Access to the AWS Billing Dashboard

Among the many benefits of sourcing AWS through TD SYNNEX Public Sector, customers are provided access to CloudCheckr, which provides a comprehensive cloud management tool including multiple reports and alerts for billing and more.

The AWS Billing Dashboard, which includes Cost Explorer and additional reports, was primarily designed for customers using a standard AWS account at list price. With a provider like TD SYNNEX Public Sector, there can be an array of complexity in how credits, discounts, and special pricing might apply that affect the accuracy of the built-in AWS Billing Dashboard. By default, TD SYNNEX Public Sector recommends leaving this disabled for the following reasons:

• AWS does not have a way to include TD SYNNEX Public Sector’s internal pricing plan or structure natively into the AWS console. The console will show AWS list prices and will not accurately reflect the amount you owe.
• As part of TD SYNNEX Public Sector’s discounting agreement with AWS, AWS service teams generate refunds in the form of Credit Memos against a bill after it posts. When viewing Cost Explorer or the Billing Dashboard through a member account, these refunds may not be visible at the member account level at all times or may not be visible consistently.
• In certain cases, AWS may generate Service Credits against accounts in the payer family. If credit sharing is on, these credits will be applied to accounts with applicable spend within the billing family automatically, but there is no way to specify which accounts they apply to. In these cases, your billing administrator may backcharge appropriately after bills post. However, at a member account level, accounts may see an unexpected drop in spend based on a credit their account consumed, which is not indicative of their true spend for the month.
• Depending on Reserved Instance (RI) strategy, reserved instance reporting at a member account level may be confusing. Please contact your administrator with any questions.
• Support charges may not appear in the billing console depending on your support plan and agreement.

TD SYNNEX Public Sector recommends that customers should not look to Billing Dashboard/Cost Explorer as a source of truth or accurate representation of what they owe and should instead utilize CloudCheckr for comparable reports and alerts. However, we understand using the built-in Billing Dashboard may be a requirement in certain cases, so this can be turned on at an organization's request. We ask that, prior to requesting this, customers review the caveats listed above and agree to use CloudCheckr and the TD SYNNEX Public Sector invoice as the source of truth for their billing data. Reach out to cloud-sales@dlt.com for assistance.