Automate the monthly cloud cost review
A monthly report with an executive summary, root causes and trends, generated from a Cost digest and delivered automatically.
Runs in
Slack · Teams · Email
First optimization recommendation
The next day
ROI
Pays for itself with the first recommendation you act on
# finops
Costory
APP
September review: €331k (+2.1%). Up: Data +€6.2k (BigQuery storage), ML +€3.1k (Bedrock). Down: Web −€2.4k. Recurring: BigQuery storage has grown four months in a row.
Leadership discusses the drivers, not the export.
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
The 11th of every month.
Costory investigates
01
Pick the scope
The whole company, or one business unit.
02
Digest
A Cost digest ranks changes and writes the summary and root-cause analysis.
03
Schedule
Monthly delivery to Slack, Teams or email.
04
Discuss
The meeting starts from the explanation, not the export.
Where you see it
Slack · #leadership
You decide
Leadership discusses the drivers, not the export.
Why it matters
Monthly cost reviews take hours of exporting, charting and writing. The same questions come back every month.
Who it’s for
FinOps leads, finance, CTOs
Where it runs
Slack · Teams · Email
What you get
What lands in front of your team
Hours saved
No manual deck.
Root causes included
Not just charts.
Consistent
The same format every month.
Sources and assistants
What it connects
Data sources
Example prompts
Or drive it yourself
Set up
Create a monthly report with a cost digest for the whole company, sent to #leadership on the 11th.
FAQ
Questions about this playbook
When are month-end numbers final?
Costory refreshes month n-1 until the 10th of month n, then freezes it so close numbers stay stable.
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
Every Monday morning.
Weekly cost digest: the changes that matter, ranked by impact
Every significant cost shift ranked by impact, with an AI summary, delivered to Slack, Teams or email.
See the playbook
Costory notices
Quarter end, or before a board meeting.
A board and exec cost pack in minutes
Total spend trend, top drivers, budget progress, unit costs and month-over-month comparison in one executive view.
See the playbook
Costory notices
Month n-1 freezes on the 10th.
Month-end close: allocated cloud costs ready for finance
Use Costory's frozen month-end numbers, allocated to cost centers, as the cloud input to your close.
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