Create a new self-serve Cloud Billing account

This topic describes how to create a self-serve, online Cloud Billing account to automatically pay for your Google Cloud and Google Maps Platform usage costs. If you are interested in setting up a Cloud Billing account that is billed by invoice, visit Apply for monthly invoiced billing.

Before you begin

Before you create a new billing account, we recommend you do the following:

About Cloud Billing accounts

  • Cloud Billing accounts pay for usage costs in Google Cloud projects and Google Maps Platform projects. Cloud Billing accounts do not pay for Google Workspace accounts. Google Workspace customers need a separate Google Workspace billing account.

    Product Billing account needed to pay for product usage costs
    Google Cloud Cloud Billing account
    Google Maps Platform Cloud Billing account
    Google Cloud & Google Maps Platform 1 Cloud Billing account
    Google Workspace Google Workspace billing account
    Google Cloud & Google Workspace 1 Cloud Billing account + 1 Google Workspace billing account

  • A project and its service-level resources are linked to one Cloud Billing account at a time.

  • A Cloud Billing account operates in a single currency and is linked to a Google payments profile.

  • A Cloud Billing account can be linked to one or more projects.

  • Usage costs are tracked by Project and are charged to the linked Cloud Billing account.

    Important: Projects that are not linked to an active Cloud Billing account cannot use Google Cloud or Google Maps Platform services. This is true even if you only use services that are free.

  • If you want to change the Cloud Billing account that you are using to pay for a project (that is, link a project to a different Cloud Billing account), see Enable, disable, or change billing for a project.

  • You can manage your Cloud Billing accounts using the Google Cloud console. For more information about the Google Cloud console, visit General guide to the console.

Permissions required for this task

The permissions required (if any) to create a Cloud Billing account depend on your configuration of Google Cloud or Google Maps Platform.

Members of a Google Cloud Organization Not using a Google Cloud Organization

If you manage your Google Cloud resources using an Organization node, and you are a member of that Google Cloud Organization, then you must be a Billing Account Creator on the Organization node to create a new Cloud Billing account.

Specifically, if you are a Google Cloud user within an Organization, to perform this task, you must have the following permission.

  • billing.accounts.create

Additionally, Cloud Billing accounts are linked to a Google payments profile. If you plan to use an existing payments profile with your new billing account, you must be granted the Sign-up and purchase permission on the payments profile.

If you are not a member of a Google Cloud Organization but instead are managing your Google Cloud resources or Google Maps Platform APIs using projects, you do not need any specific billing role or permission to create a Cloud Billing account.

Additionally, Cloud Billing accounts are linked to a Google payments profile. If you plan to use an existing payments profile with your new billing account, you must be granted the Sign-up and purchase permission on the payments profile.

For more information about Cloud Billing permissions, see:

For more information about Google payments permissions, see Manage payments users, permissions, and notification settings.

Add a new Cloud Billing account

To create a new self-serve (autopay) Cloud Billing account, complete the following steps.

  1. Sign in to the Manage billing accounts page in the Google Cloud console.

    Sign in to Manage billing accounts

  2. Click Create account.

    1. Enter the Name of the Cloud Billing account. This is the name of the billing account that displays in billing account selectors and tabular lists or reports that display the billing account name.

    2. Depending on your configuration, you will also need to select one of the following:

      • Organization: If you see an Organization drop-down, then you must select an Organization before you can continue.

      • Country: If you are prompted to select a Country, select the country that corresponds with your billing mailing address.

        • The country you select affects the payment options available in the next step.
        • The currency for your Cloud Billing account is automatically assigned based on the country you select.
        • Your country determines what payment methods you can use to pay for your incurred usage costs.
        • Choose your country (and currency) carefully, as you can't change these selections later. If you need to edit the country on an existing Cloud Billing account, you'll need to create a new billing account.

    3. Click Continue.

  3. Choose the Google payments profile that will be associated with this Cloud Billing account. A payments profile is shared and used across all Google products (such as Google Workspace, Google Cloud, Google Fi, and more). You can choose an existing Google payments profile, or create a new payments profile. If you choose to create, follow the instructions on the screen to set up your Google payments profile.

    Important: About the Account Type

    • If you are creating a new Google payments profile, when setting your Account type, be aware that this setting is permanent and may be used for tax (such as value-added tax (VAT)) and identity verification.

      If this is for a business, organization, partnership, or educational institution, or if you want more than one person to have access to the profile, select Business. Otherwise, select Individual. Individual account types allow for only one user to be associated with the Google payments profile.

    • Depending on your country's tax requirements, you might need to enter additional tax information.

    • If you are choosing an existing Google payments profile to be associated with this Cloud Billing account, select a Business profile for Cloud account.

  4. When you are done setting all the options and details, click Submit and enable billing.

About authorization requests

When you create a new account, you might notice a $0.00 transaction from Google on your bank or credit card statement. This is a pending authorization request between our billing system and the bank that issued your credit or debit card. In some countries, authorizations are $1 (which might be converted to local currency by your bank). These transactions might appear as pending on your statement for up to a month. These are authorization requests only, not actual charges. If you have questions, we recommend you contact your bank about the authorization status.

