Enable, disable, or change billing for a project

This document describes how to manage Cloud Billing for each of your Google Cloud projects and Google Maps Platform projects and teaches you how to link and unlink projects and Cloud Billing accounts.

To learn how to create, modify, or close your Cloud Billing account, visit Manage your Cloud Billing account.

A Cloud Billing account defines who pays for a given set of resources, and it can be linked to one or more projects. Project usage is charged to the linked Cloud Billing account.

If you're a billing administrator on only one Cloud Billing account, new projects you create are automatically linked to your existing Cloud Billing account. If you create or have access to multiple Cloud Billing accounts, you can change the Cloud Billing account a project is billed to. This document describes how to change the Cloud Billing account for your project, as well as how to enable and disable billing for a project.

If you want to receive invoices by email, or you want to change who receives them, see Change payments contacts and notifications.

Required Permissions

The permissions required to accomplish the various tasks described in this document depend on the task and are noted at the start of each topic.

For more information about Cloud Billing permissions, see:

Check if billing is enabled on a project

Billing is enabled on a project if the following are true:

  1. The project is linked to a Cloud Billing account.
  2. The linked Cloud Billing account is active and in good standing - that is, the billing account isn't closed or suspended.

See Verify the billing status of your projects to learn how to determine if billing is enabled on a project.

Change the Cloud Billing account linked to a project

Switching a project to a different Cloud Billing account shouldn't result in any service interruption or server downtime. However, your projects might be affected in the following ways.

  • Committed use discounts (CUDs): If you purchased a Resource-based commitment for Compute Engine resources in your project, the CUD is applied on the new Cloud Billing account. Moving the commitment has the following effects on your discount:

    • If you enabled discount sharing across projects in the original Cloud Billing account, the projects that remain linked to the original billing account are no longer in the scope of the discount sharing settings.

    • If the destination Cloud Billing account already has discount sharing enabled, such as for an existing commitment, the CUD associated with the project that you're moving is added to the discount sharing settings.

    • If the destination account doesn't have discount sharing enabled, you can enable discount sharing for the Cloud Billing account. If you don't want to enable discount sharing, the CUD is applied only to eligible usage in the project where you purchased the resource-based commitments.

    • If you set up prioritized attribution for the commitment, you might need to update the prioritized attribution configuration after you change the project's Cloud Billing account.

      Learn about setting up prioritized attribution for your commitments.

    • After you change the Cloud Billing account for the project, the resource-based CUD is applied to the new Cloud Billing account at midnight in the US and Canadian Pacific Standard Time (UTC-8) time zone.

  • Google Cloud Marketplace customers: If you've made purchases from Google Cloud Marketplace in your project, learn about the steps you must take to transfer your purchases. Following these steps prevents your project from being disabled or losing data as a result of missing required resources. To learn about how you're billed for Cloud Marketplace purchases, see the Cloud Marketplace documentation.

  • Google Cloud Armor customers: If your Cloud Billing account is subscribed to Cloud Armor Enterprise Annual, and you migrate your project from that billing account to another, but your new Cloud Billing account isn't subscribed to Cloud Armor Enterprise Annual, your project reverts to Google Cloud Armor Standard after the migration completes. Learn how to keep your project in Cloud Armor Enterprise Annual without downtime.

Permissions required for this task

To change the Cloud Billing account for a project, you need to be able to move a project from one Cloud Billing account to another. To accomplish this task, you need permissions to unlink the project from the current Cloud Billing account AND to link the project to the target Cloud Billing account.

You need both project permissions and billing account permissions. These predefined roles have adequate permissions to perform this task:

  • On the project: Project Billing Manager and Project Viewer or Project Owner

    AND

  • On the current and target Cloud Billing account: Billing Account User and Billing Account Viewer or Billing Account Administrator

Specifically, to perform this task, you must have the following permissions.

