Budgets in Uniskai let you set a spending threshold for one or more cloud accounts — evaluated per month or per week — and trigger notifications when costs approach or exceed that threshold. You can further narrow a budget to a specific slice of an account (region, service, purchase type, and more).
Notifications are delivered by email (to one or more recipients), in-app via the bell icon in the top right of the platform, and in Slack if Slack is connected.
This can help you stay on top of your finances and take proactive measures to manage your spending. For more detailed instructions on how to set up these notifications, please take a look at the following article.
Where to set up budget limits
Budget limits live on the Costs Monitoring page, in the Budget Limits tab, right next to the Anomalies tab.
The Budget Limits tab is where you view existing budgets or create a new one. On a fresh workspace with no budgets yet, you'll see a "Set budget limits" empty state with a Create 1st notification button. Once you have at least one budget, use the + New budget button in the top right instead.
Click the button to open the Create budget screen. Fill in all the required information and then click Save.
Scope
Defines which cloud accounts the budget applies to.
Accounts — a searchable, multi-select dropdown listing every account connected to your organization across all providers (AWS, Azure, GCP). Select one or more accounts. This field is required.
A budget is always scoped to one or more accounts. To limit it to specific regions, services, etc. within those accounts, use Narrow scope below.
Narrow scope (optional)
Click + Add Filter to narrow the budget down to a specific slice of the selected accounts.
The available filters depend on the provider of the accounts you picked — for example: Region, Service, PurchaseType, InstanceType, UsageType, VPC (AWS), or Region, Service, ResourceGroup, Product, MeterName (Azure).
You can add multiple filters; each narrows the scope further (they combine, they don't create separate budgets).
Spend chart
On the right side of the Create budget screen, a chart shows spend for the selected accounts, period by period.
Past periods are shown as solid Paid bars, while the current, still-running period is shown as a highlighted Estimated bar.
A dashed horizontal line marks your spend limit and is labeled with its value (e.g. "Limit: $904").
This chart is live: as soon as you type an amount into the Spend limit field or move the slider, the dashed limit line redraws at the matching height on the chart, so you can immediately see how your new limit compares against past spend and against the current period's bar before you even save.
Limit & Period
Sets the cost threshold that triggers notifications, the period it's evaluated over, and how costs are calculated.
Period — Per month or Per week.
Cost type — how costs are calculated for this budget: Unblended (default), Blended, Amortized, W/O RI and SP, W/O reseller with own commitment, or Uncovered EC2.
Spend limit per month (or per week) — type the amount directly into the $ field, or drag the slider; they're linked. Click Suggested $X to auto-fill a recommended limit — this is calculated slightly above your actual peak month/week, so you're alerted before a genuine spending spike, not just before an average month.
Below the slider you'll see a live comparison message, e.g. "56% above your average month of $578 — covers historical peaks with headroom", or the equivalent wording if your chosen limit is below the average. This tells you at a glance how aggressive or lenient the limit is relative to your own spending history. As noted above, moving this slider also moves the dashed limit line on the chart in real time.
Notification name
Optional. Give the budget a display name so it's easier to identify in the list. If you leave it empty, Uniskai automatically generates a name from the selected scope and the spend limit you set, e.g. By accounts-<account>-month-<limit>usd.
Recipients
Specifies who receives notifications when the budget is triggered.
The user who creates the budget is automatically added as a recipient.
Click the field and start typing to search organization members by name or email, then select to add them. You can add as many recipients as needed.
Remove a recipient by clicking the × next to their entry.
Save the budget
Once you've configured the budget, make sure every section is filled in — Scope, Limit & Period, and Recipients — before saving.
Click Save.
The Save button stays disabled until you select at least one account in the Scope section. The spend limit doesn't block saving on its own, since Uniskai can suggest one for you.
Once saved, the budget appears in the Budget Limits list with its scope and threshold summarized, plus Remove, Pause, and Edit actions.
From this row you can manage the budget at any time:
Remove — deletes the budget permanently.
Pause — stops the budget from evaluating spend and sending notifications, without deleting it. You can resume it later.
Edit — reopens the Create budget form, pre-filled with the current scope, limit, period, cost type, and recipients, so you can adjust any of them and save again.
Budget status icons
Each budget in the list carries a status icon that reflects how close it is to its limit:
Icon color | Meaning |
White | Spend and forecast are safely under the set limit |
Yellow | Spend/forecast is approaching the limit |
Red | The limit has been exceeded |
Notifications
If a budget's spend is approaching or has exceeded its set limit, you'll be notified through every connected channel.
Every recipient on the budget gets an email showing the budget name, the monthly/weekly limit, how much has already been spent in the current period, and the forecast for the full period (current + expected spending), broken down by account (Account ID, Account Name, Regions).
The email also includes an Edit budget button that opens the budget in Uniskai.
In-app bell
A bell notification appears in the top right of the platform ("One of your budgets exceeded monthly set limit.").
Click View Details to open the full breakdown.
The details dialog shows the budget's accounts, period, current limit, amount already consumed, amount exceeded, and the forecast until the end of the period.
You can edit your budget limit directly from this dialog or click Got It to review the changes later.
The Edit Budget Limit button in this dialog is only shown to users with admin permissions. Without admin permissions, the button isn't displayed.
Slack
If Slack is connected to Uniskai, budget notifications are also delivered there — alongside the in-app bell and email notifications.
Notifications can be connected as personal (delivered to your own Slack) or as organization notifications (delivered to a shared organization channel). Any user can set this up — see How to connect Slack webhook, etc. notifications for the setup steps, which cover connecting both personal and organization notifications.
Once Slack is connected, every time a budget exceeds its threshold, Uniskai posts a message to the configured Slack channel. The message includes:
The budget name that was triggered.
The scope — Account ID, Account Name, and Regions for every account in the budget.
The monthly (or weekly) limit that was set.
The actual spending so far in the current period, and the dates of the period.
The forecast for the full period (current + expected spending).
An Edit budget button — opens the budget in Uniskai for editing the threshold or scope.
