Team budgets with forecast-based alerts
Monthly budgets per team, with Slack or email alerts when actual spend or the end-of-month forecast crosses a threshold.
Runs in
Claude · Slack
First optimization recommendation
The next day
ROI
Pays for itself with the first recommendation you act on
# finops
Costory
APP
Budget alert: Data Platform forecast €52,400 vs budget €48,000 (109%). Main driver: EMR backfill jobs since Sep 9. Reply in thread to investigate.
Costory
APP
I can save a view of Data Platform spend by service, so the budget owner can follow the EMR backfill. Want me to save it?
Daniel Chen
@Costory
yes, save that view.
Costory
APP
Done. The view is saved in Costory, with a link to open it in Explorer.
The budget owner decides to act, accept or re-plan.
Playbook
What the agent does
From what Costory notices to what you decide. Costory suggests the next step in conversation, and you decide whether to go ahead.
Costory notices
A team's forecast crosses a budget threshold.
Costory investigates
01
Create budget lines
Monthly budgets by team, product or any business dimension, with an owner per line.
02
Forecast
End-of-month forecasts per line, computed with TimesFM by Google.
03
Alert
Thresholds on actual or forecasted spend, ordered by severity.
04
Route
Alerts go to the owner's channel.
Costory suggests
I can save a view of Data Platform spend by service, so the budget owner can follow the EMR backfill. Want me to save it?
Where you see it
Slack · #team-data
You decide
The budget owner decides to act, accept or re-plan.
Why it matters
Budget overruns are discovered when the invoice arrives. By then the month is over and nobody can change anything.
Who it’s for
Engineering managers, FinOps leads, finance
Where it runs
Claude · Slack
What you get
What lands in front of your team
Early warning
Know mid-month, not at invoice time.
Owner accountability
Each line has an owner.
Versioned budgets
Track revisions through the year.
Sources and assistants
What it connects
Data sources
Example prompts
Or drive it yourself
FAQ
Questions about this playbook
How are forecasts generated?
Costory forecasts end-of-month values for each budget line with TimesFM by Google, and alerts can use actual or forecasted thresholds.
How long does this playbook take to set up?
Connecting your billing data and the Costory MCP takes under 30 minutes with Terraform or CloudFormation. The playbook itself takes minutes: pick the scope, the trigger and the Slack channel. The first billing data lands the next day, and the agent starts from there.
Can we adjust what the agent does?
Yes. You choose the trigger, the scope (team, service, environment), the channel and the format, and you can pause or change it at any time.
Does Costory change anything in our cloud accounts?
No. Costory reads billing exports and the metrics you connect, and has no write access to your cloud. Actions it takes create Costory objects only: alerts, reports, dashboards and events. Your team stays in control of every change.
Step-by-step guide in the Costory docs
Related playbooks
Run these alongside it
Costory notices
The forecast for a team moves materially.
End-of-month cost forecast per team, before the invoice
See where each team will land at month end, based on a forecast model, and investigate drifts while there's still time.
See the playbook
Costory notices
The 3rd of every month.
Monthly budget vs actual review with engineering leads
A ready-made dashboard and monthly report with target, actual, forecast and delta per team, for the VP Infrastructure review.
See the playbook
Costory notices
A team's spend deviates from its baseline.
Route cost alerts to the owning team's channel
Each team gets its own alerts in its own Slack or Teams channel, scoped to the services it owns.
See the playbook
Put this playbook on call
Included in every plan, from €250/month. 30-day free trial: connect in under 30 minutes, get your first optimization recommendation the next day.
First optimization recommendation
The next day
ROI
Pays for itself with the first recommendation you act on
Setup
About 30 minutes
Data residency
EU
Access
Read-only on your cloud