Today Vantage announces the launch of Budget Alerts which allows customers to receive automated notifications when costs exceed user-defined alert thresholds. Customers can now create and manage budget alerts for each budget and select which team member’s email, Slack channels, or Microsoft Teams channels receive alerts.
With Budgets, customers have had the ability to create a budget and assign it to a Report. Once assigned, the budget performance could be tracked by visiting the Cost Report or the Budget page. However, users previously had to login to check the budget performance for the current month to make sure costs were on track.
Now, customers have the ability to configure alerts to be automatically notified when a Cost Report exceeds certain thresholds. From the Budget Alerts page, users can add thresholds to one or more budgets by clicking “Configure Alert”. Alerts can be configured to send to specific recipients given a percentage of budget exceeded for a specific time period. Time periods can be set before or after a number of days into the month (e.g. “10 days from the start of the month”).
Customize alert thresholds according to your budget needs.
This feature is now available for all users, including users in the free tier. To create your first Budget Alert, head over to the Budget Alerts page under “Financial Planning” and click “Configure Alert”. To learn more, please consult our Budget Alerts documentation.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is being launched today?
Today, Vantage is launching Budget Alerts. The ability to configure automated notifications based on budget thresholds.
2. Who is the customer?
This feature is available to all Vantage users, including users in the free tier. Anyone who has created a Budget can create and assign a Budget Alert.
3. How much does this cost?
There is no additional cost to using Budget Alerts.
4. What does a budget alert consist of?
A Budget Alert consists of the following:
- An assignment to one or more Budgets
- A percentage threshold. e.g. 85% or 110%
- Optionally, a period of observation within the month. For example, “10 days from the start of the month” or “5 days before the end of the month.”
- A list of recipients
- This can include emails and/or Slack or Microsoft Teams channels
5. From the budgets page, can I quickly see which budgets have alerts triggered?
Yes, the alerts with red icons indicate the threshold has been exceeded for that alert within the period of observation.
6. Can I see a list of reports which have triggered budget alerts?
No, at this time we don’t show which reports have crossed the alert threshold. If you have feedback on this you contact support@vantage.sh
7. Can I see a list of historical budget alert notifications?
You cannot currently view past notifications within the console. However, you can still see them in your email and/or Slack history.
8. When creating a budget alert can I set both static and dynamic thresholds?
No, at this time, only dynamic, percentage-based thresholds are supported.
8. What notification destinations do budget alerts support?
Budget alerts support sending to any email address which has been invited to your team along with any Slack or Microsoft Teams channel which the Vantage integration is present in.
9. Do report notifications include the budget for the month?
Yes, report notifications now include the current budget progress for the month. We display the budget amount, total accrued costs, and percentage of the budget used month-to-date.
10. Can I assign a budget alert to a specific service within a Cost Report?
No, a budget is tracked against the combined cost of all services within a report. Increases in a specific services’ cost will be detected as an anomaly or you can create a Cost Report specific to that service.
11. Can I alert based on forecasted costs?
No, this is not supported at this time. Budget Alerts can only be configured to alert off of actuals.
12. Do you support alerting based off of cost increases instead of budgets?
Creating alerts based off of static cost increases is not currently supported. However, you can receive notifications for Anomalies.
13. How quickly will I be notified after a Budget Alert has been triggered?
Recipients will be notified immediately after a cost report is updated with the latest data. Reports are updated with the latest data at least once per day.
14. Can I set a global threshold for all my budgets?
Yes, when you create a budget alert you can select multiple budgets.
15. When I bulk import budgets can I set the threshold in the import file?
Not at this time, but you can contact support@vantage.sh for assistance with this.
16. If multiple thresholds are triggered for the same budget - how does notification work?
If your budget exceeds the threshold for multiple alerts, we will only notify you of the most severe alert—meaning, the alert with the highest threshold.
17. Is it possible to alert on periods longer than a month?
Not at this time. If you have a use case outside of monthly budgeting please email your feedback to support@vantage.sh.
18. Can I import AWS Budgets into Vantage?
Not at this time. You can contact support@vantage.sh to have these imported.
19. If I am modifying a Cost Report which has a budget threshold am I warned before I save the report?
Yes, if the cost report you’re saving has budget alerts attached to it, we will ask you to confirm before saving the report.
20. If I am modifying an existing budget alert will it let me know if the modified settings will trigger alerts?
Yes, when changing the Budget Alert form you will be notified which budgets will be triggered by the pending changes.
21. Can I configure a Budget Alert to trigger off of month-to-date budget instead of the entire month’s budget?
No, at this time you can only be notified based off of the budget amount for the entire month. You can use the time periods to mimic similar behavior by combining different percentage thresholds with time periods. For instance you can set a threshold of 50% within 15 days of the start of the month.
22. What do budget alert notification emails look like?
The budget alert email shows which Cost Report and Budget triggered the alert as well as details about spend.
23. If I delete a budget that has alerts shared between multiple budgets, will the shared alerts be affected in the other budgets?
When a budget is destroyed, any shared alerts are retained. If the budget only has a single alert, that alert will be deleted. When deleting a single budget alert that has many budgets, the alert will be deleted across all of the budgets.
24. How many budget alerts can I set up?
There is currently no limit to the number of alerts you can configure. However, we don’t allow creating another alert with identical criteria to an existing one, for a given budget.
