Outcome
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to recognise the bill lines that are not rentals (credits, tax, support plans and third-party charges) and know where to go next.
| Prerequisites | L1, L2 |
| Time | 7 minutes |
1. Concept
In L2 every row was something rented: compute, storage, network or a database. A real bill also carries a few lines that are not rentals at all. They change the total, but they do not describe anything running.
Credits
A credit is money the provider takes off your bill. It shows as a negative amount. Credits come from several places: a starting offer for new accounts, a programme for start-ups, a refund for a service problem, or a promotion. Credits often have an end date and can be limited to certain services.
Credits can hide the real cost. If a $2,000 bill is covered by $2,000 of credits, you pay nothing this month. When the credits run out, you pay the full $2,000. Always read the total before credits as well as after.
Tax
Depending on where your company is, the provider may add sales tax, VAT or a similar tax. It shows as its own line, usually near the bottom. Tax follows the location and tax status of the company being billed, not the region where the machines ran.
Support plans
Providers sell support plans: paid access to their technical help, with faster answers on the higher plans. A paid support plan appears as its own line. On some providers and plans, its price is worked out as a percentage of your monthly usage, so it grows when the rest of the bill grows.
Marketplace and third-party charges
Each provider runs a marketplace: a shop where other companies sell software that runs in the cloud. If your team buys something there, the charge usually lands on your cloud bill, under the seller’s product name. It is not the provider’s own service, but you pay for it through the same invoice.
Putting the bill together
A full bill reads like this:
Usage (everything rented, from L2)- Credits+ Support plan+ Marketplace charges+ Tax= Amount to pay2. Worked example
The online shop from L2 had $867.30 of usage. Here is the rest of its illustrative bill:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Usage, all services (from L2) | $867.30 |
| Credit: new-account offer | -$300.00 |
| Support plan | $29.00 |
| Marketplace: third-party monitoring software | $50.00 |
| Subtotal before tax | $646.30 |
| Tax at an illustrative 10% | $64.63 |
| Amount to pay | $710.93 |
Check the sums: $867.30 - $300.00 + $29.00 + $50.00 = $646.30, and 10% of that is $64.63. All amounts and the tax rate are illustrative, and real tax rules depend on the country and on how the tax applies to credits.
Two things to notice. The shop pays $710.93 this month, but its real running cost is higher, because $300 of credit is covering part of it. And the $50 marketplace line is not a cloud service at all: it is another company’s software, billed through the cloud provider.
3. Hands-on (5 min: no account needed)
1. Search the AWS, Google Cloud or Azure site for its support plans page.2. Find the cheapest paid plan and note how its price is worked out: a fixed monthly fee, a percentage of usage, or the greater of the two.3. Using the shop's $867.30 of usage, work out what that plan would cost.4. Open the provider's marketplace (for example aws.amazon.com/marketplace) and find one product. Note how it is priced: per hour, per month or per unit.You now know every kind of line that can appear on a cloud bill: rentals, credits, support, marketplace and tax.
4. Knowledge check
Q1
A bill shows an illustrative usage total of $2,000 and a credit of -$2,000. What should you tell finance?
A. The cloud is free for this company from now on
B. The bill must contain an error, because usage cannot be zero
C. We used nothing at all in the cloud this month
D. We pay nothing now, but about $2,000 once the credits end
Show answer
Correct: D. Credits cover the cost; they do not remove it. Usage was $2,000, and that is what the company will pay once the credits run out or expire.
Q2
A team bought monitoring software from the provider’s marketplace. Where does the charge usually appear?
A. Nowhere, because marketplace software is always free
B. On a separate bill sent by post from the provider
C. On the cloud bill, under the seller’s product name
D. Inside the tax line
Show answer
Correct: C. Marketplace purchases are usually billed through the cloud provider’s invoice, listed under the seller’s product. They are real charges, not provider services.
Q3
Why can a support plan line grow even when the support plan did not change?
A. Support plans are charged per hour of each support call
B. On some plans the price is a percentage of monthly usage
C. Support is billed per GB of data moved out
D. Tax on support doubles every year
Show answer
Correct: B. Some support plans are priced as a share of what you spend, so a bigger usage total means a bigger support line.
5. Apply
You can now open a cloud bill and name every line on it: what was rented, in what unit, and which of the four things it belongs to, plus the credits, support, marketplace charges and tax around it. That is the end of this track.
The next step is to go deeper into those same lines: why one resource produces many rows, how list prices differ from what you actually pay, and how to trace any amount back to the thing that caused it. That starts in Cloud Cost Foundations, Module M0.1, Lesson 1:
What’s actually in a cloud bill
Related lessons
- L2, Name every line: a sample bill, row by row
- Foundations M0.1 L1: What’s actually in a cloud bill (next)
- Cloud Cost Foundations