CLF-C02 Practice Question 60: Cost Allocation Tags
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) · Test 6 · question 10 of 10
Four departments share one standalone AWS account. Every resource has a Department tag, but when the finance team opens the billing reports and AWS Cost Explorer, it cannot group costs by department. What must be done so that costs can be broken down by the Department tag?
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Answer:
Tagging resources is not enough on its own. A tag has to be activated as a cost allocation tag before it appears in Cost Explorer or on a cost allocation report. After activation, AWS groups usage and costs by the active tags, so finance can see what each department spends across all services. Activation is done by the management account of an organization, or by a standalone account like this one, and tags can take up to 24 hours to appear.
Option B alerts someone when spending passes a threshold, but it does not break down the bill, and a budget that filters by the tag would also need the tag activated first. Option C does give per-account billing, but only after a large restructuring into separate accounts. Consolidated billing combines accounts' bills; it does not split one account's costs by tag. Option D produces *estimates* of planned spend, not a breakdown of actual charges.
Reference: Organizing and tracking costs using AWS cost allocation tags