Counting one initiative's AWS costs

An AWS connection reads the whole account's bill. Linked to an initiative without a tag, it counts every service you map, whoever's work it runs. If one account runs several things, a cost-allocation tag narrows what it counts to the resources that are the initiative's own: its Bedrock calls, the Lambda functions around them, its S3 bucket.

It takes three steps, two in AWS and one in Roiva. Do them in this order, and start soon: a cost counts toward the tag only from the day its resource carries the tag.

1. In AWS: tag the initiative's resources

Pick one key for every initiative, such as Initiative, and one value per initiative, such as InvoiceAI. Put that pair on each resource the initiative runs on. Tag Editor, under Resource Groups & Tag Editor in the AWS console, tags many resources at once; Terraform's default_tags or a CloudFormation stack tag does it for everything a project deploys.

• Tags count from the day they go on. Costs from before a resource was tagged carry no tag, and nothing in AWS or Roiva can add it to them afterward.
• Keys and values are case-sensitive. Initiative=InvoiceAI and initiative=invoiceai are different tags, and a connection linked by one never sees costs tagged with the other.
• Not every cost carries a tag. Some charges, like tax, support plans and some data transfer, aren't tied to a resource you can tag. They stay in the rest of the bill.
• RDS snapshots need their own tag. From November 1, 2026, AWS bills snapshot storage against the snapshot, not the database it came from. Turn on Copy tags to snapshots on each database, and tag the snapshots that already exist.

2. In AWS: activate the tag key for billing

Cost Explorer can't filter by a tag until its key is activated as a cost allocation tag. In the AWS console, open Billing and Cost Management, choose Cost allocation tags, select the key and choose Activate. In an AWS Organization, only the management account can do this.

AWS takes up to 24 hours to list a new key after it first sees it on a resource, and up to another 24 hours to activate it. Activating late loses nothing as long as the resources were already tagged: Backfill tags, on the same page, applies the activation to up to twelve months back.

You can also activate it in CloudShell, signed in to the management account:

aws ce update-cost-allocation-tags-status --cost-allocation-tags-status '[{"TagKey":"Initiative","Status":"Active"}]'

3. In Roiva: enter the tag for the initiative

On the AWS connection, open the Initiatives tab and choose Link to an Initiative, or Edit on an initiative it's already linked to. Under the cost-allocation tag section, choose the Tag key and Tag value. Roiva lists the keys AWS has seen, activated ones first, and each value with its cost over the last 30 days, so you pick the spelling AWS uses rather than typing one. Save, and the connection syncs within a few minutes.

Linked as a cost source, the connection books the tagged spend as the initiative's cost, by month and service, and skips its service mappings: the tag decides what counts. Link it to an initiative that reduces cloud spend, rather than spending it, as an activity source instead, so the spend it measures isn't also booked as its cost. Linking connections to initiatives explains the roles.

Check it worked

The Connection Check gets a row for each initiative linked by a tag, named for the initiative and its tag. It says how much AWS tagged that way in the last 30 days, or what's wrong: a key AWS hasn't seen on any resource, a key that isn't activated yet (with the command to activate it), or a value with no costs, which usually means it's spelled differently on the resources. Choose Check again after you fix one.

A tag that matches nothing books $0 without failing the sync, so check this row before you rely on the initiative's cost.

Amazon Quick

To split Amazon Quick between initiatives by the seats each one covers, rather than by a tag, see How much one initiative should cover.