Azure Billing Report

The Azure Billing report helps an Azure cloud consumer determine the total cost of their cloud usage over a period of time, analyze their cloud spend, and figure out which resources, resource groups, or services they spent the most on. Additionally, this report provide details on unused resources and cost details associated to the unused resources.

To generate the Azure Billing report, do the following:

  1. Follow the menu sequence: REPORTS BY FUNCTION -> Domain-specific Reports -> Microsoft Azure Subscription -> Billing in the eG Reporter interface.

  2. Figure 1 will then appear. Pick a criterion for analysis from the Analyze by list. Using this report, you can analyze the configuration or state changes to Azure resources that are part of a zone. The options provided by the Analyze by list box are discussed hereunder:

    • Component: Select this option to choose the component(s) from across all the managed components in the environment.

    • Zone: Pick this option if the components chosen are part of a zone. Then, choose a Zone. Also, indicate whether the components within the sub-zones of the chosen zone are also to be considered for report generation, by selecting an option from the Include Subzone list.

      Figure 1 : Selecting the criteria for the Azure Billing report

  3. Select the Component Type for which you wish to see the details of wasted resources.

  4. The Components list will then be populated with the components that match the Analyze By criteria specified earlier. From this list, select the components for which the report is to be generated.

  5. By default, All option is chosen from the Show Details list indicating that this report will be generated for all the cost analysis dimensions (i.e., resource groups, tags, services, location etc) in the target Microsoft Azure environment. However, if you want to generate this report based on any one of the cost analysis dimension (i.e., resource groups, tags, services, location etc), then you can pick an option from this list.

  6. By default, this report will be generated for the current Month and Year. For example, if we are in August, 2025, then, August will be chosen from the Month list and 2025 will be chosen from the Year list, by default. However, you can choose to generate this report for any month:year combination from the past too. For this, pick the month and year of your choice from the Month and Year list.

  7. In addition to the settings discussed above, this report comes with a set of default specifications. These settings are hidden by default. If you do not want to disturb these default settings, then you can proceed to generate the report by clicking the Run Report button soon after you pick a Component. However, if you want to view and then alter these settings (if required), click on the button. The default settings will then appear in the MORE OPTIONS drop down window (see Figure 2). The steps below discuss each of these settings and how they can be customized.

    Figure 2 : The default settings for generating the Azure Billing report

  8. In large environments, reports generated using months of data can take a long time to complete. Administrators now have the option of generating reports on-line or in the background. When a report is scheduled for background generation, administrators can proceed with their other monitoring, diagnosis, and reporting tasks, while the eG manager is processing the report. This saves the administrator valuable time. To schedule background processing of a report, you can either select the Background Save - PDF option or the Background Save - CSV option from the Report Generation list. To process reports in the foreground, select the Foreground Generation - HTML option from this list.

    Note:

    • The Report Generation list will appear only if the EnableBackgroundReport flag in the [BACKGROUND_PROCESS] section of the eg_report.ini file (in the {EG_INSTALL_DIR}\manager\config directory) is set to Yes.
    • The default selection in the Report Generation list will change according to the Timeline specified for the report. If the Timeline set is greater than or equal to the number of days specified against the MinDurationForReport parameter in the [BACKGROUND_PROCESS] section of the eg_report.ini file, then the default selection in the Report Generation list will be Background. On the other hand, if the Timeline set for the report is lesser than the value of the MinDurationForReport parameter, then the default selection in the Report Generation list will be Foreground. This is because, the MinDurationForReport setting governs when reports are to be processed in the background. By default, this parameter is set to 2 weeks - this indicates that by default, reports with a timeline of 2 weeks and above will be processed in the background.

  9. Finally, click the Run Report button.

    Figure 3 : The generated Azure Billing report

  10. The Azure Billing report (see Figure 3) then appears and reveals the following details:

    • The Summary section helps the administrators to analyze the cost of cloud usage on a daily basis, compare the cost with that of the previous month and predict future spends. This report represents a vertical bar chart highlighting those cost details. This section also reports the total count of resources that were wasted and the cost details for those wasted resources.

    • The Last 6 Months Billing Trend section denotes a vertical bar chart view, representing the billing cost based on previous 6 months excluding the current month. It helps the administrators to identify which month the billing cost was too high.