AWS Cost Measures and Currencies
Compare unblended, net, amortized and net-amortized costs correctly.
CoreFinOps preserves four cost measures: unblended, net unblended, amortized, and net amortized. They answer different questions and must not be combined within one rollup.
Choosing a measure
Unblended reflects the billed line-item view before some commitment amortization treatment. Net measures reflect applicable netting or discounts in AWS data. Amortized measures spread commitment economics over the relevant consumption. CoreFinOps defaults to net amortized for decision views where that measure is available and consistent.
Currency is part of every fact
Money is persisted with explicit currency and precise decimal representation. A $10,000 USD application and a €5,000 EUR application do not make a single comparable numeric total unless a separately approved FX model exists. CoreFinOps v1 has no automatic FX conversion.
Important
Period consistency
Compare like-for-like calendar windows, the same measure and the same currency. A partial current month is not comparable to a complete prior month without an explicit qualification. Restated AWS cost exports may revise previously published periods; the authoritative version must remain traceable.
Discounts and adjustments
Credits, refunds, commitments and support charges can have different attribution defensibility. Some adjustments must stay at account or organization level rather than being automatically allocated to a workload. Never force a clean-looking allocation percentage at the expense of accuracy.
How to use this reference
Before exporting, record period, measure, currency, freshness and allocation version. When a finance team disagrees with a number, align those five attributes first.