Department Budgets

Architecture

Implement departmental cost governance with tag-based budgets:

  • AWS Budgets for spending limits per department
  • Cost Allocation Tags for department identification
  • SNS Notifications to department leads and finance
  • Cost Explorer for detailed analysis and reporting

When to Use

This pattern is ideal when you need:

  • Clear cost accountability across teams
  • Chargeback or showback billing models
  • Department-level spending limits
  • Financial governance and compliance
  • Multi-team AWS account environments

Implementation Strategy

  1. Define cost allocation tags for departments
  2. Create budgets filtered by department tags
  3. Set appropriate limits based on historical usage
  4. Configure notifications to department leads
  5. Review and adjust quarterly

Considerations

  • Tags must be applied consistently to all resources
  • Cost allocation tags require 24-48 hours to appear in billing
  • Shared resources need allocation strategies
  • Consider using AWS Organizations for account-level separation