Cloud Spending Control Checklist

This checklist helps small and medium businesses (SMBs) maintain visibility and control over their cloud expenses. Use it to review your current practices and identify improvement areas.

1. Visibility and Monitoring

• ☐ Set up centralized dashboards for cloud cost visibility
• ☐ Monitor usage trends across services and departments
• ☐ Tag resources for accurate allocation and chargeback

2. Budgeting and Forecasting

• ☐ Establish clear cloud budgets per business unit
• ☐ Use forecasting tools to estimate future usage
• ☐ Review budget adherence monthly

3. Rightsizing and Optimization

• ☐ Identify and downsize underutilized resources
• ☐ Remove orphaned or unused services
• ☐ Schedule workloads to shut down when not in use

4. Reserved and Spot Instances

• ☐ Use Reserved Instances for predictable workloads
• ☐ Use Spot Instances for batch or non-critical tasks
• ☐ Review instance pricing models regularly

5. Governance and Policy

• ☐ Define spending thresholds and alerts
• ☐ Limit self-service provisioning where appropriate
• ☐ Assign cloud cost accountability across teams