Billing account

A billing account settles charges for cloud services and manages your account assets, such as your cash balance, credit limit, prepaid cards, and third-party payment methods.

Introduction to billing accounts

A billing account is a digital wallet that settles charges for Alibaba Cloud services. It centrally manages all spending assets: cash balance, credit limit, coupons, vouchers, and prepaid cards.

Accounts vs. billing accounts

Alibaba Cloud account: An identity registered on the Alibaba Cloud website for logging on, purchasing, and managing cloud resources.

Billing account: Settles charges for your Alibaba Cloud account, holds funds and coupons, and manages payment methods.

When you register an Alibaba Cloud account, a default billing account is created automatically. Two relationship types exist between accounts and billing accounts: payment and management.

Payment relationship: A billing account pays for the cloud services that an Alibaba Cloud account uses.
- Each Alibaba Cloud account can be linked to only one billing account for payments.
- A single billing account can pay for multiple Alibaba Cloud accounts.
Management relationship: By default, an Alibaba Cloud account manages only its own billing account. After you enable Enterprise Account Center, you can establish financial relationships between multiple accounts in your organization.
- The enterprise's management account can manage all billing accounts within the enterprise.
- You can configure multiple administrator accounts for each billing account.
- A single Alibaba Cloud account can be configured to manage multiple billing accounts.

Use your billing account

By default, only an Alibaba Cloud account can access billing account information. To allow a RAM user to manage or view financial data, grant the following permissions.

Financial administrator permissions: Grant AliyunBSSFullAccess to a RAM user for full financial management, including top-ups, withdrawals, and payments.
Read-only permissions: Grant AliyunBSSReadOnlyAccess to a RAM user for read-only access to financial and billing information.

For more flexible permission combinations, create custom policies. Use RAM for access control.

Log on to the Expenses and Costs console. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Account > Billing Account to go to the Billing Account page.

On the billing account page, you can view and manage the following information: Basic Information, Asset Information, Account Settings, Bind Third-party Payment Method, Manage Billing Accounts, and Account Administrator.

Basic information

The Basic Information section displays the account name, ID, owner, and status.

Account Name: A custom name for the billing account. An administrator or an account with the ModifyBillingAccount permission can modify this name.
Account ID: The unique numeric identifier for the billing account.
Account Type: The type of billing account, which can be a direct customer account (settled directly with Alibaba Cloud) or an ecosystem account (settled through a distribution or reseller partner).
Owner: The billing account owner. For enterprise accounts, this is the enterprise name. For individual accounts, this is the verified name.
Created At: The time when the billing account was created.
Account Status: The current status of the account, such as Valid, Frozen, or Deregistered.

Account assets

The Asset Information section shows your current Available Credit and its composition, with transaction history for each asset type.

Available Credit updates in real time and can be negative if your account has an overdue payment.

Available credit is calculated differently for each account type:

Alibaba Cloud direct customer account: available credit = cash balance + credit limit + credit refund - unsettled amount (current month) - unsettled amount (historical).
Ecosystem account: available credit = Quota - Quota consumption - unbilled amount.

Credit limit

Credit control is a spending benefit that Alibaba Cloud grants to enterprise users.

A credit limit is the credit amount granted to a user. Within this limit, an enterprise can use services without prepayment.

An entity-level credit limit is the total credit amount at the enterprise entity level, based on the unified social credit code and tied to the enterprise's real-name verification.

Note

Credit control is available for direct customer accounts. To apply, contact your account manager.

The Regular Bank Credit section displays your account's current credit limit. Click Change Records to view the history of adjustments, including the account's Credit Information and Credit Record. The Credit Record provides details about each adjustment, such as the Transaction ID, Transferred At, and Amount Before Transaction.

A Regular Bank Credit Refund is a balance resulting from a refund for a purchase made with your credit limit. This balance is recorded in the ledger for the refund month and, by default, settles only current and future bills. To settle earlier bills automatically, enable Write off Previous Bills.

Important

After you enable Write off Previous Bills, the system uses the credit refund to settle outstanding bills in chronological order. This may cause a discrepancy between the unsettled amount on a bill for a specific month and the amount available for invoicing for that same month.

