Standard billing is no longer available. Google Detailed Billing is the new default billing method.
Flexera One uses bill data to provide an accurate view of your costs across accounts and services. This data is consumed by the Flexera One platform and made available for pre-built and ad-hoc analyses. In order to gather the cost information, certain configuration steps must be performed with specific data and credentials being shared with Flexera One.
The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) detailed billing export provides more granular billing data compared to the standard export. It provides a complete split of data, including different types of credit (for example, promotional credits) along with additional contextual information. This granular visibility is crucial for accurate financial analysis, enabling you to precisely filter promotional credits and gain deeper insights into your cloud spending.
This section describes the configuration and input information needed to enable Google detailed billing data to Flexera One using BigQuery billing exports. The following steps must be completed to connect your Google cloud billing data to Flexera One for cost reporting purposes:
- Prerequisites
- Connecting Google Detailed Billing in Flexera One
- Verifying Bill Connect
- Viewing Import History to Verify Bill Status
Use Cases
Check out the following use cases to quickly start using the Google Common Bill Ingestion (CBI) pipeline for detailed billing.
Use Case: Users With Existing Google Bill Connect
Users with an existing Google bill connect can create an additional bill connect to facilitate detailed billing exports. They will also have the capability to filter by different types of credits while benefiting from resource-level granularity.
The API Capabilities provide full control of bill data configuration, and it can be used to automate connections or credential rotation using a REST-compliant interface.
The BillConnects resource provides a list of all billing data configurations, while cloud-specific resources are used for creating, updating, and removing billing data configurations.
Review the following topics to understand how to configure your billing data connections:
If you are an existing customer on standard billing and want to upgrade to detailed billing, then you must complete all the steps mentioned in this topic and contact Flexera Support to enable this feature. When submitting your request, include both your old bill connect ID and the new bill connect ID in the support ticket. For more information, see Contacting Flexera Support.
For the existing users, Flexera One ensures the following:
- Historical data is populated from the old bill connect.
- For months where each bill connects overlap, the new Google CBI bill connect takes precedence.
Use Case: New Users
For new users onboarding to the GCP Detailed Billing Export, blending the old bill with the new bill is not required. The detailed billing export is configured as the primary and the only bill connect from the start, ensuring all historical and current data flows exclusively through the new detailed Google CBI pipeline. Since there is no legacy bill connect involved, there will be no overlap in billing data, eliminating the need for reconciliation between multiple sources.
Mapping Flexera One Dimensions to GCP Detailed and Standard Billing Columns
The following table describes the Flexera One dimensions and indicates which dimensions map to standard and detailed billing columns:
| Flexera One Dimension | GCP Old (Standard) | GCP New (Detailed) |
|---|---|---|
| Credit Description | "None" | credit_type |
| Cloud Vendor | "GCP" | "GCP" |
| Manufacturer Name | "Google" | "Google" |
| Spend Type | "cloud" | spend_type |
| Flexera Capability | "csm" | capability |
| Bill Entity | "" | "" |
| Bill Source | bill_source | bill_source |
| Category | category_derived (internal) | category_derived |
| Resource Type | sku_description | sku_description |
| Resource Group | "None" | "" |
| Resource ID | "None" | resource_name / resource_global_name |
| Instance Type | "None" | system_labels |
| Region | region | location_region |
| Cloud Vendor Account | project_id | project_id |
| Cloud Vendor Account Name | project_name | project_name |
| Service | service_description | service_description |
| Usage Unit | usage_pricing_unit | usage_pricing_unit |
| Usage Type | "None" | "None" |
| Line Item Type | "None" | cost_type |
| Commitment ID | "" | "" |
| Commitment Name | "" | "" |
| Purchase Option | "None" | "None" |
| Service Family | "" | "" |
| Product Order Name | "" | "" |
| Availability Zone | "None" | "None" |
| Database Edition | "None" | "None" |
| Database Engine | "None" | "None" |
| Deployment Option | "None" | "None" |
| Description | "None" | "None" |
| Instance Type Family | "None" | system_labels |
| License Model | "None" | "None" |
| Operating System | "None" | "None" |
| Meter Category | "None" | sku_id |
| Billing Account ID | billing_account_id | billing_account_id |
| Invoice ID | invoice_id | invoice_month |
The Description dimension with the value of credit description is not available to all customers. To view the credit description, contact Flexera Support. For more information, see Contacting Flexera Support .