Teams

A single cost view rarely works for an entire organization. Your backend squad needs scoped to their services, while finance needs Billed Cost across everything. Teams let you configure those defaults once so each group lands on the right numbers without manual filtering.

Setting up a team and assigning a cost scope in Costory

Overview

A Team is a group of users that share three things: a default cost metric (Contracted, Effective, or Billed) applied across all screens, one or more cost scopes that pre-filter every view to the team’s perimeter, and a set of dashboards and saved views that all members can edit together. Dashboards can be public (visible org-wide) or private (team members only).

When a user belongs to multiple teams, the first team they were added to provides the default scope.

Get started

Create a team

UI
Terraform

Navigate to Settings > Teams and click Create Team. Give the team a name, an optional description, and choose its visibility.

terraform {
  required_providers {
    costory = {
      source  = "costory-io/costory"
      version = ">= 0.1.0"
    }
  }
}

variable "costory_api_token" {
  type        = string
  description = "Costory API token."
  sensitive   = true
}

provider "costory" {
  token = var.costory_api_token
}

# Public team
resource "costory_team" "engineering" {
  name        = "Engineering"
  description = "All engineering members"
  visibility  = "PUBLIC"
}

Add members

UI
Terraform

Open your team in Settings > Teams and click Add member. Invite members by email and assign each person a role.

Data team detail page in Costory showing two members with Owner and Member roles, PUBLIC visibility, and Contracted Cost as the default metric

Role	Permissions
Owner	Add/remove members, manage scopes, edit team settings
Member	Use team scopes, view and edit team dashboards

terraform {
  required_providers {
    costory = {
      source  = "costory-io/costory"
      version = ">= 0.1.0"
    }
  }
}

variable "costory_api_token" {
  type        = string
  description = "Costory API token."
  sensitive   = true
}

provider "costory" {
  token = var.costory_api_token
}

resource "costory_team" "engineering" {
  name       = "Engineering"
  visibility = "PRIVATE"
}

variable "team_members" {
  type = map(object({
    email = string
    role  = string
  }))
  default = {
    alice = { email = "alice@example.com", role = "OWNER" }
    bob   = { email = "bob@example.com", role = "MEMBER" }
    carol = { email = "carol@example.com", role = "MEMBER" }
  }
}

resource "costory_team_member" "members" {
  for_each = var.team_members

  team_id = costory_team.engineering.id
  email   = each.value.email
  role    = each.value.role
}

Assign cost scopes

Scopes are persistent filters that apply by default whenever a team member opens Cost Explorer, a dashboard, or any cost view. They define the team’s cost boundary: for example, only the AWS accounts or GCP projects the team owns.

Cost Explorer with a team scope 'ML stack' applied as a persistent filter in the Where clause

To add a scope:

Go to Settings > Teams and select your team.
Click Add Scope and define the filter conditions.
Save. The scope applies by default to every view for all team members.

You can assign multiple scopes per team, for example one for compute resources and another for storage.

Team members can temporarily remove a scope to see organization-wide costs. The scope is re-applied automatically when they open a new view.

Key capabilities

Default cost metric per team

Different stakeholders need different cost metrics. With Teams, you set the default once and it applies across Cost Explorer, dashboards, and Digest. Engineering teams typically default to , which is stable and reflects actual resource usage without Savings Plan fluctuations. Finance teams prefer Effective Cost or Billed Cost, which reflects what is actually invoiced. Individual users can still switch metrics on the fly. For a guide on matching metrics to personas, see Cost Metrics Per Persona.

Persistent cost scopes

Common scope patterns include scoping by AWS account or GCP project to match the team’s ownership, by cloud service (e.g., SageMaker, BigQuery), by such as team = ML using Virtual Dimensions, or by Kubernetes namespace.

Shared dashboards and views

Assign dashboards and saved views to a team so all members can collaborate. Public dashboards are visible to the entire organization, which is useful for cross-team cost overviews. Private dashboards are restricted to team members for team-specific analysis.

Costory dashboard owned by the Data team showing description, team ownership, labels, and the ML stack scope

All team members can edit dashboards assigned to their team. People outside the team can view public dashboards but cannot edit them.

Manage teams

Edit a team

Open Settings > Teams and select the team you want to modify. From there you can rename the team, update its description, change its visibility (Public or Private), and update the default cost metric. In Terraform, update the corresponding costory_team resource attributes and run terraform apply.

Delete a team

Open Settings > Teams, select the team, and click Delete Team. Deleting a team removes all scopes and unlinks all dashboards. Members are not deleted from Costory, they just lose access to the team’s private dashboards.

Deleting a team cannot be undone. Make sure to reassign any dashboards you want to keep before deleting.

In Terraform, remove the costory_team resource from your configuration and run terraform apply.

Roles and permissions

Role	Members	Scopes	Team settings	Dashboards
Owner	Add and remove	Create, edit, delete	Edit name, description, visibility, default metric	Edit all team dashboards
Member	View only	View only	View only	Edit all team dashboards

Owners have full control over the team configuration. Members can use the team’s scopes and edit dashboards assigned to the team, but cannot change membership or settings. Both roles can temporarily remove a scope to see organization-wide costs.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens when a user belongs to multiple teams?

The first team the user was added to provides the default scope. The user can still access dashboards and scopes from all their teams.

Can team members remove a scope temporarily?

Yes. Scopes apply by default, but any team member can remove the scope filter to see organization-wide costs. The scope is re-applied when they navigate to a new view.

Do Slack Reports inherit team scopes?

Team scopes are applied when a team member creates a Slack Report or a saved View. Alerts and scheduled reports cannot be owned by a team yet, so they are managed per user.

What is the difference between PUBLIC and PRIVATE visibility?

A Public team’s dashboards are visible to everyone in the organization. A Private team’s dashboards are only visible to team members. In both cases, only team members can edit the team’s dashboards.

Can I manage team scopes via Terraform?

Not yet. Scopes are currently managed through the UI. Team creation and member assignment are available via the Costory Terraform provider.

Next Steps

Cost Explorer

Explore your costs with team scopes applied by default

Tag & Allocate Costs

Build the Virtual Dimensions that power your team scopes

Cost Metrics Per Persona

Match the right cost metric to each stakeholder

Cost Metrics Reference

Understand Contracted, Effective, and Billed costs

Get Started

Setup

Explore

Tag & Allocate

Reporting & Dashboards

Cost Changes

Planning

Technical Documentation

Glossary

Teams

Overview

Get started

Key capabilities

Default cost metric per team

Persistent cost scopes

Shared dashboards and views

Manage teams

Edit a team

Delete a team

Roles and permissions

Frequently Asked Questions

Next Steps

Cost Explorer

Tag & Allocate Costs

Cost Metrics Per Persona

Cost Metrics Reference

Get Started

Setup

Explore

Tag & Allocate

Reporting & Dashboards

Cost Changes

Teams

Planning

Technical Documentation

Glossary

​Overview

​Get started

​Key capabilities

​Default cost metric per team

​Persistent cost scopes

​Shared dashboards and views

​Manage teams

​Edit a team

​Delete a team

​Roles and permissions

​Frequently Asked Questions

​Next Steps

Cost Explorer

Tag & Allocate Costs

Cost Metrics Per Persona

Cost Metrics Reference

Overview

Get started

Key capabilities

Default cost metric per team

Persistent cost scopes

Shared dashboards and views

Manage teams

Edit a team

Delete a team

Roles and permissions

Frequently Asked Questions

Next Steps