Introduction to the billing manager role
Organization and enterprise owners can share the work of managing budgets and reporting on costs by inviting members to become billing managers. See Adding a billing manager to your organization.
When you accept an invitation or a notification to become a billing manager, you gain access to the billing and licensing pages for an organization or enterprise account. From these pages you can view usage, set budgets to control costs, and download reports on how budgets were spent.
This article will guide you through the essential concepts and tasks you should focus on as a new billing manager, presented in a logical order to help you get oriented and become effective in your role.
1. Understand how GitHub charges for use
First, you need to understand how billing works on GitHub and familiarize yourself with your organization's current costs and payment structure.
- Read about billing concepts to understand the terminology, what you pay for, and when. See How GitHub billing works.
- Get an overview of the billing functionality and discover how to access billing information. See Introduction to billing and licensing.
- Explore your current usage and discover what your organization or enterprise is paying for and which features drive costs. See Viewing your usage of metered products and licenses.
2. Monitor usage and spending
Now that you understand the basics, you can start monitoring usage and tracking spending to identify trends and potential issues.
- Use billing reports to track monthly spending, identify trends, and spot anomalies that could signal unexpected usage or costs. See Viewing usage for your GitHub Enterprise plan and Managing user licenses for an organization or enterprise.
- Share billing reports and budget status with organization owners, enterprise owners, or your finance team, to keep everyone aware of usage patterns and cost drivers.
3. Control costs by setting budgets and alerts
With insight into your spending patterns, you can take proactive steps to manage costs and prevent budget overruns.
- Learn how budgets and alerts allow you to track and control spending. See Budgets and alerts.
- Set up budgets and alerts to proactively address potential overspending before it becomes a problem. See Setting up budgets to control spending on metered products.
- Adjust budgets and thresholds as your organization grows or usage patterns change.
4. Attribute costs (enterprise only)
If you manage an enterprise account, you can use cost centers to organize and track spending across different teams and business units.
- Organize spend with cost centers to help you see which teams, projects, or business units are responsible for portions of your GitHub bill. See Using cost centers to allocate costs to business units.
- Attribute parts of the bill to specific teams to increase visibility and accountability.
- Compare groups and identify opportunities for optimization.
5. Collaborate and communicate
As a billing manager, you'll need to work closely with other stakeholders to share insights and support informed decision-making about costs.
- Report status and recommendations to finance, technical leads, and decision makers.
- Use the data and alerts from GitHub to inform budget discussions, contract negotiations, and investment in new features.
- Ensure smooth onboarding for new billing managers by sharing helpful resources.
Next steps
Now that you understand how billing works on GitHub, you can look at tutorials to learn how to perform specific tasks.
- To estimate your spending and make informed decisions towards optimal budgeting, see Estimating spending.
- To find which teams or members drive most of your usage and who's using what, see Gathering insights on your spending.