Billing Concepts and Terminology
Glossary
This page defines cloud billing and OnSpend-specific terms and concepts.
API
Application programming interface (API) is an interface/communication protocol between a client a server. APIs provide a mechanism of communication between software applications. OnSpend has a public API that can be used to integrate into other software applications. OnSpend's REST API allows developers to access core OnSpend data and use it within other clients. To learn more about OnSpend's API capabilities, please see the OnSpend API Documentation.
Billing Account
A payment instrument used for defining who pays for a given set of cloud resources. The billing account tracks all the charges and credits incurred by your use of cloud services. It also serves as the basis for your monthly invoice and operates in a single currency. If Onix is your premier cloud partner, you can receive your invoice in either US dollars (USD) or Canadian dollars (CAD). In order to have unlimited access to cloud services within your projects, you must link your Google Cloud projects to a billing account.
Billing Contact
An individual in your organization that has been designated as the point of contact for billing and OnSpend related issues, questions, or general inquiries. Only users that serve as billing contacts are capable of opening billing or OnSpend support cases.
Billing Resource
A container representing a collection of cloud resources. Billing resources are the fundamental components that make up the layers of your cloud environment from a billing perspective. In OnSpend, billing resources can be of type account, group, or project. Accounts represent your cloud billing account, while projects represent your cloud projects. Groups can be thought of as folders that can contain a set of projects, accounts, or even other groups.
Billing Project
A container of cloud services in Google Cloud. A billing project represents a Google Cloud project that is linked to a billing account. Projects that are linked to a billing account can consume cloud services that require billing to be enabled. Billing enabled projects are given access to higher quota limits in some cases and generally provide you access to consume cloud services at a higher rate than projects that are not linked to a billing account.
Budget
An estimate of cloud expenses over a set period of time. A budget can be based on the terms of a purchase order, a cost estimate commitment, or other estimated expenditure over a specific period of time. Budgets can be applied to any billing resource in OnSpend and can include or exclude any discounts or credits that have been applied to a billing account.
Budget Alert
A notification informing you when costs meet or exceed a percentage of a budget, based on the alert thresholds you set. Budget alerts are sent by you, the user that created the alert. You can add other recipients to receive budget alerts at thresholds that you define, but all additional recipients must grant their consent for emails to be delivered to them.
Budget Rule
A policy that can be applied on a billing account resource that automatically applies a budget that you set, on all projects linked to the billing account. Budget rules are configured similarly to budgets and are applied immediately when a project is linked to a billing account that contains a budget rule. Budget rules are useful in cases in which you want to automatically apply a specific budget to all projects within a billing account.
Credits
Discounts that are applied to your cloud invoice. Credits include promotional discounts, sustained use discounts, committed use discounts, educational grants and any other credit off of the cloud services list price.
Cloud Provider
A provider of cloud computing services. Currently, OnSpend only supports services provided by Google (GCP), including Google Cloud Platform and Google Maps.
Cloud Resource
A fundamental component that makes up all cloud services. Cloud resources can be managed using a resource hierarchy strategy which organizes the fundamental components into entities such as an organization, folder, or project that enables you to configure specific access control policies and configure settings. Examples of cloud resources include Compute Engine Virtual Machines, Cloud Storage buckets, App Engine instances, Cloud Functions, BigQuery tables, and App Engine instances.
Cloud Service
A service offering by a cloud provider. Cloud services are classified as products and provide a mechanism of accessing and managing individual cloud resources. Every service contains a number of cloud resources that each have individual cloud product SKUs and pricing. Examples of cloud services include Compute Engine, Google Maps, Firebase, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and App Engine.
Cloud SKU
Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) is a unique entity that relates to the use of a specific cloud resource. Each cloud service has a list of product SKUs that define pricing for the use of resources contained within a given cloud service. Examples of cloud SKUs include N1 Instances (Compute Engine), Frontend Instances (App Engine), Multi-Regional Storage (Cloud Storage), Places Autocomplete (Maps), and Analysis (BigQuery).
Invoice
An itemized list of cloud services and the quantity used that shows the total price and discounts (if any) applied to a billing account. Invoices are generated monthly and delivered to a billing contact on a given billing account. If Onix is your premier cloud partner, you will receive an invoice no later than by the fifth business day of the following month for the previous month's usage.
Master Billing Account
A billing account owned and managed by a Google Cloud Premier partner that resells Google Cloud products and services. If you are not a Google Cloud Premier partner, your billing account is classified as either a sub-billing account or a generic billing account that is billed directly by Google. Master billing accounts are also known as Reseller Billing Accounts.
Notification Channel
An instance for receiving OnSpend budget alerts and watched events. A notification channel provides a mechanism for receiving notifications from OnSpend through means other than email. Notification channels can be configured via advanced settings in the budget alert editor, or through the notification channel view accessed via the user settings page.
Project Label
A key-value pair that helps you organize your cloud projects. By attaching project labels, you can have OnSpend automatically organize your cloud projects into resource groups.
Pub/Sub Message
Publish/Subscribe messaging is a form of asynchronous communication between services. In the publisher-subscriber model, any message published to a topic by a publisher is immediately received by all subscribers to the topic. OnSpend can be configured to publish budget alerts and watched resource events to a topic of your choice.
Reseller Billing Account
Resource Favorite
A billing resource that will serve as the default resource when you log in to OnSpend. The favorite can be selected by clicking the favorite star at the top of the OnSpend dashboard. The resource favorite will load by default and provides data and insights into a specific resource that you frequently access. By default, the root resource is selected as your resource favorite.
Resource Group
A type of billing resource in OnSpend that helps organize other billing resources. Resource groups are similar to folders that allow you to easily manage a billing resource hierarchy that meets your organizations billing requirements. Resource groups give you the flexibility to customize how your billing resources are organized. You can easily create groups such as departments, cost centers, or sub-organizations without needing a separate billing account for each. You can also share resource groups to efficiently give other users access to multiple billing resources in OnSpend.
Resource Label
A key-value pair that helps you organize your cloud resources. Resource labels can help you identify costs specific to a particular cloud resource, or collection of cloud resources regardless of which project or billing account it is contained in. Examples of resource labels include team or cost center (team:research), environment or stage (environment:production), and component (component:frontend). Costs by resource label can be view in the details view of the OnSpend dashboard.
Resource Share
A function of granting other users access to an OnSpend billing resource. All billing resources in OnSpend can be shared with other users and function independently of identity and access management policies defined with your cloud provider.
Resource Watch
A subscription to receive notifications related to activities pertaining to a specific billing resource. Resource watching is beneficial if you would like to know when certain events take place such as when a budget has expired, or when the billing status on a project is changed.
Root Resource
A type of billing resource that is reserved for each OnSpend user. The root resource serves as a user-specific resource group that allows each user to organize resources to their own user-specific needs. When resources are shared through OnSpend, the shared resource is automatically added to the shared user's root resource.
Sub-Billing Account
A billing account that has been created by a Google Cloud Premier Partner under a master billing account. If Onix is your Google Cloud Premier Partner, a sub-billing account will be created for you to link your projects. You may request as many sub-billing accounts that you need according to your requirements.