Customize budget alert email recipients

Overview

You can specify the email recipients of budget alerts in these ways:

• Role-based (default): You can send email alerts to Billing Account Administrators and Billing Account Users on the target Cloud Billing account when the budget alert threshold rules trigger an email notification.

  Use this option if Billing Account Administrators and Billing Account Users can take cost control actions based on the alert emails.

Figure 1: Illustrates the default email functionality for budget alert notifications and the optional method to customize the email recipients using Cloud Monitoring.

• Using Cloud Monitoring (described on this page): You can specify other people in your organization (for example, project managers) to receive budget alert emails.

  Use this option if your organization's Billing Account Administrators and Billing Account Users aren't the best recipients to take cost control actions based on the alerts. For example, if you want to send an email alert to a project manager or developer who doesn't need to be a Billing Account Administrator.

To customize who receives the budget alert emails for a specific budget, Link Monitoring email notifications to the budget, and select up to five email notification channels.

Permissions required for this task

To set up Cloud Monitoring notification channels and link them to a Cloud Billing budget, you need the following roles:

• To create or modify a budget for your Cloud Billing account, you need the Billing Account Costs Manager role or the Billing Account Administrator role on the Cloud Billing account.

• To create or modify Cloud Monitoring notification channels, you must have the Monitoring Editor role on the project where you create the notification channel.

  Specifically, you must have the following permissions:

  • billing.budgets.create on the Cloud Billing account, to create a new budget.
  • billing.budgets.get and billing.budgets.list on the Cloud Billing account, to view all budgets for the Cloud Billing account.
  • billing.budgets.update on the Cloud Billing account, to modify an existing budget.
  • roles/monitoring.editor on the project where you want to create notification channels.

  To edit an existing Cloud Billing budget to link it to existing Cloud Monitoring notification channels, you need these specific permissions:

  • billing.budgets.get and billing.budgets.list on the Cloud Billing account, to view all budgets for the Cloud Billing account.
  • billing.budgets.update on the Cloud Billing account, to modify an existing budget.
  • roles/monitoring.viewer on the project that stores the notification channels.

Permissions required for the recipients of budget alert emails

When you select Cloud Monitoring email notification channels to customize who receives alert emails (in addition to Billing Account Administrators and Billing Account Users on the target Cloud Billing account), the email addresses specified are sent the budget alert emails when the threshold rules trigger an alert.

The budget alert emails contain helpful links to the budget, so that you can quickly view it and take any appropriate actions. The people you specify to receive alert emails using email notification channels might not have the correct permissions to view the Cloud Billing budgets in the Google Cloud console.

If you want the recipients of the alert emails to be able to view the budget, email recipients need permissions on the Cloud Billing account. At a minimum, ensure email recipients are added to the Billing Account Viewer role on the Cloud Billing account that owns the budget. See View a list of budgets for additional information.

For more information about Google Cloud permissions, see:

• Overview of Cloud Billing access control
• Create custom roles for Cloud Billing
• Understanding predefined Identity and Access Management roles

Set up and enable Cloud Monitoring email notifications

To customize the email addresses that will receive budget alert notifications, link notification channels to your budget.

Before you begin: create an email notification channel

You must create an email notification channel in Cloud Monitoring.

For Cloud Billing budget alerts, you must configure Email notification channels. Other types of notification channels are not supported.

If you have already set up email notification channels that you want to use, skip this step and link the notification channel to your budget.

Tip: If you want to send notifications to Slack, you can configure programmatic notifications.

Link your budget to email notification channels

After you have created an email notification channel, follow these steps to link your budget to it:

1. Sign in to the Budgets & alerts page in the Google Cloud console.

   Sign in to Budgets & alerts

2. At the prompt, choose the Cloud Billing account for which you'd like manage budgets. The Budgets & alerts page opens for the selected billing account.

3. If necessary, create a budget and set alert threshold rules. Or, to edit an existing budget and alert rules, click a budget name.

4. In the Actions section, under Manage notifications, select Link Monitoring email notifications to this budget.

5. From the Select project menu, select the project that contains the email notification channels.

6. Under Notification Channels, select up to five existing notification channels, or click Manage notification channels to edit or create email notification channels on demand.

   • If you are editing a budget, you can link new notification channels or unlink previously selected email channels by using the checkboxes next to the channel names.
   • While editing a budget, if you can no longer see an email notification channel that you previously linked to the budget, this might be because the notification channel was deleted from the project. To learn more about viewing, editing, or deleting notification channels, visit Notification options.

7. Click Save.

Delivery guarantees for Cloud Monitoring notifications

After you create a budget and link it to Cloud Monitoring email notification channels, you can expect emails to be sent as described here:

• It may take several hours before receiving the first alert email.
• Email alerts are sent only when triggered by the threshold rules.
• If the Cloud Billing account has no usage, no email notification is sent.
• If delivery fails due to notification channel misconfiguration, you will not be notified.
• Delivery will fail if the notification channel no longer exists.