Assess — Your Cost Overview#

Assess is the first FinOps phase and the dashboard you check first. It answers “what am I spending and where is it going?” with zero setup. Open it from the left navigation → FinOps → Assess.


Controls#

Two controls drive all summary cards and the trend chart simultaneously:

Time Range#

Option

Period

Last 7 Days

Rolling 7-day window

Last 30 Days

Rolling 30-day window

This Month

Current calendar month

Previous Month

Prior calendar month

This Quarter

Current quarter

Previous Quarter

Prior quarter

This Year

Current calendar year

Custom

Pick any start and end date

Note

The maximum end date is yesterday (T−1). Today’s costs are not yet available.

Cost Type#

Toggle between Actual (raw invoiced costs) and Amortised (reservation charges spread over the commitment term). See The FinOps Lifecycle for a full explanation of both types.


Summary row#

Three KPI tiles at the top:

Tile

Description

Total Cost

Sum of all costs in the selected period across all providers

Daily Average

Total ÷ number of days in the period

Trend

% change vs the equivalent prior period (green = decrease, red = increase)


The four breakdown cards#

Cost by Provider#

Pie chart with one slice per provider (Azure, AWS, GCP). Click a provider badge in the legend to toggle that series on or off — useful for temporarily isolating a single provider’s trend.

Cost by Connection#

Bar chart ranking connections by total cost in the selected period. Immediately surfaces which account is driving costs when you have multiple subscriptions or accounts under the same provider.

Cost by Category#

Six categories: Compute, Network, Database, Serverless, Storage, Other. Colour-coded consistently across the entire platform. Categories with zero spend in the selected period are hidden.

Cost by Group#

Shows spend attributed to your top-level Group nodes. Resources not yet attributed to any group show as “Unallocated”. A high unallocated percentage signals that your allocation rules need attention — go to Allocate to fix this.


The daily cost trend chart#

A line chart showing daily spend over the selected period, with a comparison line for the equivalent prior period.

Tip

Look for changes rather than absolutes. A sudden spike in the daily trend or a category growing faster than others is a good reason to drill down in Analyze.

How to interpret:

  • A single-day spike → an unusual event (a large deployment, a misconfigured resource, a billing adjustment)

  • Gradual upward slope with no spikes → organic growth

  • A comparison line much lower than the current line → something changed this period vs last period


When data is missing or shows zero#

Symptom

Likely cause

Fix

All cards show $0

Connection was just added; first sync takes up to 24 h

Wait 24 hours after connecting

A provider card is missing

No active connection for that provider

Add a connection in Tenant → Connections

“Unallocated” dominates the Groups card

Allocation rules not set up yet

Go to Allocate and create your group hierarchy

No comparison line on the trend chart

Period is longer than available history

Expected for newer tenants; the comparison appears once sufficient history exists


Next steps#

Set up cost ownership →

Investigate a specific cost →