> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.costory.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Quickstart: How to set up automated cloud cost reporting in 30 minutes

> Step-by-step guide to connect AWS, GCP, Azure and Datadog to Costory. Set up automated FinOps Slack & Teams cost reports in 30 minutes, free trial included.

New to Costory? Read the [Welcome](/get-started/welcome) page for how the product fits DevOps workflows, then follow the steps below.

<Frame caption="Costory's scheduled reports deliver actionable insights on cloud costs directly to your workspace.">
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/MPk5hJyiLFQv1UHM/images/slack-report-light.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=MPk5hJyiLFQv1UHM&q=85&s=c54fb32412db534866bab867cdcbf76a" alt="Example of weekly cost reporting message sent by Costory" width="1020" height="558" data-path="images/slack-report-light.png" />
</Frame>

Here's what you can expect in 30 minutes (and a large lunch break):

* Set up your 14-day free trial with your cloud billing data connected.
* Get a unified view of your costs across teams, providers, and environments.
* Receive your first Costory report directly to your team's inbox (Slack, Teams, Email).

## Prerequisites for Costory cloud cost management setup

* **Cloud Billing Admin Access**: Be a Billing Admin on your cloud provider account. If you're a marketplace admin, you can also purchase Costory directly from the marketplace at the end of onboarding.
* **Slack or Teams App Install**: Have your Slack or Teams admin ready to install the Costory app, or ensure you have admin permissions to do it yourself.

## Step 1: Connect your AWS, GCP, Azure billing accounts (10 minutes)

<Steps>
  <Step title="Create your Costory Account: 1 minute">
    <Card title="Sign up for Costory" icon="rocket" href="https://app.costory.io/sign-up" horizontal>
      Request a free trial
    </Card>
  </Step>

  <Step title="Connect your cloud billing data: 10 minutes">
    Go to [Setup Billing Datasources](https://app.costory.io/datasources/billing)

    <Tabs>
      <Tab title="AWS CUR using CloudFormation">
        <Frame caption="Setup AWS CUR using CloudFormation Template">
          <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/LqFJ666hCOge47VG/images/Setup%20AWS%20CUR%20using%20CloudFormation%20Template.gif?s=5f55ae4ee1682742830995cf50295a29" alt="Setup AWS CUR using CloudFormation Template" width="1308" height="720" data-path="images/Setup AWS CUR using CloudFormation Template.gif" />
        </Frame>

        <Check>If you have an existing export, you will be able to import it directly in Costory. </Check>

        <Check> If you need to create a new report, AWS takes between 6 and 12 hours to export the first file. And 12-24 hours to backfill the historical data. Costory will ping you when your data is ready.</Check>
      </Tab>

      <Tab title="GCP Billing Export">
        Click new datasource and select GCP. You will see your Costory service account email. Share your BigQuery dataset with it using these IAM roles: BigQuery Data Viewer and BigQuery Metadata Viewer.

        <Check>The data will be available in Costory within 10 minutes.</Check>
      </Tab>

      <Tab title="Azure Billing Export">
        <Frame caption="Azure setup">
          <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/LqFJ666hCOge47VG/images/Azure%20setup.gif?s=7643d48d8f33da10d9bdf5291ec6d90e" alt="Azure setup" width="1308" height="720" data-path="images/Azure setup.gif" />
        </Frame>

        <Check>
          If you have an existing export, you will be able to import it directly in Costory.
        </Check>

        <Check>
          If you need to create a new report, Azure takes between 5 and 10 minutes to export the first file. You can then trigger backfills (\~1 hour).
        </Check>
      </Tab>

      <Tab title="Datadog">
        <Frame caption="Datadog setup">
          <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/LqFJ666hCOge47VG/images/Datadog%20setup.gif?s=5db300c35be3fb3edf2008f8c2d66085" alt="Datadog setup" width="1412" height="720" data-path="images/Datadog setup.gif" />
        </Frame>

        <Check>The data will be available in Costory within 10 minutes.</Check>
      </Tab>
    </Tabs>
  </Step>

  <Step title="Wait for your data to be ingested: (from 10 minutes to 24 hours depending on your luck but mostly on your provider...)">
    Costory will ingest your data and make it available.
    Depending on your provider, the first export may take from 10 minutes (GCP, Azure) to several hours (AWS).
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Step 2: Automate your cloud cost reporting (20 minutes)

<Steps>
  <Step title="Create Dimensions: Costory automatically finds your best labels: 5 minutes">
    Costory will read your existing labels across providers, suggest merges and mappings to standardize keys and values.

    Going from 3 labels: `env`, `environment`, `k8s_label_env` with many different values to a single label: `environment`, with only 3 values: `development`, `staging`, `production`.

    You can review those in the [Dimensions page](https://app.costory.io/dimensions), and add more transformations to your labels:

    <Frame caption="Dimensions let you merge labels and map values into clean reporting fields">
      <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/WRvESdGs0dJNS2oW/images/quickstart/feature-engineering.gif?s=5e4a368ffab44febc9d9d98bb24c45d0" alt="Dimensions UI showing label values being remapped into a clean dimension" width="1308" height="720" data-path="images/quickstart/feature-engineering.gif" />
    </Frame>

    <Check>
      Dimensions keep Explorer clean with only the
      meaningful labels and values. They also help our AI assistant Billy better
      understand your data and keep its explanations clear and actionable.
    </Check>
  </Step>

  <Step title="Verify Billing Data: 5 minutes">
    Explore the cost using Last Month date preset, or Last invoice month (uses invoice date instead of usage dates).

