How to Read the ZopNight Sankey Cost Flow
The Flow view draws a period's spend as a four-column Sankey. Clicking is filtering, and the URL remembers everything you clicked.
A trend chart answers “how much, when”. The Flow view answers “where from, where to”: which provider’s spend goes to which account, which resource types, and finally which team. It is a view of the same cost data as the rest of Cost Reports, not a separate dataset. For the general idea behind the chart type, see Sankey cost breakdowns.
Open it
- Go to Cost Reports and set the date range you want.
- On the Cost Breakdown card, switch the toggle from Trend to Flow.
The card shows “Live data”: the breakdown is computed from current cost records each time, not from a nightly snapshot.
Pick a layout that matches the question
The Layout dropdown chooses the four columns. Switching layout clears any drill-down you have made.
| Layout | Use it to answer |
|---|---|
| Provider, Account, Type, Team (default) | Which teams consume which kinds of resource in each account |
| Provider, Account, Service, Team | Same, grouped by the provider’s service names |
| Provider, Region, Type, Team | Whether a region is carrying unexpected spend |
| Provider, Account, Purchase, Team | How much runs on demand versus commitments or spot |
| Account, Service, Purchase, Team | Commitment coverage per account and service |
To see the individual resources behind a team’s number, click its node to drill down.
Drill by clicking
Click any node or link. The chart narrows to that slice and a breadcrumb chip appears above it showing the path, for example AWS, then prod-account, then EC2. Each chip backs out one column; Clear all returns to the full flow. There are no separate filter dropdowns on this card: the diagram is the filter.
Hover for numbers
Hovering a node or link opens the inspector on the right with the dollar value and its percentage of the source and target nodes. Read percentages against the node you care about; 40% of a small account and 40% of the whole provider are very different amounts.
Turn on the two overlays
- Savings overlay adds a red stripe to links and nodes in proportion to the reclaimable spend inside them. When the hovered node is a resource type or a cloud account, the inspector adds a “$X reclaimable” callout that opens Recommendations filtered to that subset. For other dimensions (provider, region, service, purchase type, team, single resource) the callout is hidden, because Recommendations cannot filter on them.
- Unattributed teams highlights spend that reaches the Team column without an owning team. That flow is your showback gap; team showback explains how teams and resources are assigned.
Share the exact view
Layout, drill path, overlays and date range all live in the page URL. Copy it into a ticket or a review document and the recipient opens the same chart.
A five-minute monthly routine
- Default layout, last full month, Savings overlay on.
- Click the largest team node and note its top resource type.
- Hover that type and open the reclaimable callout if one appears.
- Switch to the Provider, Account, Purchase, Team layout (this clears the drill), then click the same team node to see how much of its spend is on demand.
- Paste the URL into the monthly review notes.