How can I use Partner-Generated Billing to automate complex billing in AWS?

Products

• CloudHealth

Issue/Introduction

Partner-generated billing (PGB) can help you easily manage and bill large groups of related accounts.

 

Billing Blocks

Customers can have single or multiple billing configurations depending on their need by organizing accounts into Billing Blocks.

 

Account Structures

Within AWS, there are two types of account structures: consolidated and standalone.

• Consolidated accounts generate a single statement that combines usage and shares tiered discounts (such as Reserved Instances and Saving Plans) for all accounts in a particular block.

• Standalone accounts generate one statement per account, and do not share these benefits between accounts.

Either account structure is recommended for customers who are resold an AWS service by a partner, which is determined by customer need and preference.

 

Full Family Billing Blocks

Additionally, CloudHealth has a third option for Billing Blocks called Full Family. This option is designed for customers who have their own AWS Organizations. Full Family configured customers still have partner credits removed, but tiered discounts and other benefits are not adjusted.

You can create Billing Blocks - or subsets of accounts - for a single customer, which combines multiple accounts into one group. Billing Blocks can consist of consolidated accounts, with linked accounts under them where RI/SPs and tiering is applied across all accounts. One statement is produced for the entire billing block. Billing Blocks can also consist of standalone accounts, which generate statements per account but do not share RI/SPs and tiering between accounts.

For example, you could create a Billing Block for the Finance group and a Billing Block for the Engineering group within the same company. Because the Finance group has a separate cost center from Engineering, they require a separate bill.

Billing Blocks only expose billing data to the account that requires access to it. In the previous example, even though Engineering and Finance are in the same company, the platform can be configured so that Finance sees only the bill or bills related to their usage.