Using LevelFour
Cost alerts
Rules that watch your spend or your commitments and tell the right people, in the dashboard and in Slack, when a line is crossed.
A cost alert watches one thing, an account or project, or your commitments, and tells the people named on it when a line you set is crossed. Alerts belong to the organization: everyone sees the same list, and a change to an alert applies to everyone on it.
Create an alert
Open Cost alerts
In the dashboard sidebar, click Settings, then Cost Alerts, then Create alert.
Choose the type and what it watches
Pick one of the three types below, then the source: an account or project for Budget and Cost changes, AWS commitments for Commitment.
Set when it fires
The rule reads as a sentence, and you fill in its numbers. The form prefills none of them, so an alert never fires on a value nobody chose.
Choose who hears it
Add the members who should get it. Only members of the organization receive alerts. Under the recipients, the form names the Slack channel every alert also posts to, if your team chose one.
Types
| Type | Fires when |
|---|---|
| Budget | Spend passes a share of a monthly budget, or an amount, at any point in the month or within a number of days of its start or end. One alert can carry several thresholds. |
| Cost changes | Spend rises more than an amount you set against the same days last week, the same days last month, or the previous 7 days. A floor keeps a small rise on a small bill quiet. |
| Commitment | A Reserved Instance or Savings Plan is within a number of days of its end, from 1 to 365. |
Commitment alerts
A commitment alert judges each commitment on its own. Nine commitments ending across two days are nine warnings, one per commitment, each sent once for that term. A commitment you already renewed stays quiet, and LevelFour skips one that has already ended.
Where alerts arrive
- The bell in the dashboard header, for every recipient.
- Your team's Slack channel, for every alert in the organization, once someone chooses the channel.
- A Slack direct message, for each recipient who turned Slack on under Settings > General.
Slack covers choosing the channel and turning on direct messages.
How often alerts are checked
LevelFour checks every alert in every organization about every 15 minutes. A crossing has to hold on two checks in a row before the alert fires, so a figure sitting on the line does not flap. Each crossing is announced once per period, so a budget that stays over its line all month tells you once that month. When a figure comes back under its line, the alert's history records it, and nobody is notified.
History
Open an alert to see what it has said, newest first: when it fired or cleared, the figure against the line it crossed, the commitment it was about, and whether anyone was told. A firing that reached nobody says so.
Pause, suggestions and permissions
- Pause an alert with the switch on its row. A paused alert shows who paused it, and it moves to the Paused tab.
- Suggestions proposes budgets from an account's own billing history. Turning one on sends it to you.
- Admins and members create, change and pause alerts. Viewers see them.
You can also arm, list and pause alerts from an AI client through the MCP server.
Next
- Slack sets up the team channel and direct messages
- Notifications covers the bell and your notification preferences
- Commitments shows every Reserved Instance and Savings Plan an alert watches