Switching a Cost Report to amortize costs.
Today, Vantage announces support for the amortization of upfront purchases in Cost Reports in all plans. By default, all Vantage customers will now see upfront fees, such as fees for Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Marketplace purchases and Support, amortized daily. All Resources Cost Reports have been automatically updated to have Amortization be the new default experience and customers can choose to toggle a Cost Report to not amortize if they wish to view the upfront fees on the day they are incurred.
When customers create Cost Reports they are often trying to understand usage by team or service in order to track budgets and plan for the future. Before, when Vantage Pro, Business, and Free tier customers purchased reserved instances or savings plans, the upfront fees would only appear in the month the purchase occurs. Because the fee is covering the full term of usage (in some cases up to 3 years) it dramatically increases costs for the month the purchase was made and was not represented in costs for the remainder of the term. This made it difficult for teams to understand usage over the full term of a purchase and whether or not costs are increasing month over month.
Now, Cost Reports will automatically amortize upfront payments day-by-day for the period of the fee. Amortization has been applied for all upfront purchases tracked within Vantage and will be for all new upfront purchases that are ingested going forward. If customers would like to see upfront fees unamortized they can create a Cost Report with amortization toggled off under “settings”.
To see amortized costs in Vantage, head to a Cost Report containing a reservation, savings plan or marketplace fee. For more information on the options for displaying costs, please see the Cost Reports documentation page.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is being launched today?
Vantage is launching amortization support for Cost Reports. The ability for users to automatically see upfront fees spread out day-by-day for the term of the fee. This is now the new default experience for all Cost Reports.
2. Who is the customer?
The customer is any Vantage user who has made upfront payments for savings, plans or reserved instances.
3. How much does this cost?
There is no additional cost for amortization.
4. Which types of costs are amortized?
- Fees for upfront or partial upfront AWS reserved instances
- Fees for upfront or partial upfront AWS savings plans
- AWS Marketplace Transactions
- Upfront fees for Support
5. Are marketplace purchases supported?
Yes, if you are purchasing from the AWS Marketplace and that purchase contains a term the cost of that purchase will be amortized over the term.
6. Can I turn this off in settings for my account?
No, this can not be toggled at the account level. However, when you create new Cost Reports you can toggle off Amortization.
7. Which account will amortized costs be assigned to?
Amortized costs will be assigned to the account in which the upfront fee was incurred.
8. For Datadog, Fastly and other providers with static fees that hit on the first of the month, will these fees amortize out over the span of the monthly period?
At this time these fees are not supported, but are planned for future support. If you have a cost that you believe should be amortized contact support@vantage.sh.
9. Why am I seeing an unamortized support fee on my amortized Cost Report?
Some support fees are based on previous usage and thus are not amortized to future dates.
