Cost Management

Azure Cost Management is Microsoft's native cost visibility tool that answers every question except the ones finance actually asks. It shows total spend by subscription—but finance needs costs by application. It displays resource-level charges—but auditors require cost center allocation. It provides usage analytics—but CFOs want budget forecasts that account for seasonal demand. The gap between what Cost Management provides and what regulated enterprises need is enormous. Real cost management requires building analytics layers on top of Azure's native tools. Power BI dashboards that join cost data with tag metadata. KQL queries that aggregate spending across resource groups, subscriptions, and management groups. Showback reports that allocate shared infrastructure costs fairly. And chargeback models that satisfy both finance teams and business unit leaders. At scale (31,000+ resources), Azure Cost Management becomes a data source rather than a solution. You'll export billing data to storage, transform it with Power Query, and build custom reporting that matches your chart of accounts.