What is AWS Billing Conductor?
AWS Billing Conductor is a service for custom AWS billing aimed specifically at AWS partners (resellers) and organizations with chargeback or showback requirements. For partners, chargeback is often a prerequisite for getting paid by their customers; for end customers, it is used to correctly allocate the costs of individual teams, business units, or subsidiaries to the relevant budget.
At the core of the service is the pro forma cost view: a second, configurable representation of cloud costs alongside the actual invoice data calculated by AWS. This pro forma data is based on your own pricing plans, pricing rules, and custom line items, and is shown to accounts or organizations in a billing group. The actual AWS invoice and existing discounts (such as Reserved Instances or Savings Plans) remain unaffected.
Billing Conductor supports two modes of operation: standard billing groups, which bundle a subset of accounts within an AWS Organization, and billing transfer, where an entire AWS Organization, including the management account, is assigned to an external bill transfer account.
Core Features
- Billing Groups: Group AWS accounts or entire AWS Organizations into logical billing units with an individual pro forma cost view.
- Pricing Plans and Pricing Rules: Reusable pricing plans with global or service-/SKU-specific markups, discounts, and control over Free Tier access.
- Custom Charges and Credits: One-time or recurring, flat or percentage-based line items that can be added to a billing group.
- Pro Forma Analysis: Analyze pro forma costs in AWS Cost Explorer, Cost and Usage Reports, and the billing dashboard, including a margin comparison between pro forma and actual costs.
- Budgets and Notifications: Accounts and organizations in billing groups can set their own budgets based on pro forma costs and are notified by email of configuration changes.
Typical Use Cases
Chargeback for AWS partners: Resellers and managed service providers offer their customers custom, margin-based billing that is decoupled from internal AWS costs.
Internal cost chargeback: Organizations with multiple business units or cost centers allocate AWS costs based on usage, with each unit receiving its own pro forma view.
Billing transfer between organizations: A central bill transfer account manages the consolidated bill of multiple AWS Organizations, while operational control remains with the individual organizations.
Benefits
- Flexible pro forma cost design independent of standard AWS pricing.
- Free for billing transfer customers using an AWS managed pricing plan.
- Separation of pro forma data and the actual invoice, so existing discounts and contracts remain unaffected.
- Deep integration with Cost Explorer, Cost and Usage Reports, and budgets.
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory uses Billing Conductor itself for customer billing, among other things, and supports you in designing your own billing structure: from choosing between standard billing groups and billing transfer to configuring pricing plans and pricing rules and integrating with your internal billing and ERP systems.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AWS Billing Conductor?
AWS Billing Conductor is a cost management service for AWS partners (resellers) and organizations with chargeback requirements. It creates a second, so-called pro forma cost view alongside actual AWS invoice data, based on your own pricing plans, pricing rules, and custom line items.
What are pro forma costs?
Pro forma costs are a separate, configurable cost view that can differ from actual AWS invoice costs. It is based on the pricing rules defined in Billing Conductor and is shown to accounts or organizations in a billing group. The actual AWS invoice is not affected.
What is the difference between standard billing groups and billing transfer?
Standard billing groups bundle a subset of accounts within an AWS Organization as a standalone service. With billing transfer, an entire AWS Organization, including the management account, is assigned to an external bill transfer account that centrally manages and pays the consolidated bill.
What does AWS Billing Conductor cost?
For billing transfer customers using an AWS managed pricing plan, the service is free. A customer managed pricing plan, as well as standard billing groups outside of billing transfer, are billed. Current prices are available on the official AWS pricing page.
Who is Billing Conductor suited for?
The service targets AWS partners and resellers who want to provide their customers with custom, margin-based billing, as well as organizations with multiple AWS accounts that want to allocate costs internally to business units based on usage.
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of AWS (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by AWS.