Creating a Cost and Usage Report (CUR) for AWS Payer Registration

If your FinOps Dashboard shows no cost data after completing your OpsNow account setup, this simply means one final step is needed. To enable cost visibility, OpsNow requires access to your AWS Cost and Usage Report (CUR).

By configuring your AWS Payer account to automatically generate and store the CUR in an S3 bucket, OpsNow can securely access this data and display detailed cost insights in your dashboard.

This guide walks you through the steps to enable AWS CUR and activate cost analytics in OpsNow.

Creating the CUR Data Export in the AWS Console

① Log in to AWS with your Payer Account. ② From the left-hand menu, select ‘Billing and Cost Management’.

③ Under Billing and Cost Management, click ‘Data Exports’.

Mandatory Steps:

① Click the ‘Create’ button on the Data export.

② Select ‘Legacy CUR Export’ to proceed.

① Set the ‘Export name’ section.

② Export content through select ‘Include resource IDs’ to ensure resource-level details are included in the export.

③ Enable Refresh automatically so the report is updated whenever changes occur.

① For Data export delivery options, in Report data time granularity section, select ‘Hourly’.

② In Report versioning, choose ‘Create new report version’.

③ Then in Report data integration, do not select any integration options (Amazon Athena,

Amazon Redshift, Amazon QuickSight).

④ Next select ‘gzip’ in Compression type.

① This step relates to Data export storage settings, click ‘Configure’ to set up the S3 bucket for storing your Cost and Usage Report (CUR).

① Click ‘Create a bucket’.

② Enter a name for the S3 bucket.

③ Keep the region as the default: US East (N.Virginia)

④ Click ‘Create bucket’ to complete the setup.

① Enter the S3 path. For example: opsnow/curreport.

② Copy the S3 bucket name and prefix. You can verify both the bucket name and prefix in your S3 settings.

③ Click ‘Create report’ to complete the process. Then verify that the CUR has been created and stored in your S3 bucket. Then CUR will be generated within 24 hours.

Other Consideration Steps

① ‘Ensure that all settings marked as “Mandatory” in the previous steps are properly configured.

② Do not change the column order or delete any columns from the generated CUR. If you need to remove unnecessary data, delete only the records you do not require, and then upload the updated CUR to your S3 bucket. (e.g., excluding sensitive information)

③ The CUR must be updated regularly on a daily basis to allow OpsNow to collect cost data. If daily updates are not possible, please inform OpsNow in advance of your intended update frequency.

④ For any further inquiries, please contact us at [email protected]

Additional Notes

① Verify CUR file type and file name settings

• The actual CUR filename must be in the format ‘cur-report-name.csv.gz’. Do not change the filename arbitrarily.

• When exporting data properly from the AWS Console, files will be generated as:

  • company-aws-billing-0001.csv.gz

  • company-aws-billing-0002.csv.gz

  • company-aws-billing-0003.csv.gz etc.

• Important: The path must match exactly with opsnow_poc-Manifest.json.

② Manifest Path

• Do not change this arbitrarily, so that it can be detected correctly by the AWS CUR collection system.

Once these steps are complete, the OpsNow system will begin syncing your cost data. Within a few hours, you will see your cost dashboard populate with valuable insights, ready for you to analyze.

Thank you, The OpsNow Team