> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.noros.ai/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.noros.ai/features/budgets.md).

# Budgets

Learn how to set spending budgets, how Noros tracks them, and how to be told when spend approaches a threshold you choose.

Set spending budgets for your cloud accounts and track your actual spend against them in real time. Noros monitors your budgets and alerts you when spending approaches or exceeds thresholds you define — all manageable through the chat.

### What a Budget Is Made Of

Each budget carries four things, and all four appear on the budget wherever it is listed:

* **An amount**, for example $40,000.
* **A period**, such as monthly or yearly.
* **A cost type**, either Unblended or Amortized.
* **A cloud provider**, such as AWS.

You can hold more than one budget on the same combination. Two monthly Unblended AWS budgets at different amounts is a normal setup, and each one alerts independently. That is useful when different people want to hear at different levels of spend.

### Budget Types

#### Year-to-Date (YTD)

Track your cumulative spend from January 1st through today against your annual budget. Noros shows your current spend as a percentage of the total budget and highlights whether you're on pace.

**Try asking:**

* "What's my YTD budget status?"
* "Am I on track for my annual cloud budget?"
* "How much of my yearly budget have I used?"

#### Month-to-Date (MTD)

Track your spend from the first of the month through today against your monthly budget. Useful for catching overspend early in the billing cycle.

**Try asking:**

* "How much have we spent this month compared to our budget?"
* "Are we over or under budget this month?"
* "What's our monthly budget status?"

#### Custom

Track spend within a custom date range — a quarter, a project timeline, or any period you define — against a specific budget target.

**Try asking:**

* "What's our budget status for Q2?"
* "How are we tracking against our custom budget?"
* "Show me our budget progress"

### Setting Budgets

You can set and update your budgets by asking Noros:

* "Set my monthly budget to $50,000"
* "I want to set a yearly budget of $500,000"
* "Create a custom budget of $100,000 from April 1 to June 30"

You can also create one from **Monitoring Settings** using **Set a budget**.

### Budget Tracking

For each budget, Noros reports:

* **Spend vs. budget** — Your actual spend as a percentage of the defined budget
* **Pacing** — Whether your spend rate is ahead of, behind, or on pace relative to time elapsed in the budget period

### Budget Alerts

You choose the percentages you want to hear about. A budget with no percentages set raises nothing.

Open the budget in **Monitoring Settings** and use **Alert at** to add a threshold. Add as many as you need, and remove one by clicking its **x**. Setting 80% and 100% gives you an early warning and a breach notice, but nothing about those two figures is fixed.

Thresholds and delivery are set per person. Two people watching the same budget can choose different percentages and different channels.

* **Your own alerts** reach you by **Email**, **Slack DM**, or both.
* **Organization alerts** post to your organization's shared Slack channel, and only your root user sets them.

See [Monitoring & Notifications](/account-management/monitoring-and-notifications.md) for the full picture.

### Example Conversations

**Quick status check:**

> "Are we on budget?"
>
> Noros shows your YTD and MTD budget status with spend amounts, percentages, and pacing indicators.

**Investigation:**

> "We're over budget this month — why?"
>
> Noros checks your budget status, identifies that you're over, and then breaks down spending by service to show what's driving the overage.


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