Runcost

Charge

Type
string, from a small set of values
Required
Yes, on every row
Added in
FOCUS 1.0
Contract name
charge_category
Updated

FOCUS column

ChargeCategory

The high-level kind of charge a row represents, from a fixed set: Usage for consumption, Purchase for an upfront or one-time buy such as a reservation, Tax, Credit for money returned, and Adjustment for corrections. It is the first filter in any cost analysis, because usage and purchases behave differently in time.

Example

A savings plan bought upfront is a Purchase on the day it is bought; the hourly usage it later covers is Usage; a service credit is a Credit.

Where it comes from, per export

The export column that feeds ChargeCategory in each format the platform ingests, and the transform applied. A format with no row does not carry the column; the value is then absent rather than guessed.

ExportSource columnTransform
AWS Data Exports, FOCUS
ChargeCategory
as is
Azure Cost Management, FOCUS export
ChargeCategory
as is
Azure Cost Details (actual cost)
ChargeType
values mapped: Usage → Usage, Purchase → Purchase, Refund → Credit, UnusedReservation → Usage, UnusedSavingsPlan → Usage
Azure Cost Details (amortized cost)
ChargeType
values mapped: Usage → Usage, Purchase → Purchase, Refund → Credit, UnusedReservation → Usage, UnusedSavingsPlan → Usage
Google Cloud detailed billing export
cost_type
values mapped: regular → Usage, tax → Tax, adjustment → Adjustment, rounding_error → Adjustment

How Runcost uses it

Runcost allocates Usage to consumers, allocates Purchases to the usage they cover over time, and reports Tax, Credit and Adjustment rows separately so a statement reconciles.

Related columns

About this reference

Generated from the column contract and provider rules that Runcost runs, and written by Faisal Saleem, Founder. The normative definitions are in the FinOps Foundation’s FOCUS specification at focus.finops.org.

Your bills, in FOCUS, allocated to owners.

Runcost ingests AWS, Azure and Google Cloud exports into this contract and produces statements, forecasts and alerts from it.

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