Today, Vantage is launching support for Custom Providers, allowing Vantage customers to upload costs from providers that don’t expose billing APIs, aren’t yet supported by Vantage, or originate from custom systems. Customers can import costs by providing a CSV that adheres to the FinOps FOCUS schema, or by posting records to the Vantage API. To get started, customers can navigate to the Integrations tab and define a new Custom Provider. To read more about the supported schema, see the product documentation.
Vantage customers commonly use multiple SaaS vendors, and allocating the spend for these vendors is just as important as allocating spend for the big three cloud service providers. However, many SaaS vendors have limited, non-standard, or non-existent support for billing APIs and usage reports. This makes it difficult to track these costs in a standard way, and it’s often up to the internal finance team to track these software costs in spreadsheets. This leads to a lack of clarity on costs, an incomplete view of spend, and multiple sources of truth inside an organization.
Custom Providers Integration UI
Now, Vantage allows customers to upload a CSV file for Custom Providers via the console or the API. Customers can import both one-time costs, such as licenses, for amortization and allocation purposes, or usage reports to track ongoing spend. To help standardize the reporting capabilities on usage reports, Vantage has implemented support for the FinOps FOCUS schema, which is rapidly gaining momentum as the standard schema for usage reports.
Custom Providers are now available to all Vantage customers and are included under the standard Vantage pricing model. To get started, navigate to the Integrations screen in the console and create a new Custom Provider integration. To learn more about integrating a Custom Provider, see the documentation.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is being launched today?
Vantage is launching support for Custom Providers. You can now import costs from SaaS providers that do not currently have first-class integrations in Vantage, custom internal systems, or even software providers that charge license fees on a yearly basis. Vantage now supports importing any cost data that adheres to the FinOps FOCUS schema. You can also view the explainer video below for more details.
2. Why did Vantage build support for Custom Providers?
Businesses today consume software from dozens of providers, and support for billing APIs or cost and usage reports is inconsistent in format and lacking in functionality. When SaaS providers don’t offer their customers a complete billing system, customers end up creating custom tracking mechanisms internally, using spreadsheets, accounting software, or other tools that are poorly equipped for tracking and allocating spend. Now, Vantage customers can upload these costs into Vantage, allowing for Vantage to be the single source of truth for costs in their organization.
3. Who can use Custom Providers?
Any Vantage customer who wants to ingest costs from a provider or system that isn’t currently supported in Vantage can use Custom Providers.
4. How much does this cost?
There is no additional cost for Custom Providers support; however, costs from Custom Providers will be included in quota tier enforcement. In the event that your Custom Provider’s costs push you over your current tier limit, you may be prompted to upgrade. To see more details on pricing, please refer to the Pricing page.
5. How do Custom Providers work?
Customers can create a Custom Provider integration in the console or via the Vantage API. Once the provider has been created, customers can upload a CSV file that adheres to the supported schema or POST data to the API. Customers will need to transform any usage reports to the supported format before uploading.
6. What file formats are supported?
Costs can be uploaded via a CSV within the console or via the API.
7. How does the CSV have to be structured?
The supported schema is as follows:
ChargePeriodStart,ChargeCategory,BilledCost,ResourceId,ResourceType,RegionId,ServiceCategory,ServiceName,Tags
2021-01-01T00:00:00Z,Usage,1.23,resource-id-1,cost_sub_category-1,us-east-1,service-category-1,service-name-1,"{""tag1"":""value1"",""tag2"":""value2""}"
However, only the following fields are required:
ChargeCategoryChargePeriodStartBilledCostServiceName
In addition, for any amortized costs, ChargePeriodEnd is required. See the product documentation for details on the required data format.
8. Why did Vantage choose to support these fields?
We chose to implement a subset of the FinOps FOCUS schema. These fields provide enough detail to Vantage to render these costs and perform cost allocation. With just the minimum required fields, Custom Providers are compatible with other Vantage features, such as anomaly alerts, report notifications, and forecasting.
9. How do I create a Custom Provider in the API?
- Send a
POSTrequest to the/integrations/custom_providerendpoint to create the Custom Provider. - A Custom Provider integration
tokenis returned in a successful200response (e.g.,accss_crdntl_1a234bc5def678). - Use the
tokento upload a CSV file via the/integrations/{integration_token}/costs.csvendpoint.
See the documentation for a detailed walkthrough of how to use these API endpoints.
10. How does Vantage differentiate Custom Provider data from the automatically ingested data?
You can specify a provider name, which will be used throughout the interface and API. This gives teams flexibility to allocate resources how they see fit. From there, they can provide the same metadata that other cost data currently has to use all the existing cost reporting features.
11. What happens if Vantage adds first-class support for an integration I’m uploading costs for through Custom Providers?
You will be able to set up the official provider integration alongside your Custom Provider.
12. How often can I upload Custom Provider data?
Custom Providers can be uploaded at any time. The schema mandates a timestamp via the ChargePeriodStart column, so Vantage can place the data in the correct relationship to other costs under a given Custom Provider. Note, however, if you upload a file with the same name as an existing import, your new file will overwrite the original file. Ensure you have different names for each file upload (e.g., cloudflare_costs_8_2024, cloudflare_costs_9_2024). You can view the list of imported filenames on the Manage tab for each Custom Provider integration.
13. Can I delete data for a Custom Provider?
Yes, if you delete the CSV, the corresponding data will be deleted from the provider.
14. What permission level is needed to upload data?
Users must have Owner permissions in Vantage.
15. Are there any limits to how much data I can upload for a Custom Provider?
The CSV file has a max limit of 10,000 rows of data and 2MB.
16. What date granularity is supported?
Vantage aggregates uploaded costs for a Custom Provider to a daily level.
17. Can I set a currency for uploaded Custom Provider costs?
Not at this time. All costs are considered to be in USD. Please reach out to support@vantage.sh if you have a need for this.
18. Can I provide custom field names for the cost data I upload?
No, you need to ensure that your field names match those required in the CSV file format. If you upload data for a field name not in this format, you will see an error message displayed, indicating that you should remove those fields.
