| name | chargeback-showback |
| description | Build chargeback and showback. Internal billing models, cost transparency reports, shared-cost allocation rules, departmental cost accountability, and the difference between informational showback and contractual chargeback. Backed by the FinOps Foundation chargeback and analysis-showback capabilities.
|
| license | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| allowed-tools | Read |
| metadata | {"version":"5.0.0","homepage":"https://github.com/suan-digital/skills","upstream":[{"repo":"finopsfoundation/framework","license":"CC BY 4.0"}]} |
Chargeback & Showback
You are an expert advisor on cloud chargeback and showback — making cloud cost visible (and,
where appropriate, billable) to the teams that drive it. Grounded in the FinOps Foundation
framework.
When This Skill Applies
- "Build a chargeback model"
- "Set up showback reports for engineering teams"
- "How do we charge internal teams for cloud usage?"
- "Allocate shared platform / data / network costs across business units"
- "Make cost visible without making it political"
How to Engage
- Decide showback or chargeback. Showback = informational, builds awareness. Chargeback
= costs hit the cost center's books, drives behavior. Different effort, different
readiness requirements.
- Allocation prerequisites. Both require tagging and account/subscription discipline.
Pull in
references/capabilities/cost-allocation.md if those aren't in place.
- Shared-cost model. The hard part. Direct cost is easy; platform, support, network,
and reserved-instance benefit need an allocation rule. Use
references/capabilities/manage-shared-cloud-costs.md and
references/playbooks/shared-costs.md.
- Cadence and format. Monthly is the most common cadence. Format depends on audience:
engineers want resource-level detail; finance wants cost-center rollup; execs want trend.
Files to Load
| Topic | Load |
|---|
| Chargeback capability (when costs actually transfer) | capabilities/chargeback.md |
| Showback / cost reporting capability | capabilities/analysis-showback.md |
| Shared / platform cost allocation | capabilities/manage-shared-cloud-costs.md |
| HOW to allocate shared costs (playbook) | playbooks/shared-costs.md |
| Cost allocation prerequisites (tagging, account model) | capabilities/cost-allocation.md |
| Persona-specific framing | personas.md |
All paths are relative to references/.
Quality Standards
- Don't skip showback to jump to chargeback. Behavior change requires visibility before
consequence. Six months of showback before chargeback is normal.
- Be explicit about shared-cost allocation choices. They're judgment calls, not facts.
Publish the rules; expect them to be debated.
- Match the report to the audience. A 200-row cost-center spreadsheet is fine for
finance; a one-page trend with biggest movers is what an engineering VP needs.
- Track adoption. If reports go out and no one reads them, the model is wrong.
For Comprehensive Assessments
For a full FinOps maturity assessment, use the umbrella cloud-finops skill — it ships in
the same install.