Action Permission Roles with permission Resource
View projects and Cloud Billing account associations billing.resourceAssociations.list Billing Account Viewer, Billing Account Costs Manager, or Billing Account Administrator Billing account
AND
resourcemanager.projects.get Project Viewer, Project Editor, or Project Owner Project
Unlink project from its current Cloud Billing account billing.resourceAssociations.delete Billing Account Administrator Current billing account
OR
resourcemanager.projects.deleteBillingAssignment Project Billing Manager or Project Owner Project
Link project to the target Cloud Billing account billing.resourceAssociations.create Billing Account User or Billing Account Administrator Target billing account
AND
resourcemanager.projects.createBillingAssignment Project Billing Manager or Project Owner Project

How to change the project's billing account

To change the project's Cloud Billing account, do the following.

  1. In the Billing section of the Google Cloud console, locate the project using one of the following methods:

    Method 1: Start with your list of projects Method 2: Start with a billing account
    Access the My Projects page to view a list of all of your projects and their associated Cloud Billing account.

    This method works best if you have the Project Owner, Project Editor, Project Viewer, or Project Billing Manager IAM role on the project you want to manage.

    To view a list of all of your projects and their associated Cloud Billing account, take the following steps:

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the My Projects page in the Billing section.

      Go to My Projects in Cloud Billing

    2. From the list of projects, locate the project you want to manage.
    		 Open the Account management page for a selected billing account to view the list of all the projects linked to the Cloud Billing account.

    This method works well when you have access to an active Cloud Billing account that you know by name.

    To view the list of projects linked to a specific billing account, take the following steps:

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Account management page for the Cloud Billing account.

      Go to Account Management in Cloud Billing

    2. At the prompt, choose the Cloud Billing account you want to view.
    3. On the Account management page, from the list of projects, locate the project that you want to manage.

  2. In the project row, open the Actions menu (), select Change billing, then choose the destination Cloud Billing account.

  3. Click Set account.

  4. (Optional) After you link a project to a billing account, you can lock the link to prevent the project from unintentionally being moved (linked) to a different billing account or the project link being deleted from the billing account.

About project charges after the billing account is changed

After you change the Cloud Billing account on a project, charges already incurred prior to moving the project are billed to the former Cloud Billing account. This can include charges that haven't yet been reported in the transaction history. Depending on the service, it might take up to two days for charges to be reported to the transaction history.

For example: If you move your project from Account A to Account B on May 15, charges incurred May 1 to May 15 will be billed to Account A (old), and charges incurred May 16 to May 31 will be billed to Account B (new).

Enable billing for a project

How you enable billing depends on whether you're creating a new project or you're re-enabling billing for an existing project.

Enable billing for a new project

When you create a new project, you're prompted to choose which of your Cloud Billing accounts you want to link to the project. If you have only one Cloud Billing account, that account is automatically linked to your project.

If you don't have a Cloud Billing account, you must create one and enable billing for your project before you can use many Google Cloud features. To create a new Cloud Billing account and enable billing for your project, follow the instructions in Create a new Cloud Billing account.

Enable billing for an existing project

To use Google Cloud resources in a project, billing must be enabled on the project. Billing is enabled when the project is linked to an active Cloud Billing account. Billing can become disabled on a project for one of the following reasons:

If you have a project where billing has been disabled, all billable services within that project are stopped. Re-enable billing on the project to restart the resources.

Permissions required for this task

To enable billing for a project, you need permissions to link the project to the target Cloud Billing account.

You need both project permissions and billing account permissions. These predefined roles have adequate permissions to perform this task:

  • On the project: Project Billing Manager and Project Viewer or Project Owner

    AND

  • On the target Cloud Billing account: Billing Account User and Billing Account Viewer or Billing Account Administrator

Specifically, to perform this task, you must have the following permissions.

