We have subscribed to the Pixel-Perfect monthly subscription (500 USD; 500 Reporting Units).
What we have been observing is that the bill contains the 500 USD monthly subscription; plus an additional Capacity usage line in the bill
I tracked down the details using the Data Export option and see that for every individual email published using the Pixel-Perfect reporting USD 1 is being charged under the head Capacity usage. Even with this our usage is less than 500 emails; but still it is considered extra.
What is a Reporting Unit then? How is it calculated? Why is the extra bill for when I see the usage well within limits even if one email = 1 reporting unit.
We have a case registered with AWS but haven’t got any satisfactory response. Trying to see if the experts have any reasoning/explanation to this issue.
How large are the reports that are being published? On the pricing page there is some fine print for what constitutes a “report”: “A report unit is defined to be up to 100 pages long or 100 MB in size. For example, a 200-page report constitutes 2 report units.” Business Intelligence Service – Amazon QuickSight Pricing – AWS.
It could be that some of your reports are larger than 100 pages/100 MB and are using up more capacity.
We publish 8 reports which have 19 recipients, which I see counted as 19 reports in Capacity usage. These 19 reports put together do not cross 20 MB.
We purchased the monthly subscription based on the definition of Reporting Units published in the pricing page. But it appears misleading and we are ending up paying twice the amount every month.
Problem is zero explanation on what is happening behind the scenes.
My only other theories here are that the reports are being sent to a user group rather than a individual or that the reports are going out more than once a month.
You said that AWS did not have a satisfactory response, did they give you any specifics? Also, did AWS confirm that only 19 reports were being sent monthly or are you seeing that 19 reports are being sent in your billing statement?
19 reports are being sent per day and I see can see those 19 being shown as Capacity Usage every day in the Billing and Cost Management Data Export.
So, based on this it appears that even though we have the 500 USD Per month subscription. The moment any report is published via email it is charging extra for each report at USD 1 per email.
1/ Is this screenshot from cost explorer ?
2/ Have you validated this information by looking at raw data from cost explorer ?
I checked my pixel-perfect cost and see the bundled discount as I would get charged only if I go above the 500 report units [ schedule sends email weekly [4 emails + 4 report units as report has only 7 pages ] .
Thank you for your response. In our bill the “Bundled Discount” line does not appear at all which is what I have been asking AWS for the last 3-4 months now.
If our usage went above 500 then only we should be charged right? We are not getting any credits for the usage and directly being charged for every report being sent.
We may have a mix of dashboards with RLS and without one. So I will take that into consideration as well. Our reporting units then should actually come down furhter!
Our Feb usage in Cost-Explorer shows like this. The first line is the 500 Reporting Units subscribed + the days usage. All other days it add 19 Reporting Units.
We may have a mix of dashboards with RLS and without one. So I will take that into consideration as well. Our reporting units then should actually come down furhter!
Using my first example
If we take an example for 1 report
with RLS applied for each user
1 report * 19 recipients = 19 report units as the report is generated for each user.
considering this was scheduled to be delivered daily , if this was sent for 20 days in a month [ 19 report units *20 days = 380 report units consumed ]
There are 7 reports in your environment which have a different schedule and can include/not include RLS. So your reporting units required per month would be more than 500 . Using cost and usage report raw data, you can get granular details on your usage What is AWS Data Exports? - AWS Data Exports
Now, as we began March, the monthly commitment is already charged 500 USD and we also see the Capacity Usage of 38 for 2 days.
How can we believe we are over using capacity? Its just two days and we already over 500 Reporting Units?
That’s fine because it’s a monthly charge of 500 for those 500 reports units . The bundled discount should account for that. To check if you are using over capacity, you can get granular information using cost and usage data ?
I had done a data export as a one off exercise to get the Jan month data and Capacity usage showed 19 reporting units each day of the month. And the first day had the 500 Reporting Unit Monthly Commitment.
We haven’t gone down to individual dashboard level; as this data itself sort of explains that our usage itself is 19 reporting units per day but our bill is 500 + 570 and not 500 + 70.
My recommendation would be then to provide this information back to the support team and request for review from the service team. If your granular data suggests that it was 570 reporting units, they should clarify the discrepancies.
