vantage that you want to receive the alert.
Under App alerts, optionally select any Slack channels, Microsoft Teams channels, or Jira projects you want to receive the alert.

Click to view example image

A budget alert configured to send to one user and a Slack channel within the first 10 days of the period.

Click Save Budget Alert. Budget alerts will look similar to the below image.

Recipients will be notified immediately after a Cost Report is updated with the latest data. Reports are updated with the latest data at least once per day. If your budget exceeds the threshold for multiple alerts, you’ll be notified only about the most severe alert (the alert with the highest threshold). An annotation is also added to the corresponding Cost Report on the date the alert was triggered.

You can create multiple budget alerts with the same threshold and window but different recipients. For example, you can create one alert that sends email notifications to a specific team member and another alert with the same threshold that sends notifications to a Slack channel. This allows you to route the same alert to different destinations based on your team’s needs.

Budget Alert Limitations

At this time, only dynamic, percentage-based thresholds are supported. Budget alerts can be configured only to send alerts based on actual, not forecasted costs.

A single cost increase will not typically trigger a budget alert. If you are interested in this feature, see the Cost Anomaly Alerts documentation.

By default, a budget alert evaluates spend against the budgeted amount for the entire budget period. If you want to be alerted based on only part of the period, use the Within first option (e.g., within the first 10 days of the period) to scope the alerting window.

Keep the Within first window shorter than the budget’s period. If the number of days is longer than the period length (for example, a 20-day window on a weekly budget), the alert is skipped and won’t fire.

Budget Alerts and Cost Reports

If you update a Cost Report that is associated with a budget alert, the following message is displayed: This report has budget alerts and may trigger a notification. Are you sure you want to save the report? You must confirm before saving the report.

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Cost Reporting Features

Financial Planning Features

Budget Types

Standard Budget

Hierarchical Budget

Budget Periods

Budgets Screen

Create a Budget - UI Method

Edit Budget Settings

Create a Budget - CSV Import Method

Expected Format

Standard Budget Format

Set the Budget Period via CSV

Hierarchical Budget Format

Import Budget

Fix Import Errors

View Budget Performance

Performance Summary Cards

Utilization States

Performance Chart

Performance Table

View Budgets on Cost Reports

Budget Alerts

Budget Alert Limitations

Budget Alerts and Cost Reports

​Budget Types

​Standard Budget

​Hierarchical Budget

​Budget Periods

​Budgets Screen

​Create a Budget - UI Method

​Edit Budget Settings

​Create a Budget - CSV Import Method

​Expected Format

​Standard Budget Format

​Set the Budget Period via CSV

​Hierarchical Budget Format

​Import Budget

​Fix Import Errors

​View Budget Performance

​Performance Summary Cards

​Utilization States

​Performance Chart

​Performance Table

​View Budgets on Cost Reports

​Budget Alerts

​Budget Alert Limitations

​Budget Alerts and Cost Reports

Budget Types

Standard Budget

Hierarchical Budget

Budget Periods

Budgets Screen

Create a Budget - UI Method

Edit Budget Settings

Create a Budget - CSV Import Method

Expected Format

Standard Budget Format

Set the Budget Period via CSV

Hierarchical Budget Format

Import Budget

Fix Import Errors

View Budget Performance

Performance Summary Cards

Utilization States

Performance Chart

Performance Table

View Budgets on Cost Reports

Budget Alerts

Budget Alert Limitations

Budget Alerts and Cost Reports