--- title: Setting up Key Metrics for Azure Cost Management description: Learn how to create and setup key metrics for Azure cost control and management. image: https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/hubfs/cost-managemen-looking-glass-featured.jpg --- # Key Metrics for Azure Cost Management Posted by Michael Spenny - January 18, 2021 ### Organizing your cloud-based resources is critical to securing, managing, and tracking the costs related to your workloads.  - [**](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/key-metrics-for-azure-cost-management) - [**](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/key-metrics-for-azure-cost-management&title=&summary=&source=) - [**](https://twitter.com/home?status=) - [**](mailto:?&subject=https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/key-metrics-for-azure-cost-management&body=https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/key-metrics-for-azure-cost-management) ** ![header-picture](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/hubfs/cost-management-header-web.jpg "header-picture") ### Key Metrics for Azure Cost Management Azure cloud portal makes it easy to deploy and manage thousands of resources, but without proper governance and oversight in place organizations will struggle to manage cost. A well-planned organizational structure for your Azure billing and resource hierarchies enables visibility and control over costs as you create your cloud infrastructure. Organizing your cloud-based resources is critical to securing, managing, and tracking the costs related to your workloads.  ### **Define a Management Group Hierarchy**  A well-planned organizational structure for your Azure billing and resource hierarchies helps to give you a good understanding and control over costs as you create your cloud infrastructure.  ![Azure Cloud Strategy](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Incycle%202017%20website%20resources/Azure%20Cloud%20Strategy.png?width=115&name=Azure%20Cloud%20Strategy.png)Creating a subscription or resource group for each team is common practice. They can help you to differentiate costs and hold teams accountable. If you already have teams with multiple subscriptions, consider grouping the subscriptions into management groups to analyze the costs together. Management groups, subscriptions, and resource groups are all part of the Azure RBAC hierarchy.   If your organization organizes spending by the cost center, you can surface this data by enforcing a resource tagging policy that requires a cost center be specified at time of provisioning.  ### **Metrics and KPI’s**  The following are examples of useful metrics that you should gather to help track your cloud costs:  - Annual / Monthly spending: The total annual cost for services provided by a cloud provider.  - Forecast versus actual ratio: The ratio comparing forecasted and actual spending (monthly or annual).  - Pace of adoption (month-over-month) ratio: The percentage of the delta in cloud costs from month to month.  - Accumulated cost: Total accrued daily spending, starting from the beginning of the month.  [![Azure Governance Playbook FREE DOWNLOAD](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/707613/12e14509-7f97-4632-9ac5-296ad0dc3b81.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/707613/12e14509-7f97-4632-9ac5-296ad0dc3b81) ### **Budget**  Once you have your organizational cost reporting structure setup in Azure you can view accumulated costs over time to estimate monthly, quarterly, or even yearly cost trends against a budget. After you've identified and analyzed your spending patterns, it's important to begin setting limits for your teams. Azure budgets give you the ability to set either a cost or usage-based budget. Azure budget will also send out alerts when thresholds are exceeded.  For organizations interested in managing compliance with their governance strategy, InCycle can accelerate your efforts**.** How are you managing your resources in Azure?  Ask yourself some simple questions:    - Do you know where your Azure resources are being created?    - Are your resource provisioning standards consistent?  - Are you able to audit and enforce consistent provisioning policies?  - Can you decommission projects with confidence?  - Can you recreate resources in Azure with confidence?   If you don’t know the answers to these questions you may have cloud governance blind spots.   [Download](https://www.incyclesoftware.com/playbook-for-modern-enterprise-and-cloud-governance)[ our Azure Governance Playbook](https://www.incyclesoftware.com/playbook-for-modern-enterprise-and-cloud-governance) today.  Topics: [Cost Control](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/topic/cost-control) [![Modern Enterprise & Cloud Governance Playbook](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/707613/e1a05ffb-2e33-417f-8064-4014f1877e61.