5 Common Cloud Cost Reporting Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

Cloud cost reporting is crucial for improving your cloud spending strategy. However, many companies make costly errors that lead to wasted money, confusion about their cloud expenses, and unexpected charges.

If you don't have the right cloud cost reporting tools, you might miss out on key information that could help you save a lot on your cloud bills. To manage your cloud expenses well, you need accurate data that only thorough cloud cost reporting can provide.

In this article, we'll go over five common mistakes in cloud cost reporting and offer tips on how to avoid them. This way, you'll be able to control your costs better and understand your cloud spending more clearly.

Mistake #1: Lack of Granular Cost Breakdown

Why It’s a Problem

Many businesses see their cloud bill as just one total amount and don’t really know what’s driving those costs. Without a clear breakdown of cloud expenses, it’s hard to spot wasteful spending or manage resources effectively.

Having a detailed cost summary is crucial for sorting expenses by category and figuring out what’s behind the spending. Without this understanding, it’s tough to take effective steps to control costs.

How to Avoid It

With Amnic’s Cost Summary and Analysis, you can:

• Get a detailed breakdown of cloud costs.

• Filter costs by date range, cloud provider, billing ID, resource ID, availability zone, category, tags, SKU, and more.

• Slice and dice costs to identify the root cause of unnecessary spending.

• Take action before costs spiral out of control.

Mistake #2: Not Automating Report Sharing

Why It’s a Problem

Manually creating and sharing cloud cost reports takes a lot of time and can lead to mistakes. This makes it hard for different teams to get the latest information, reducing transparency between them.

Different teams need cloud cost data at different times. Finance teams might want monthly reports, while engineering teams could need updates weekly or daily. Without automated reporting, there are often delays in sharing reports, making it tough to manage budgets and spending. It also becomes harder to understand cloud billing reports when insights into unusual costs aren’t easily available.

How to Avoid It

Amnic’s Saved, Shared, and Scheduled Reports feature automates this process by allowing you to:

• Save and export reports for deeper analysis.

• Share reports with stakeholders at scheduled intervals (daily, weekly, or monthly).

• Ensure transparency by sharing insights into anomalies and recommendations across teams.

Mistake #3: Not Tracking Cloud Spend by Category

Why It’s a Problem

Cloud spend isn’t just a single expense. It’s made up of multiple categories like networking, storage, compute, and data transfer. 

If your reports don’t break down expenses by category with ready-made views, you might struggle to see which areas are driving up your cloud bill. This is especially true for tracking costs on AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Not being able to view these details can lead to wasted resources and stop teams from cutting costs where it matters most. Custom views in cloud reporting are essential for understanding each category better, helping to spot unnecessary expenses, and improve budgeting.

How to Avoid It

Amnic offers Custom Views and Pre-Built Category Views, enabling you to:

• Use pre-built dashboards to track network, data transfer, storage, and compute costs across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes.

• Build tailored views that align with your organization's specific cost structures.

• Identify anomalies and cost-saving recommendations based on category-specific insights.

Mistake #4: Limited Access Control and Collaboration

Why It’s a Problem

If there are no proper access controls, security and compliance in managing the cloud can be at risk. Important cost data may not be available to decision-makers or, even worse, could be seen by people who shouldn’t have access.

Also, without collaboration features, teams struggle to talk about unusual patterns, trends, or necessary improvements. This makes it hard for them to fully grasp how cloud costs are allocated and to find the best tools for managing those costs.

How to Avoid It

Amnic’s Enhanced Collaboration and Control brings:

• With role-based access control (RBAC), ensure that only the right people have access to sensitive cloud cost data.

• Annotations & comments lets you add insights directly onto reports so that teams can discuss cost trends and take action in real-time.

• Cross-team visibility enables finance, engineering, and leadership teams to collaborate effectively on cloud spend.

Mistake #5: One-Size-Fits-All Reporting

Why It’s a Problem

Different teams have different reporting needs. 

Finance teams look for past spending analysis, engineering teams track infrastructure costs, and executives want to see overall trends.

A one-size-fits-all reporting system doesn’t meet these varied needs, making it hard to produce useful reports for each team.

Without customized reports, teams might find it challenging to compare different cloud cost management tools effectively.

How to Avoid It

Amnic helps you build Relevant Reports for Specific Teams, ensuring that:

• Engineering teams can track real-time infrastructure costs.

• Finance teams can analyze historical spending patterns.

• Executives can view high-level trends and cost optimizations.

• Automated updates, pre-built visualizations, and custom dashboards make cost reporting simple for both technical and non-technical roles.

Summing Up

Cloud cost reporting mistakes can lead to wasted spend, inefficiencies, and poor financial decisions. However, by leveraging best practices for automated cloud cost reporting and a robust platform like Amnic, you can: 

• Gain a granular breakdown of cloud expenses. 

• Automate report sharing and scheduling. 

• Customize dashboards for network, storage, and compute costs. 

• Ensure secure collaboration with role-based access. 

• Build team-specific reports for better decision-making.

Don’t let cloud cost reporting mistakes drain your budget. Implement Amnic’s advanced reporting capabilities today and take control of your cloud spend effortlessly.

Looking for a smarter way to manage cloud costs? Book a personalized demo with Amnic or just get yourself signed up for a 30-day no-cost trial.