Introduction

To use budget control, you need to:
1. Enable cost explorer in your account (if you have not used cost explorer previously) - using root account.
2. Activate Stacktape cost allocation tags in the AWS console - using root account.
This guide will walk you through both of these.

To complete this tutorial, you need to be logged in as AWS root user (root account).

1. Enabling Cost Explorer

Launch the Cost Explorer using the button Launch Cost Explorer.

If this is your first time launching Cost Explorer you should receive the following message.

It can take up to 24 hours for Cost Explorer to be activated. This is an AWS limitation.

Activating cost allocation tags allows Stacktape to correctly aggregate costs of resources in your stacks.
Stacktape automatically tags resources in your stacks with custom tags. Based on these tags, Cost Explorer can determine which resources are part of the stack and associate costs of these resources to the stack.
For these custom tags to be usable by Cost Explorer, you need to activate them as cost allocation tags.

The list will show all tags that have been previously used to tag a resource in this account.

If you have already deployed a stack using Stacktape, all the required tags should be listed here.

The following tags are required:

It can take up to 24 hours for these tags to appear in the console after being used. This is an AWS limitation.

Select all the required tags and activate them by clicking on Activate button in the top right corner.

After the activation, tags should be marked as Active.

It can take up to 24 hours after activating the tags before you can start using them in

budget control. This is an AWS limitation.