Budgets

Guardian Pro's budget management lets you set monthly spending limits for your AWS accounts and receive proactive alerts when costs approach or exceed your defined thresholds. Budgets provide the guardrails that keep cloud spending predictable and accountable.

How Budgets Work

A budget in Guardian Pro defines a monthly spending target for a specific account or your entire organization. Guardian Pro continuously monitors actual spend against this target and triggers alerts at two configurable thresholds:

Threshold	Default	Meaning
Warning	80% of budget	Spending is on track to exceed the budget. Time to investigate and take action.
Critical	100% of budget	Spending has reached or exceeded the budget. Immediate attention required.

info

Guardian Pro budgets are monitoring-only. They alert you when thresholds are crossed but do not automatically restrict or stop AWS resource usage. For hard spending limits, use AWS Budgets Actions in the AWS Console.

Creating a Budget

1. Navigate to Cost Analysis from the main menu.
2. Open the Budgets section.
3. Click Create Budget.
4. Fill in the budget details:

Field	Description	Required
Budget Name	A descriptive name (e.g., "Production Account Monthly")	Yes
Monthly Amount	The target spending limit in USD	Yes
Account	The AWS account this budget applies to, or "All Accounts" for organization-wide	Yes
Warning Threshold	Percentage of budget that triggers a warning alert (default: 80%)	No
Critical Threshold	Percentage of budget that triggers a critical alert (default: 100%)	No

5. Click Save to create the budget.

tip

Start with a budget slightly above your current monthly spend. This gives you visibility into cost trends without generating false alarms. As you optimise costs, tighten the budget to reflect your new baseline.

Budget Status Indicators

The Budget Status card on the Cost Dashboard shows the health of each configured budget:

Status	Visual	Meaning
On Track	Green	Current spend is below the warning threshold
Warning	Yellow/Orange	Spend has crossed the warning threshold but is below critical
Critical	Red	Spend has reached or exceeded the critical threshold
Exceeded	Red (pulsing)	Spend has surpassed the budget amount

Each budget card displays:

• The budget name and target amount
• Current spend and the percentage consumed
• A progress bar showing spend relative to the budget
• Days remaining in the current month
• Projected end-of-month spend based on current trajectory

Budget Alerts and Notifications

When a budget threshold is crossed, Guardian Pro sends alerts through your configured notification channels:

In-App Alerts

• A badge appears on the Cost Analysis navigation item
• The Budget Status card on the dashboard changes colour
• A notification appears in the notification dropdown

Email Alerts

If email notifications are enabled, Guardian Pro sends:

• Warning email -- When spend crosses the warning threshold, with details on current spend, the budget limit, and projected end-of-month cost
• Critical email -- When spend crosses the critical threshold, with a stronger call to action

Webhook Alerts

Budget alerts can be sent to Slack, Microsoft Teams, or custom webhook endpoints. See Settings > Notifications to configure webhook integration.

note

Budget alerts fire once per threshold crossing per month. You will not receive repeated alerts for the same threshold in the same billing period.

Budget Forecasting

Guardian Pro's budget view includes a forecast indicator that projects whether you will exceed the budget by month end, based on your current spending trajectory.

The forecast considers:

• Average daily spend so far in the month
• Historical patterns from previous months (e.g., if costs typically spike at month end due to batch processing)
• Remaining days in the billing period

A budget that shows "On Track" for current spend but has a forecast that exceeds the limit will display a forecast warning, giving you time to take preventive action.

Managing Budgets

Editing a Budget

1. Navigate to the Budgets section.
2. Click the edit icon on the budget you want to modify.
3. Adjust the monthly amount, thresholds, or other settings.
4. Click Save.

Changes take effect immediately. The budget is re-evaluated against current spend.

Deleting a Budget

1. Navigate to the Budgets section.
2. Click the delete icon on the budget you want to remove.
3. Confirm the deletion.

warning

Deleting a budget removes all associated alert history. Consider setting the budget to a very high amount instead of deleting if you want to preserve the history.

Viewing Budget History

Each budget maintains a history of threshold crossings and spend-vs-budget comparisons for previous months. This history helps you:

• Identify months where budgets were exceeded
• Track whether your spending is trending up or down over time
• Justify budget adjustments with historical data

Best Practices

Set Budgets at Multiple Levels

Consider creating budgets at different scopes:

• Organization-wide budget -- Overall cloud spending limit
• Per-account budgets -- Individual account limits for accountability
• Per-team budgets -- If accounts map to teams, set team-level expectations

Align with Business Cycles

If your business has seasonal patterns (e.g., higher traffic during holidays), adjust budgets accordingly. A flat monthly budget may create unnecessary alerts during peak periods and false comfort during slow periods.

Use Warning Thresholds Proactively

The warning threshold (default 80%) is your early warning system. When it fires:

1. Check the Service Breakdown for unexpected cost drivers.
2. Review Anomaly Detection for unusual patterns.
3. Consider implementing Rightsizing or Waste Detection recommendations to bring costs back on track.

Review and Adjust Monthly

Build budget reviews into your monthly cost review process. As your infrastructure evolves, budgets should evolve with it. A budget set six months ago may not reflect current reality.

Budget Evaluation Timing

Budgets are evaluated during each cost analysis run. The automated analysis runs daily, so budgets are checked at least once per day. Running a manual analysis from the Cost Dashboard will also trigger budget evaluation.

Integration with Other Cost Features

Budgets work alongside other Cost Intelligence capabilities:

Feature	Relationship
Anomaly Detection	Anomalies may explain why a budget threshold was crossed
Rightsizing	Implementing rightsizing recommendations can bring spend back under budget
Waste Detection	Eliminating waste directly reduces spend toward budget compliance
Savings Plans	Commitment discounts reduce effective spend without reducing usage

Next Steps

• Rightsizing -- Reduce costs by optimising resource sizes
• Waste Detection -- Eliminate idle and unused resources
• Anomaly Detection -- Understand unexpected cost changes