Manage AWS Credits in CloudCheckr

As part of our most recent software release, CloudCheckr has improved the way we apply assigned credits. For more details, please review the AWS: Assign Credits FAQ.

Overview

Like most cloud platforms, AWS offers credits as a way for customers to save on their service bills. Credits range from $25 for participation in an AWS survey to $5,000 for Proof of Concept funding.

Unfortunately, the way in which AWS distributes those credits to is not always mutually beneficial to all payees.

When a payee receives an AWS credit, AWS applies that credit across the entire consolidated billing family. AWS allocates a percentage of the credit to each payee—not just to the payee who earned it.

For example, a payee receives a $50 credit for completing a survey and enters a code into AWS with the expectation that AWS will apply the credit to their account. In reality, AWS distributes that credit across all payee accounts in the consolidated billing family. As a result, those payees who did not earn the credit may receive part of the credit unintentionally while the original payee does not receive their fair share.

Fortunately, CloudCheckr can help you correct these inaccurate credit allocations with the Assign Credits report. This report allows you to:

In addition to the Assign Credits report, CloudCheckr provides other ways to modify and view your AWS credits:

Default Credit Visibility for Payees

AWS credit processing starts on the “Billing and Usage Configuration” page for the AWS payer account that the user wants to configure credits for.

On this page, users can configure the default behavior for showing/hiding credits from the payee accounts as it’s written to the CUR. This configuration is titled, "Hide Credit From Payees".

By selecting Enabled, this instructs the system to hide all found credits from the payee accounts and reassign them to the master payer account. If this is not selected, then all credits are automatically shown to the owner of the credits.

This will need to be configured for each AWS payer account according to desired behavior.

If you a reseller, we recommend that you configure your account to hide credits from payees.

  1. From the left navigation pane, choose Account Settings > Billing and Usage.
  2. Scroll down to the Partner-Level Settings section.
  3. Under Hide Credits from Payees, select Enabled.
  4. Click Save Configuration.
    By enabling this option, payees will not see any credits unless you manually assign them credits.

Program Credit Management

Program Credit Management settings override all other credit configuration including the Default Credit Visibility for Payees configuration from above, all regex credit rules, as well as individual credit assignment from below. This takes precedence over all other settings.

CloudCheckr provides a mechanism to automatically handle “exceptions” to the above default configuration. There are two scenarios possible with the Hide Credits from Payees configuration, examples below:

  1. If you choose to hide credits from payees, Program Credit Management allows you to automatically show the specified credits to payees.
  2. If you choose to show credits from payees, Program Credit Management allows you to automatically hide the specified credits to payees.

To configure automatic Program Credit Management.

This will need to be configured for each AWS payer account according to desired behavior.
  1. From the left navigation pane, choose Billing > Configure > Assign Credits.
  2. In the top left of the page, click on Program Credit Management button to open the configuration modal.
  3. Configure your options and click Save to save the configuration and close the modal.

Scenario 1: I want to hide all credits from payees except for Distributor Discount credits

  1. User would navigate into the Project that they want to configure.
  2. Then go to Billing and Usage Configuration page via the top right Settings Menu > Account Configuration > Billing and Usage.
  3. User needs to scroll down to the bottom of the page and locate the Hide Credits from Payees option and check the Enabled box. Click Save Configuration at the bottom of the page.
  4. From the left navigation pane, choose Billing > Configure > Assign Credits
  5. Click on the Program Credit Management button in the top left of the page to open the configuration modal.
  6. Select the Distributor Discount checkbox and click Save.

Summary: The above steps will now automatically obfuscate all credits found in the CUR from Payees except for identified Distributor Discount credits.

Scenario 2: I want to show all credits to payees except for Enterprise Discount Program credits

  1. User would navigate into the Project that they want to configure.
  2. Then go to Billing and Usage Configuration page via the top right Settings Menu > Account Configuration > Billing and Usage.
  3. User needs to scroll down to the bottom of the page and locate the Hide Credits from Payees option and uncheck the Enabled box. Click Save Configuration at the bottom of the page.
  4. From the left navigation pane, choose Billing > Configure > Assign Credits.
  5. Click on the Program Credit Management button in the top left of the page to open the configuration modal.
  6. Select the Enterprise Discount Program checkbox and click Save.

Summary: The above steps will now automatically show all found credits on the CUR to the Payees except for identified Enterprise Discount Program credits. These credits will remain hidden from Payees.

View a Summary of AWS Credits

If a payee wants to see a credit, they would go to Cost > AWS Billing> Other Features> AWS Credit Summary.

The AWS Credits Summary page displays the credits that the reseller has assigned to them and only those credits.

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