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The FinOps toolkit Power BI reports provide a great starting point for your FinOps reporting. We recommend customizing them to keep what works, edit and augment reports with your own data, and remove anything that isn’t needed. You can also copy and paste visuals between reports to create your own custom reports.

If you’re just getting started and have less than $2-5 million to report on, start with the Cost Management connector report that leverages the Microsoft Cost Management connector for Power BI. If you run into performance issues or need to report on more than $5 million, use FinOps hubs with the other available reports and configure incremental refresh. The main difference between the two is that the connector is built into Power BI and requires no external setup, while FinOps hubs requires resources to be deployed to your subscription, which enable additional capabilities. Most organizations can use the connector, depending on the reporting requirements. FinOps hubs is generally for more advanced scenarios. For details, see Help me choose.

As of FinOps toolkit 0.2, all reports have been updated to use the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS). To learn more, see About FOCUS.


📈 Available reports

The FinOps toolkit includes two sets of reports that connect to different data sources. We recommend using the following reports which connect to FinOps hubs:

  • Cost summary – Overview of amortized costs with common breakdowns.
  • Commitment discounts – Summarizes existing and potential savings from commitment-based discounts.
  • Data ingestion – Provides insights into your data ingestion layer.

The following reports use the Cost Management connector for Power BI to connect to your data. While the connector is not recommended due to the reasons below, these reports will be available as long as the connector is supported by the Cost Management team.

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⚖️ Help me choose

Microsoft offers several ways to analyze and report on your cloud costs. For quick exploration of subscriptions and billing accounts, we recommend starting with smart views in Cost analysis in the Azure portal or Microsoft 365 admin center. When you need more control or to save and share charts, switch to customizable views.

When you need more advanced reporting or to merge with your own data, we recommend using Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, or a custom or third-party solution. Use the following to determine the best approach for you:

  1. For costs under $2-5M in total1 that don’t need savings plan data, you can use the Cost Management connector for Power BI.
    • The connector uses existing raw cost data APIs and cannot scale to data sizes beyond $5M1.
    • Due to the size constraints, the connector will be phased out by the Cost Management team starting in 2024.
    • The APIs do not include some key columns for savings plans, like the BenefitId/Name columns. All costs are covered but not always easily identifiable.
  2. Coming soon: For costs under $2-5M/month (~$65M total)2 that need savings plan data, you can use raw exports with Power BI.
    • This is in preview and will be included in a future FinOps toolkit release.
    • To enable the preview, see the “Exports (preview)” feature in Cost Management Labs.
  3. For costs under $2-5M/month (~$65M total)2 that need savings plan data, you can use FinOps hubs with Power BI.
    • Requires incremental refresh to be enabled to load more than $5M over multiple months.
  4. Coming soon: For costs over $5M/month or for additional capabilities, you can connect Fabric to either FinOps hubs or raw exports.
    • This is possible today, but is not supported in FinOps toolkit reports yet. Support will be added in a future release.

1) Power BI Pro can handle ~$2M of raw cost data. Power BI Premium can handle ~$5M.

2) The $2-5M limits are for Power BI data refreshes and apply on a monthly basis for hubs and raw exports. They can load up to $65M with incremental refresh enabled.

In general, we recommend starting with the Cost Management connector when getting started with Power BI reports. The most common reasons to switch to FinOps hubs are for additional account types and scopes or to enable more advanced capabilities. Use the following comparison to help you make the decision:

Capabilities Connector Exports1 FinOps hubs Microsoft Fabric2
Cost $0 ~$10 per $1M ~$25 per $1M TBD
Data storage Power BI Data Lake Storage Data Lake Storage Data Lake Storage
Est. max raw cost details per month3 $2M/mo (Pro)
$5M/mo (Premium)		 $2M/mo (Pro)
$5M/mo (Premium)		 $2M/mo (Pro)
$5M/mo (Premium)		 TBD
Est. max total with incremental refresh4 $2M (Pro)
$5M (Premium)		 $2M (Pro)
$65M (Premium)		 $2M (Pro)
$65M (Premium)		 TBD
Does not require a deployment ✅ ❌ (storage only) ❌ (details) ❌
Latest API version5 ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅
Azure Government ❌ 🔜 ✅ ✅ (Hubs)
Azure China ❌ 🔜 ✅ ✅ (Hubs)
Enterprise Agreement ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Microsoft Customer Agreement ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Microsoft Partner Agreement ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Microsoft Online Services Agreement ❌ ❌ (if requested) ❌ (if requested) ❌
Billing accounts ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Billing profiles ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
Invoice sections ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅
CSP customers (partner only) ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅
Management groups ❌ ❌ ❌ (if requested) ❌
Subscriptions ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅
Resource groups ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅
Supports savings plans5 ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅
Supports savings plan recommendations ❌ ❌ 🔜 (0.4) 🔜
Supports multiple scopes ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅
Supports scopes in different tenants ❌ ❌ 🔜 (0.3) 🔜 (Hubs)
Faster data load times ❌ 🔜 ✅ ✅ (Hubs)
Supports >$65M in cost details ❌ ❌ 🔜 (0.4) ✅
Analytical engine ❌ ❌ 🔜 (0.4) ✅
Accessible outside of Power BI ❌ ✅ ✅ ✅
Learn more Learn more   Learn more  

1) Support for raw exports requires a Cost Management preview feature available from Cost Management Labs. The FinOps toolkit does not support raw exports yet but will in a future release.

2) Microsoft Fabric can connect to either raw exports or FinOps hubs. FinOps toolkit reports do not support Microsoft Fabric yet but will in a future release.

3) Power BI constraints are based on data size and processing time. Monitored spend estimations are for reference only. You may see different limits based on services you use and other datasets you ingest.

4) The Cost Management connector for Power BI does not support incremental refresh, so the limits are the same as the per-month estimation. The FinOps hub estimate is based on incremental refresh being enabled, which requires additional configuration after your report is published.

5) The Cost Management connector uses an old API version and does not include details for some features, like savings plans. Please use FinOps hubs for the latest version with all details.

If you’re not sure, start with the Cost Management connector. You will usually be able to tell if that works for you within the first 5-10 minutes. If you experience delays in pulling your data, try requesting fewer months. If you still experience issues, it’s time to consider switching to FinOps hubs.


✨ Connect to your data

All FinOps toolkit reports, come with sample data to explore without connecting to your account. Reports have a built-in tutorial to help you connect to your data.

  1. Select the Transform data button (table with a pencil icon) in the toolbar.

    Screenshot of the Transform data button in the Power BI Desktop toolbar.

  2. Select Queries > 🛠️ Setup > Instructions > ▶ START HERE and follow the instructions.

    To connect to a FinOps hub instance, you will need the storageUrlForPowerBI value from the deployment outputs. Make sure you have the Storage Blob Data Reader role on the storage account so you can access the data.

    Screenshot of instructions to connect to a FinOps hub

    To connect to the Cost Management connector, you will need the billing account ID and/or billing profile ID. You can find this in Cost Management configuration settings > Properties.

    Screenshot of instructions to connect to the Cost Management connector

  3. Select Close & Apply in the toolbar and allow Power BI to refresh to see your data.

For more details, see How to setup Power BI.


🙋‍♀️ Looking for more?

We’d love to hear about any reports, charts, or general reporting questions you’re looking to answer. Create a new issue with the details that you’d like to see either included in existing or new reports.

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