Action Permission Roles with permission Resource
View projects and Cloud Billing account associations billing.resourceAssociations.list Billing Account Viewer, Billing Account Costs Manager, or Billing Account Administrator Billing account
AND
resourcemanager.projects.get Project Viewer, Project Editor, or Project Owner Project
Link project to a Cloud Billing account billing.resourceAssociations.create Billing Account User or Billing Account Administrator Billing account
AND
resourcemanager.projects.createBillingAssignment Project Billing Manager or Project Owner Project

How to enable billing on an existing project

To enable billing on a project, do the following:

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

    Sign in to Manage billing accounts

  2. Select the My projects tab to view a list of projects and the associated Cloud Billing account for each project.

  3. From the list of projects, locate the project for which you want to re-enable billing. Tip: In the Billing account column, for projects that aren't linked to a billing account, look for "Billing is disabled".

  4. In the project row, open the Actions menu (), select Change billing, then choose the destination Cloud Billing account.

  5. Click Set account.

  6. (Optional) After you link a project to a billing account, you can lock the link to prevent the project from unintentionally being moved (linked) to a different billing account or the project link being deleted from the billing account.

Error when attempting to re-enable billing

If you're re-enabling billing on a recently restored project, you might encounter an error similar to: User missing permission 'resourcemanager.projects.createBillingAssignment' to link a billing account to project. The attempted action failed, please try again.

Due to latency issues during the project recovery process, it might take some time for the restored project to propagate to the Cloud Billing system. You can't successfully link a Cloud Billing account to a restored project until the project is fully propagated to the billing system.

If you receive an error message when attempting to link a billing account to a newly restored project, retry after about 10 minutes. If it still doesn't work, wait a few hours to assign billing. In rare instances, it might take up to 36 hours before you can re-enable billing on a restored project.

Disable billing for a project

To stop automatic payments for a project, you can disable billing for the project. You're still responsible for all outstanding charges for the project. Your listed form of payment on your Cloud Billing account is used to pay for any outstanding charges.

Permissions required for this task

To disable billing for a project, you need permissions to unlink the project from the Cloud Billing account.

You need both project permissions and billing account permissions. These predefined roles have adequate permissions to perform this task:

  • On the project: Project Billing Manager and Project Viewer or Project Owner

    OR

  • On the target Cloud Billing account: Billing Account Administrator

Specifically, to perform this task, you must have the following permissions.

Action Permission Roles with permission Resource
View projects and Cloud Billing account associations billing.resourceAssociations.list Billing Account Viewer, Billing Account Costs Manager, or Billing Account Administrator Billing account
AND
resourcemanager.projects.get Project Viewer, Project Editor, or Project Owner Project
Unlink project from a Cloud Billing account billing.resourceAssociations.delete Billing Account Administrator Billing account
OR
resourcemanager.projects.deleteBillingAssignment Project Billing Manager or Project Owner Project

How to disable billing for a project

To disable billing for a project, do the following:

  1. In the Billing section of the Google Cloud console, locate the project using one of the following methods:

    Method 1: Start with your list of projects Method 2: Start with a billing account
    Access the My Projects page to view a list of all of your projects and their associated Cloud Billing account.

    This method works best if you have the Project Owner, Project Editor, Project Viewer, or Project Billing Manager IAM role on the project you want to manage.

    To view a list of all of your projects and their associated Cloud Billing account, take the following steps:

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the My Projects page in the Billing section.

      Go to My Projects in Cloud Billing

    2. From the list of projects, locate the project you want to manage.
    		 Open the Account management page for a selected Cloud Billing account to view the list of all the projects linked to the billing account.

    This method works well when you have access to an active Cloud Billing account that you know by name.

    To view the list of projects linked to a specific billing account, take the following steps:

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Account management page for the Cloud Billing account.

      Go to Account Management in Cloud Billing

    2. At the prompt, choose the Cloud Billing account you want to view.
    3. On the Account management page, from the list of projects, locate the project that you want to manage.

  2. In the project row, open the Actions menu (), and then select Disable billing. You're prompted to confirm that you want to disable billing for this project.

  3. Click Disable billing.

About project charges after billing is disabled

After you disable billing on a project, charges already incurred prior to disabling billing on the project are billed to the previously linked Cloud Billing account. This can include charges that haven't yet been reported in the transaction history. Depending on the service, it might take up to two days for charges to be reported to the transaction history.

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