For information about verifying bank accounts, see Verify your bank account.

For information about adding backup methods of payment, see Add, remove, or update a payment method.

Verify your payments contact email address

To ensure you receive billing- and payments-related notifications, we might ask you to verify your email address on your Google payments profile.

To verify your email address, we'll send you a verification email to the email address you entered for your payments profile contact. To activate your Google payments email preferences, click the verification link in the email.

If you haven't received the verification email, here's how to request a new verification link:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Payment settings page.

    Go to Payment settings in Cloud Billing console

  2. At the prompt, choose the Cloud Billing account that you want to verify.

    The Payment settings page opens for the selected Cloud Billing account.

  3. Under Payments users, click Manage payments users.

  4. In the Manage users list, find the email address you want to verify and click Resend verification email. Note that if the email address has already been verified, this link is not available.

Until your primary contact email address is verified, you will see a notification banner on the Payment Overview page in Billing. This notification is similar to "This payments profile has no verified primary contact. Critical email may not be received until the primary contact verifies their email".

To ensure that you can maintain your Cloud Billing account, pay your bills, and monitor your costs, after you create a new billing account, we recommend you also do the following:

Configure access to billing accounts and payments profiles

After you create a new Cloud Billing account, you might want to grant user permissions to additional users to access your billing account and Google payments profile.

Each Cloud Billing account is linked to a Google payments profile. Access permissions for Cloud Billing and Google payments are configured in two different systems depending on what type of access you want to provide.

Cloud Billing permissions Google payments settings & permissions
The access permissions to a Cloud Billing account are managed using IAM roles. Billing account permissions can be configured to allow users to do the following:
  • Open, close, and modify a Cloud Billing account.
  • View reports and cost data.
  • View documents (such as invoices and statements).
  • Analyze committed use discounts (CUD) and purchase CUDs.
  • Enable and manage export of billing data.
  • Configure budgets & alerts.
  • Manage billing per project.
  • Manage user permissions for billing.
  • Contact billing support.
 The access permissions to a Google payments profile are managed in Google payments settings. Google payments permissions can be configured to allow users to do the following:
  • Add, edit, and remove payment methods.
  • Update payments profile info, including mailing addresses.
  • Manage payments users, including contact details, email preferences, and user permissions.

If you want to manage payments-related tasks from within the Billing page of the Google Cloud console, users will also need the Billing Account Viewer role on the Cloud Billing account.

Cloud Billing account user permissions

Each Cloud Billing account needs at least one Billing Account Administrator. By default, the person who creates the Cloud Billing account is a Billing Account Administrator for that billing account. For redundancy, we recommend you configure more than one administrator on each Cloud Billing account.

You can grant different levels of access to billing accounts to your users, depending on what they need to do (for example: track spend, review cost anomalies, manage budgets, optimize costs, or review and pay invoices).

For more information, see Cloud Billing access control & permissions.

Google payments user permissions

Each Google payments account needs at least one Admin with all permissions, and one Primary Contact (the person Google will contact with any payments-related alerts or questions). By default, the person who creates the Google payments account is both the Admin with all permissions, and the Primary Contact. For redundancy, we recommend that you configure more than one Google payments administrator.

You can add other users to any Google payments business profile you manage and grant different levels of access to your users, depending on what they need to do (for example: manage payment methods or payments profile details). You can also configure user email preferences for receiving billing and payments emails.

For more information, see Manage Google payments users, permissions, and notification settings.

Set up budgets to track your spend

You can create Cloud Billing budgets to monitor all of your Google Cloud charges in one place. A budget enables you to track your actual Google Cloud spend against your planned spend. After you've set a budget amount, you set budget alert threshold rules that are used to trigger email notifications. Budget alert emails help you stay informed about how your spend is tracking against your budget. You can also configure budget notifications to automate cost control responses.

For detailed guidance about budgets, see Create, edit, or delete budgets and budget alerts.

Enable billing data export to BigQuery

Managing and reporting costs effectively is a critical part of financial stewardship, no matter your budget. Making data-driven decisions about your Google Cloud costs and usage starts with collecting the data you'll need to inform those decisions.

Cloud Billing export to BigQuery enables you to export detailed Google Cloud billing data (such as usage, cost estimates, and pricing data) automatically throughout the day to a BigQuery dataset that you specify. Then you can access your Cloud Billing data from BigQuery for detailed analysis, or use a tool like Looker Studio to visualize your data. You can also use this export method to export data to a JSON file.

Timing is important. To have access to a more complete set of Google Cloud billing data for your analysis needs, we recommend that you enable Cloud Billing data export to BigQuery on each of your Cloud Billing accounts, at the same time that you create the Cloud Billing accounts.

For comprehensive guidance, see Export Cloud Billing data to BigQuery.

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