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/707613/e1a05ffb-2e33-417f-8064-4014f1877e61) --- ### Recent Posts By Michael Spenny - 18 January, 2021 #### Collaborative Cloud Governance: Auditability & Visibility [![read more](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/685080/IMG-TurboSodium/Sodium%20v2/blog/arrow-recent-blog-post.png "read more")](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/collaborative-cloud-governance-auditability-and-visibility) By Michael Spenny - 18 January, 2021 #### How Does the Cloud & Azure Transform Traditional Governance? [![read more](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/685080/IMG-TurboSodium/Sodium%20v2/blog/arrow-recent-blog-post.png "read more")](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/how-does-the-cloud-azure-transform-traditional-governance) By Michael Spenny - 18 January, 2021 #### DevOps Enables Modern Governance [![read more](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/685080/IMG-TurboSodium/Sodium%20v2/blog/arrow-recent-blog-post.png "read more")](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/devops-enables-modern-governance) --- ### Sign-up for Governance Blog Updates # ![Partners Awards List - 2021](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/hs-fs/hubfs/PoY%20Award%202021/Partners%20Awards%20List%20-%202021.png?width=748&name=Partners%20Awards%20List%20-%202021.png) # All About Modern Governance InCycle's Modern Governance blog is the result of almost 20 years of industry experience and is ideal reading for medium and large organizations that are trying to navigate cloud adoption and are struggling to design and implement modern governance for either a team, business unit or across the enterprise. The blog is comprehensive and addresses various stakeholders, including operations, security, application development, accounting, and audit. The goal of the blog is to showcase modern governance drivers, new challenges that arise, and to provide actionable guidance for practitioners to complete a modern governance transformation. ### Azure Governance Playbook FREE guidance and tools to complete governance transformation. [![Learn More!](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/707613/d0b6969d-3645-4839-ae95-84acb7ca61a2.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/707613/d0b6969d-3645-4839-ae95-84acb7ca61a2) ### Posts by Topic - [Cost Control (5)](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/tag/cost-control) - [Security (5)](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/tag/security) - [Structure & Responsibilities (5)](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/tag/structure-responsibilities) - [Visibility (5)](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/tag/visibility) - [Implementation & Adoption (4)](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/tag/implementation-adoption) ### Most Popular Posts ### Blog Archive - [January 2021 (23)](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/archive/2021/01) - [February 2021 (1)](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/enterprise-azure-governance/archive/2021/02) - [**](https://twitter.com/incyclesoftware?lang=en) - [**](https://ca.linkedin.com/company/incycle-software) - [**](https://www.facebook.com/InCycleSoftware/) ### About us At InCycle, we believe there is always a better way and today, that includes the cloud. [![InCycle Microsoft Partner](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Incycle%202017%20website%20resources/logo-InCycle-New-white.png?width=200&name=logo-InCycle-New-white.png "InCycle Microsoft Partner")](https://www.incyclesoftware.com/) ### Learn more - [Why Incycle?](https://www.incyclesoftware.com/why-incycle) - [Success Stories](https://www.incyclesoftware.com/customer-success-stories) - [Events](https://www.incyclesoftware.com/events) - [Careers](https://www.incyclesoftware.com/careers) - [About](https://www.incyclesoftware.com/about-incycle-software)   ### 1-800-565-0510 [info@incyclesoftware.com](mailto:info@incyclesoftware.com)  ### ![Microsoft GitHub Verified Partner](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/hs-fs/hubfs/GitHub%20Verified%20Partner%20-%20white-SQUARE.png?width=256&height=57&name=GitHub%20Verified%20Partner%20-%20white-SQUARE.png) ![Data & AI Solutions Partner](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Data%20%26%20AI%20Solutions%20Partner.png?width=125&height=144&name=Data%20%26%20AI%20Solutions%20Partner.png) ![Digital & App Innovation Solutions Partner](https://blogs.incyclesoftware.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Digital%20%26%20App%20Innovation%20Solutions%20Partner.png?width=125&height=144&name=Digital%20%26%20App%20Innovation%20Solutions%20Partner.png)   © 2025 InCycle Software [Privacy policy](https://www.incyclesoftware.com/privacy) ** ![](https://px.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=302756&fmt=gif) ![](https://px.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=302756&fmt=gif)