[FEEDBACK]: Invoice ID

[narciso-cerezo]

Proposed Change

Assigning a proper Invoice ID to each cost line when the invoices are generated.
AWS already does this in the CUR.
This is necessary to properly match all usage against a given invoice and conciliate payments.

What use cases, FinOps or others, can't be performed with the current specification without this change?

We need to distribute all cost back to each cost center and then group cost by Billing Account ID, Invoice Issuer and Invoice ID so that our finance department can charge back the business units and pay the invoices.
The sum of the invoices for a given Billing Account ID and Invoice Issuer must match to the cent the sum of the chargeback per business unit for that same perimeter.
Without Invoice ID there are situations like when an account is moved between different Billing Accounts, where you loose track and are unable to properly match those.

Another important use case are Credit Memos (Refund Invoices): AWS creates Credit Memos and they show up in the CUR at that point in time, however there is a manual process involved to request that Credit Memo to be applied to a given regular Invoice. The result is that you cannot usually include the credit memo in the same billing period. We set the applicable billing period for each Credit Memo to take them into account, and for that we need the Invoice ID to be able to discriminate the right rows of data in the input.

Which FinOps personas perform this use case?

FinOps Practitioner, Finance

For which providers do you perform this use case for?

AWS, Azure, GCP

Criticality Scale

1: Blocks my organization from adopting FOCUS

Key Metrics and KPIs

No response

Context / Supporting information

We are using the CUR for chargeback and invoicing in AWS and the Invoice ID is mandatory for us.
We have also implemented the same process with Azure, and GCP is in the works, but since the Azure Cost Exports do not include the Invoice ID we need to apply heuristics, leading to errors some times and manual intervention.
Adding the Invoice ID in all three providers would help us implement the exact same process for all three, which would be great.

Data Submission for Discussion

No response

[shawnalpay]

@narciso-cerezo I'm happy to report that we already have an issue for this one!

• [Proposal] Invoice ID column #302

That said, we are in the midst of revising our issue templates -- so stay tuned. We may either close this issue or #302, but we may want to gather more information from you soon. Thanks!

[jpradocueva]

Summary TF-2 call Oct 16:

#607 Feedback on Invoice ID
Primary Issue: A request for adding invoice ID, which already exists in another issue.
Core Problem: Redundancy between issues, indicating more clarity is needed in the backlog.
Divergent Views: None; the need for the feature was affirmed, but it was noted that the issue already exists.
Final Agreement: The issue will remain open until the issue template is revised, at which point it may be closed.
Action Items:
None are assigned at this point.

[jpradocueva]

Summary Members' call on Oct 17:

#607 [FEEDBACK]: Invoice ID
Primary Issue: The need for a clear and consistent definition of an "Invoice ID" in the FinOps FOCUS specification.
Core Problem: Practitioners raised concerns that the current spec does not sufficiently define how "Invoice ID" should be captured, potentially leading to discrepancies in its usage across various providers and systems.
Divergent Views: Some members argued that invoice data can vary significantly by cloud provider and questioned whether a single Invoice ID column can adequately represent all variations. Others proposed that a unified approach could benefit practitioners who need invoice tracking across multiple services.
Final Agreement: This issue was labeled for 1.2 consideration. A more detailed discussion is planned to determine if adjustments are needed to better capture invoice information uniformly across providers.
Action Items:

• [Members-#607] Michael @flanakin : Review how providers handle Invoice ID and propose a more robust definition.

[shawnalpay]

@narciso-cerezo We've now crafted #615, which is a Work Item for adding Invoice ID to the spec, and it's currently in the running for being added to 1.2! I've added some of your quotes to that issue, and I've also linked this one there for full reference. So I'm going to close this issue (and Michael's duplicate #302) in favor of that one, and we can discuss further there. Thanks for filing this!