Reporting AWS GovCloud Spend
AWS GovCloud activity, usage, and payments are managed through a commercial AWS account. Kion lets you decide whether to include the spending from the linked commercial account when reporting/viewing spend for the GovCloud account and vice versa. This enables you to view all of your spend for the two accounts together.
When you add an AWS GovCloud account to Kion, you will see the option to Include Spend From Linked Commercial Account.This setting should not be changed after the account is added to Kion, so it's important to understand what this does.
When you use Kion to create a new GovCloud account, you'll automatically be creating an AWS commercial account as well, since a linked commercial account is required to manage the GovCloud account.
If you're adding a GovCloud account that already exists to Kion, it will already be associated with an AWS commercial account.
Whether enable Include Spend From Linked Commercial Account or not, the accounts are linked to one another. This option only enables reporting their spend together.
Pros of Including Linked Account Spend
- Spend can't be misreported as belonging to the GovCloud account when it should have been Commercial, and vice versa. If you do not include linked account spend, expenses may not be categorized accurately as GovCloud account spend vs AWS commercial account spend. The sum total on reports will be correct, but some charges won't be clearly marked as a GovCloud expense and may register as spend for the commercial account instead. Reporting the spend together eliminates this risk.
- Decreases risk of double reporting of spend. If you do not include linked account spend and a cloud rule has an expense-generating CloudFormation template on it, the CloudFormation template could be deployed to both the Commercial and GovCloud accounts, doubling the spend. Including the spend from the linked commercial account prevents this.
Cons of Including Linked Account Spend
- Reporting capabilities won't be as granular. If you do not include linked account spend and add both the Commercial account and the GovCloud account to the same project, you can add cloud access roles, compliance checks, and cloud rules to both accounts and view reports for those accounts separately. Your capabilities around this are limited if you include linked commercial account spend and report on them together.
Our Recommendation
We have suggestions for when to or when not to include linked account spend, but ultimately the best choice depends on your organization's needs and preferences.
For the most flexibility, we recommend not including linked account spend but adding both the Commercial account and the GovCloud account to the same project. This way the sum of spend is accurate for the project, but you have more granular control when reporting.