    <Frame caption="Check your last month costs and compare them to your invoice">
      <img src="https://mintlify.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/costory/images/quickstart/verify-billing-data.gif" alt="Costory Explorer showing last month billing data with cost breakdown, cost distribution, and comparison details" />
    </Frame>

    Check that the amounts are correct. You need to trust the data before building reports on top of it.

    A few useful docs to help you:

    * [Standard Columns](/docs/standard-columns) to understand how we normalize the data into columns.
    * [Costs measures](/docs/cost-metrics) to understand the different metrics we compute on top of your data.
    * [Currency conversion](/docs/currency-conversion) to understand how we convert the data into your local currency.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Deploy FinOps Dashboards & Alerts: 10 minutes">
    Start from battle-tested dashboards instead of building from scratch.

    Costory templates cover the most common FinOps scenarios. Choose the ones that fit your needs, and Costory will also suggest relevant ones for you.

    <Frame caption="Start from a template dashboard and customize it to your needs">
      <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/WRvESdGs0dJNS2oW/images/quickstart/deploy-finops-dashboard-and-alerts.gif?s=a681059ad88df925ee0a64598637dd29" alt="Costory dashboard showing FinOps widgets that can be saved and shared with your team" width="1392" height="720" data-path="images/quickstart/deploy-finops-dashboard-and-alerts.gif" />
    </Frame>

    With [dashboards](https://app.costory.io/dashboards/new) you can:

    * Check your Kubernetes costs, waste...
    * Check your EC2 and savings plan coverage, network costs...
    * Check your savings.
    * and more.

    Alerts Templates:
    Be alerted when:

    * The cost of your R\&D environment is above your production costs.
    * The data scientists started two VMs with huge GPU during the week-end.
    * Reserved instances are not fully used.
    * Your savings plan no longer covers 50% of your costs.
    * A mandatory tag is no longer attached to most of your costs.
    * Your K8S waste ratio is above 75%.

    <Frame caption="Review active alerts for common FinOps scenarios">
      <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/WRvESdGs0dJNS2oW/images/quickstart/alerts-overview.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=WRvESdGs0dJNS2oW&q=85&s=931ca5f6a165e0c8487b74acbfd40ba4" alt="Costory alerts page listing active cost alerts for savings plan coverage, Kubernetes waste, and weekly cost changes" width="1907" height="855" data-path="images/quickstart/alerts-overview.png" />
    </Frame>
  </Step>

  <Step title="Automate Slack and Teams Cost Reports: Share costs with your team: 5 minutes">
    To automate and have your team responsible for cloud costs you need to give them visibility on the costs.

    Share a weekly and a monthly report with your team via Slack / Teams or email. You can share any view:

    * [Cost per environment](/use-cases/automated_env_allocation/visibility)
    * Service name with cost changes over the last week.
    * [Monthly cost per daily active users](/use-cases/amplitude/cost_per_active_users)

          <Frame caption="Create and schedule a recurring report from a Costory view">
            <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/WRvESdGs0dJNS2oW/images/quickstart/create-reports.gif?s=8ec4ff8da807babfd9ddcbf206ddd9ee" alt="Costory report builder showing a cost per service report configured for recurring delivery" width="1332" height="720" data-path="images/quickstart/create-reports.gif" />
          </Frame>

    <Frame caption="Your first Costory report delivered directly to your team's inbox.">
      <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/MPk5hJyiLFQv1UHM/images/slack-report-light.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=MPk5hJyiLFQv1UHM&q=85&s=c54fb32412db534866bab867cdcbf76a" alt="Example of weekly cost reporting message sent by Costory" width="1020" height="558" data-path="images/slack-report-light.png" />
    </Frame>

    Connect easily with your team. We support:

    <Tabs>
      <Tab title="Slack">
        Go to [Integrations](https://app.costory.io/integration/). Connect the Costory App to your Slack.

        <Frame caption="Setup Slack integration">
          <img src="https://mintcdn.com/costory/WRvESdGs0dJNS2oW/images/quickstart/setup-slack.gif?s=e895cb94fa0f657aa139837d36272875" alt="Slack authorization flow for installing the Costory app in a workspace" width="1332" height="720" data-path="images/quickstart/setup-slack.gif" />
        </Frame>
      </Tab>

      <Tab title="Teams">
        Go to [Integrations](https://app.costory.io/integration/). Download the zip from Integrations, then upload it in Teams Admin Center > Manage Apps
      </Tab>

      <Tab title="Email">
        No setup required, you can use it right away.
      </Tab>
    </Tabs>
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Next Steps

Here's what most of our customers do in their first week:

* Set up alerts: [check our templates](https://app.costory.io/alerts/new)
* [Calculate your cost per environment](/use-cases/automated_env_allocation/visibility)
* [Show the correct metrics to your exec team](/use-cases/what_your_exec_team_wants/value)
* [Import a business metric to understand your marginal costs](/use-cases/amplitude/cost_per_active_users).

### Need help?

We're here to help. Reach out to us at [support@costory.io](mailto:support@costory.io) or by Intercom in the bottom right corner of the app.