Cost Dashboard Walkthrough
Who this is for
Anyone opening the FinOps dashboard for the first time and wanting to understand each panel and number.
What you will complete
Navigate every section of the FinOps cost dashboard and understand what each metric, chart, and card represents.
Before you begin
- Billing data must be connected for at least one provider. See KB-08-02.
- Navigate to FinOps in the left sidebar.
Header controls
At the top of the FinOps page you will find:
- Time window selector: 7 days, 30 days (default), 90 days — controls the period shown across all dashboard sections.
- Currency selector: Change display currency (USD, EUR, GBP, INR, JPY, AUD, CAD). Conversion uses rates from the last data pull.
- Cloud account filter: Show costs for all accounts or filter to a specific cloud account.
- Refresh button: Manually trigger a cost data pull. Numbers update within 2–5 minutes.
KPI cards (top row)
The top row shows key performance indicators for the selected time window:
Total Spend: The total cost across all connected providers and accounts for the selected period.
Compared to previous period: A percentage delta showing whether spend increased or decreased vs. the equivalent prior period. A green downward arrow means costs fell. A red upward arrow means costs rose.
Month-to-date (MTD): Total spend from the first of the current calendar month to today.
Savings identified: Total estimated monthly savings across all open recommendations.
Trend chart
Below the KPIs, an area chart shows daily cost for the selected time window. Each point represents one day's total spend across all providers.
What to look for:
- Weekday vs. weekend patterns (some workloads cost less on weekends)
- Spikes that don't correspond to known deployments or usage changes (potential anomalies)
- Gradual upward trend (organic growth vs. unexpected increase)
By Account breakdown
The By Account section shows total spend broken down by cloud account, with the provider label (AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean) and the percentage of total spend each account represents.
Use this to identify which provider or account is driving the majority of your costs.
Savings and recommendations card
Shows the total estimated monthly savings from all open recommendations (idle servers, orphaned volumes, right-sizing opportunities, etc.). Click to view the full recommendations list. See KB-08-08 and KB-08-09.
Waste card
Highlights wasteful resources detected in your infrastructure: idle servers, unattached volumes, unattached IP addresses, orphaned snapshots. See KB-08-08.
Forecast card
Projects your spend for the current month and next month based on current usage trends. See KB-08-06.
Anomalies card
Flags unusual cost events — a single-day spike significantly above baseline, or a sudden cost drop that may indicate an outage. See KB-08-07.
Budgets section
Shows all configured budgets with current month-to-date spend vs. the budget limit. A green progress bar means within budget. An amber bar means approaching the threshold. A red bar means over budget. See KB-08-10.
Allocations card
Shows cost broken down by virtual dimensions (custom tags you define in CloudAIPilot for cost attribution). See KB-08-04 and KB-08-05.
What success looks like
- Every section shows data (not "No data" or loading spinners).
- The total spend roughly matches your cloud provider console totals (within expected lag).
- At least one recommendation or waste item is visible if your infrastructure has been running for 7+ days.
Common errors and fixes
"Total spend shows zero" Cause: Billing data not yet connected or refresh has not completed. Fix: See KB-08-02. Click Refresh and wait 5 minutes.
"By Account section is empty" Cause: Cloud accounts are connected but billing permissions are missing on one or more. Fix: See KB-01-07 for billing permission requirements per provider.
"Trend chart shows no data for the past 3 days" Cause: Provider billing data has a 24–48 hour lag. The most recent 1–2 days often show $0 or incomplete data. Fix: This is expected. Ignore the last 1–2 days in the trend chart.