Customize budget alert email recipients

Overview

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

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

Diagram of budget alert notifications

  • Role-based: For budgets scoped to a Cloud Billing account (or to more than one project within the billing account), 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.

    For budgets scoped to a single project, you can also send email alerts to Project Owners of the budget's project (Preview), when the budget alert threshold rules trigger an email notification. Use this option if Project Owners can take cost control actions on their projects based on the alert emails.

  • 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, Billing Account Users, and Project Owners aren't the best recipients to take cost control actions based on the alerts. For example, you want to send an email alert to a developer or a system administrator who is not a Project Owner or 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:

Permissions when using custom roles

If you are using custom roles to grant access, your role must have the following permissions to set up Cloud Monitoring notification channels and link them to a Cloud Billing budget:

For billing-account-level access

To create a new Cloud Billing budget to link it to new Cloud Monitoring notification channels, you need these specific permissions:

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

For project-level access to manage budgets

If you have limited or no access to a Cloud Billing account, you can still create or modify a budget that is scoped only to the projects that you own, one project at a time.

To manage budgets for a project and customize the email recipients of budget alerts, you need a role that includes these specific permissions:

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, Billing Account Users, or Project Owners), the email addresses you specify 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 (to view billing-account-level budgets) or on the budget's project (for single-project-scoped budgets).

  • For billing-account-level budgets, at a minimum, ensure email recipients are added to the Billing Account Viewer role on the Cloud Billing account that owns the budget.
  • For single-project-scoped budgets, at a minimum, ensure email recipients are added to the Project Viewer role on the budget's project (Preview).

See View a list of budgets for additional information.

About Google Cloud permissions

For more information about Cloud Billing permissions, see:

For more information about Google Cloud project permissions, see:

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.

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

  1. Using the procedure that fits your level of access to Cloud Billing accounts, sign in to the Budgets & alerts page in the Billing section of the Google Cloud console:

    Users with Cloud Billing account permissions Users with project-level permissions only (Preview)

    If you have Cloud Billing account permissions, you can select from a list of billing accounts that you have permissions to access.

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

      Open Budgets & alerts
    2. At the prompt, choose the Cloud Billing account for which you'd like to manage budgets.

      The Budgets & alerts page opens for the selected billing account.

    If you only have project permissions, but do not have any permissions on your project's Cloud Billing account, you'll need to select your project before you navigate to the Billing section.

    1. Sign in to the Google Cloud console dashboard and select a project.

      Open Google Cloud console
    2. Select the project for which you want to manage budgets.
    3. Next, navigate to Billing: Open the Google Cloud console Navigation menu , and then select Billing.

      If you are prompted to choose which billing account you want to view and manage, click Go to linked billing account to view the billing account that is linked to your selected project.

      The Billing Overview page opens for the selected billing account.

    4. In the Cost management section of the Billing navigation menu, select Budgets & alerts.

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

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

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

  5. 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.

  6. 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.