Cloud Cost Reports & Export

import { Steps } from ‘@astrojs/starlight/components’;

Cloud Cost Reports & Export

Xplorr generates downloadable reports for finance reviews, chargeback processes, and executive updates. Reports can be downloaded on-demand or scheduled for automatic delivery.

Report formats

Format	Best for	Contents
PDF	Executive summaries, email attachments	Charts, tables, trend analysis, formatted for printing
Excel (.xlsx)	Finance teams, pivot table analysis	Raw data with multiple sheets (summary, daily breakdown, by-service, by-account)
CSV	Importing into other tools, programmatic processing	Flat file with one row per day per service per account

Generating a report

1. Go to Reports from the left sidebar in the console.

2. Click New Report.

3. Configure the report:

   • Date range — last 7 days, last 30 days, last 90 days, this month, last month, or custom range
   • Accounts — all accounts, specific provider, or specific account
   • Group by — service, account, tag, or region
   • Format — PDF, Excel, or CSV

4. Click Generate. The report builds in a few seconds and downloads automatically.

Report contents

PDF report

The PDF report includes:

• Executive summary — total spend, month-over-month change, top 5 services by cost
• Spend trend chart — daily spend over the selected date range
• Service breakdown table — each service with cost, percentage of total, and change vs prior period
• Account breakdown — spend per connected cloud account
• Top recommendations — the 5 highest-savings recommendations currently open
• Forecast — projected EOM spend if the report covers the current month

Excel report

The Excel file contains multiple sheets:

• Summary — same as the PDF executive summary, in tabular form
• Daily — one row per day with total spend and per-service columns
• By Service — aggregated spend per service for the date range
• By Account — aggregated spend per account
• By Tag — spend grouped by your primary allocation tag (if configured)
• Raw Data — every line item, suitable for pivot tables

CSV report

A single flat file:

date,account_id,account_name,provider,service,region,cost_usd
2026-03-01,aws-123456,Production,aws,EC2,us-east-1,142.50
2026-03-01,aws-123456,Production,aws,RDS,us-east-1,87.20
2026-03-01,aws-123456,Production,aws,S3,us-east-1,23.40
...

Scheduled reports

Set up automatic report delivery so stakeholders get reports without anyone clicking a button.

1. Go to Reports → Scheduled Reports and click New Schedule.

2. Choose the report configuration (same options as on-demand reports).

3. Set the frequency:

   • Daily — delivered every morning at 8 AM UTC with the previous day’s data
   • Weekly — delivered every Monday with the past 7 days’ data
   • Monthly — delivered on the 2nd of each month with the full previous month’s data

4. Add recipients — email addresses of everyone who should receive it. They don’t need Xplorr accounts.

5. Choose the format (PDF or Excel — CSV is available but not recommended for email delivery due to formatting).

6. Click Save Schedule.

Scheduled reports show up in each recipient’s inbox with the report attached. The email includes a brief inline summary (total spend, change vs prior period) so recipients can decide whether to open the attachment.

Chargeback and showback reports

For organizations that need to bill internal teams for their cloud usage:

Showback report

Shows each team (or cost center) what they spent, for awareness and accountability. No actual money changes hands.

To generate a showback report:

• Set Group by to a tag key (e.g., team or cost-center)
• Choose Excel format for the most useful output
• The report will have one section per tag value with that team’s spend breakdown

Chargeback report

Same as showback, but formatted for finance teams to process actual internal billing. The Excel output includes:

• Cost center / team allocation
• Per-service breakdown within each team
• Shared cost allocation (divided proportionally or by a custom split you define)
• Untagged costs (flagged separately for review)

To set up shared cost allocation, go to Settings → Cost Allocation → Shared Costs. You can define rules like:

• Split NAT Gateway costs by data transfer volume per team
• Split support plan costs evenly across all teams
• Allocate untagged costs to a default cost center

Filtering options

Reports support combining multiple filters:

• Date range — any custom range or preset
• Accounts — one or more cloud accounts
• Services — specific services only (e.g., just EC2 and RDS)
• Tags — filter by tag key-value pairs (e.g., env:production)
• Regions — specific regions only
• Minimum cost — exclude line items below a threshold (useful for cleaning up $0.01 charges)

Common mistakes

• Sending raw CSV reports to finance teams. Finance teams want summaries and charts, not 10,000 rows. Use PDF for executive audiences and Excel for teams that need to slice the data.
• Not setting up scheduled reports and relying on ad-hoc requests. Every “can you pull the numbers for last month?” email is avoidable with a monthly scheduled report.
• Forgetting to include shared costs in chargeback reports. If you don’t allocate shared infrastructure costs, teams will undercount their true cloud spend.

FAQ

Can I customize the PDF report template? Not currently. The PDF uses a standard Xplorr template. If you need custom branding or layout, use the Excel or CSV export and build your own template.

How far back can I generate reports? As far back as your billing data goes. For most accounts, this is 12 months from the date of connection.

Can I generate reports via the API? Yes. POST /api/v1/reports accepts the same configuration options and returns a download URL for the generated report.

Are scheduled reports retroactive? No. Scheduled reports only generate from the date you create the schedule. For historical reports, use the on-demand generation.

Key takeaways

• Use PDF for executive stakeholders, Excel for finance teams, CSV for programmatic processing.
• Set up monthly scheduled reports to eliminate ad-hoc reporting requests.
• Configure shared cost allocation before generating chargeback reports — otherwise shared infrastructure gets assigned to no one.
• Use tag-based grouping for accurate team-level reporting.