Overview of Billing Access Control

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides Cloud Identity and Access Management (Cloud IAM), which you can use to grant or prevent access to specific GCP resources. Cloud IAM lets you control who (users) has what access (roles) to which resources by setting Cloud IAM policies on the resources.

To grant or limit access to Cloud Billing, you can set a Cloud IAM policy at the organization level or the billing account level. GCP resources inherit the Cloud IAM policies of their parent node, which means you can set a policy at the organization level to apply it to all the child billing accounts in the organization.

Overview of Billing roles in Cloud IAM

The following predefined Billing Cloud IAM roles are designed to allow you to use access control to enforce separation of duties:

Role	Purpose	Level	Use Case
Billing Account Creator	Create new self-serve billing accounts.	Organization	Use this role for initial billing setup or temporarily to create a billing account in a different currency. Users must have this role to sign up for GCP with a credit card using their corporate identity. Tip: Minimize the number of users who have this role to help prevent proliferation of untracked cloud spend in your organization.
Billing Account Administrator	Manage billing accounts (but not create them).	Organization or billing account.	This role is an owner role for a billing account. Use it to manage payment instruments, configure billing exports, view cost information, link and unlink projects and manage other user roles on the billing account.
Billing Account User	Link projects to billing accounts.	Organization or billing account.	This role has very restricted permissions, so you can grant it broadly, typically in combination with Project Creator. These two roles allow a user to create new projects linked to the billing account on which the role is granted.
Billing Account Viewer	View billing account cost information and transactions.	Organization or billing account.	Billing Account Viewer access would usually be granted to finance teams, it provides access to spend information, but does not confer the right to link or unlink projects or otherwise manage the properties of the billing account.
Project Billing Manager	Link/unlink the project to/from a billing account.	Organization or project.	This role allows a user to attach the project to the billing account, but does not grant any rights over resources. Project Owners can use this role to allow someone else to manage the billing for the project without granting them resource access.

Relationships between organizations, projects, and billing accounts

Two types of relationship govern the interactions between billing accounts, organizations, and projects: ownership and payment linkage.

Ownership refers to Cloud IAM permission inheritance.
Payment linkages define which billing account pays for a given project.

The following diagram shows the relationship of ownership and payment linkages for a sample organization.

Relationship of Ownership and Payment Linkages

In the diagram, the organization has ownership over Projects A, B, and C, meaning that it is the Cloud IAM permissions parent of the three projects.

The billing account is linked to Projects A, B, and C, meaning that it pays for expenses incurred by the three projects.

In this example, any users who are granted Cloud IAM billing roles on the organization also have those roles on the billing account or the projects.

Billing access control examples

Combine Cloud IAM roles as follows to meet the needs of a variety of scenarios.

Scenario: Small-to-Medium Enterprise (SME) with a preference for centralized control.

User type	Billing Cloud IAM roles	Billing activities
CEO	Billing Account Administrator	Manage payment instrument. View and approve invoices.
CTO	Billing Account Administrator Project Creator	Set and track budgets. View spend. Create new billable projects.
Development teams	None	None

Scenario: SME with a preference for delegated authority.

User type	Billing Cloud IAM roles	Billing activities
CEO	Billing Account Administrator	Manage payment instrument. Delegate authority.
CFO	Billing Account Administrator	Set and track budgets. View spend.
Accounts payable	Billing Account Viewer	View and approve invoices.
Development teams	Billing Account User Project Creator	Create new billable projects.

Scenario: Separate Financial Planning & Procurement Functions

User type	Billing Cloud IAM roles	Billing activities
Procurement or Central IT	Billing Account Administrator	Manage payment instrument. Set and track budgets. Communicate spend to development teams.
Financial planning	Billing Account Viewer	View billing reports. Process exports. Communicate with CxO.
Accounts payable	Billing Account Viewer	Approve invoices.
Development teams	Billing Account User Project Creator	Create new billable projects.

Scenario: Development Agency

User type	Billing Cloud IAM roles	Billing activities
CEO	Billing Account Administrator	Manage payment instrument. Delegate authority.
CFO	Billing Account Administrator	Set and track budgets. View spend. Approve invoices.
Project lead	Billing Account User Project Creator	Create new billable projects.
Project development team	None	Develop within existing projects.
Client	Project Billing Manager	Take payment ownership of the project when it is completed.

Update billing permissions

To add or remove billing permissions:

Go to the Google Cloud Platform Console.
Open the console left side menu and click Billing.
If you have more than one billing account, select Go to linked billing account to manage the current project's billing permissions. To locate a different billing account, select Manage billing accounts.
On the right, use the Permissions panel to edit permissions for the selected billing account. (If the panel isn't already open, click SHOW INFO PANEL to open it.) Then, do either of the following:
- To assign permissions, under Add members, enter the email address of the person you want to assign the permission to, then select a permission from Select a role. Click Add.
- To remove a member's billing permission, click and expand the list for the corresponding permission, hover over the member you want to remove, and then click the trash can icon on the right.