Creating a budget

Creating a budget takes a handful of decisions: how much you want to spend, over what period, on which slice of spend, and when you want to be warned.

Note

Creating budgets is a paid feature. On the Free plan the option is visible but locked behind an upgrade prompt. See Plans & billing.

What you set

• Name — a label you’ll recognize, such as Prod AWS monthly.
• Target amount — the spend ceiling for the period. Budgets are always denominated in your organization’s display currency, whether you create them in the dashboard or through the MCP server. To change the currency your budgets use, set the display currency under Currency & regional settings.
• Period — how often the budget resets: monthly (default), quarterly, or annual. Periods are anchored to the budget’s start date, not the calendar — a quarterly budget starting June 15 runs June 15 → September 14.
• Start date — when the budget begins tracking. The dashboard defaults it to the first of the current month; you can change it there or set it explicitly through the MCP server.
• End date (optional) — when tracking stops. Omit it for an ongoing budget. After the end date the budget freezes at its final period — it stops advancing and stops firing alerts — rather than rolling on forever. Settable in the dashboard and through the MCP server; must be on or after the start date.
• Scope — what spend the budget covers. Leave it at the whole organization, or narrow it to an integration, a platform, a service, a tag, or a cost center. See Budgets overview for the full scope list.
• Thresholds — the percentages of target at which you want to be warned. The default is 80% and 100%; at least one is required, and thresholds above 100% are allowed (up to 1000%) if you only care about real overruns, say 120%.
• Notification channels — where threshold crossings are delivered. The dashboard exposes email and a Slack webhook; the MCP server and API also accept a Microsoft Teams webhook. A budget with no channels still tracks status; crossings are recorded but not delivered anywhere.

Creating one with an agent

Because budgets are part of the CloudQuell MCP server, you can create one from any connected AI client in plain language:

“Set up a $50k monthly budget for prod AWS starting July 1, alert at 80% and 100%.”

Creating a budget is a write action. Through the MCP server it — like editing and deleting — requires an admin:write token and an explicit confirmation on the call, so an agent can never change budgets silently. The agent can set everything: target, period, start and end dates, scope, thresholds, and notification channels (as { slack, teams, email }).

Tip

Not sure which service codes, tag keys, or accounts you can scope to? Ask the agent “what services and accounts can I filter on?” first — the discovery tools return the valid values before you commit them to a budget.

Next steps

• Budget status & pace — watch the budget you just created.
• Alert rules — turn threshold crossings into notifications.