Cash balance

The Cash Balance section shows the real-time cash balance in your account from top-ups, refunds, or billing adjustments.

users can click the Top-up & Remittance button, use Alipay, UnionPay online payment, or other methods to top up online, or make a corporate bank transfer. Click Auto-recharge Settings to enable automatic top-ups. When your available credit falls below a specified threshold, funds are automatically deducted from your bound payment method.

If you make a corporate bank transfer, use the Remittance feature to manually claim the amount to your account.

For more information, see Online Top-up and Corporate Bank Transfer.

Click the Withdraw button to withdraw your account balance to a specified destination. For more information, see Withdraw your balance.

Note

This feature is available for Alibaba Cloud direct customer accounts.

Prepaid card

A Stored-value Card is a payment method available for direct customer accounts. The billing account page shows the number of remaining prepaid cards in your account. Click the number to go to the Cards and Coupons page and view detailed information, including the Prepaid Card No., Nominal Value, Balance, Applicable Commodity, Status, and Validity Period.

Quota

For ecosystem accounts, the billing account page displays quota information, including:

Quota: The quota that your partner configured for your account and a history of quota changes.
Quota Consumption: The consumed portion of your quota balance and the history of changes to your quota consumption.

The Income and Expenditure Details section records monthly summary and detailed transaction logs of your account's income and expenses. You can search and view details by clicking the Income and Expenditure Details button next to Regular Bank Credit Refund or Cash Balance. For more information, see View transaction details.

Account settings

The Account Settings section lets you configure and manage Service Suspension, Low Balance Alerts,Automatic Write-off,.

Service Suspension is a benefit for pay-as-you-go resources. If your account has an overdue payment, resources continue running for a grace period or within a specified credit amount, giving you time to resolve the issue. Billing continues during postponement, and charges are added to your overdue amount. For more information, see Postponing service suspension due to overdue payments.

Low Balance Alerts help monitor your balance, detect unexpected spending, and prevent service interruptions due to insufficient funds. Enable Low Balance Alerts and set the Threshold. When your available credit falls below this threshold, the system sends alerts via internal message, SMS, or email, once daily for up to five consecutive days. If a payment is already overdue, an overdue notification is sent instead. For more information, see Monitor your account balance.

You can use the Automatic Write-off feature to automatically settle your bills. For users not on credit control, the Automatic Write-off feature is enabled by default and cannot be disabled. For users on credit control, go to the Billing Account > Account Settings section to check the status of this feature.

If Automatic Write-off is enabled, the system automatically uses your account assets (including prepaid cards, vouchers, credit refunds, and cash balance) to settle bills in the order they are generated.
If your available funds are insufficient, the system does not pay the bill automatically, and its status remains Not fully settled. You can top up your account on the Billing Account page. After you top up, the system automatically pays the unsettled bill.
If you disable Automatic Write-off, the system does not automatically settle your bills. You must manually select and settle them.

Important
For enterprise users, if an administrator initiates a "unified settlement" for your account, the Automatic Write-off feature is automatically disabled while the custom settlement is in progress. Do not enable Automatic Write-off at this time to avoid settlement errors during the unified settlement process.

Third-party payment methods

Click Add Payment Method to bind a verified Alipay account to your billing account. For more information, see Online Top-up.

Multi-account payments

When you register an Alibaba Cloud account, a default billing account is created to pay for its charges.

After you establish a financial association between a management account and member accounts, the relationship is marked as Activating. This enables unified payment, credit control sharing, and discount sharing.

An administrator can click Add Account to use a single billing account to pay for multiple accounts, or click Change Payment Account for an existing account.

Note

To configure payment relationships, first enable Enterprise Account Center and invite accounts with the same real-name verification. To enable Enterprise Account Center, see Enterprise accounts.

Account administrators

The Account Administrator settings allow an enterprise administrator to centrally manage accounts and authorize others to manage a billing account.

Note

To configure account administrators, first enable Enterprise Account Center and invite accounts with the same real-name verification. An administrator can then assign accounts to manage the billing account.

There are two types of account administrators: Super Administrator and Regular Administrator.
- Super Administrator: This role is automatically granted to the enterprise's management account and cannot be revoked.
- Regular Administrator: This role is manually granted by a super administrator and includes permissions to modify the billing account.
Add an account administrator:
- Click the Add Account Administrator button. In the dialog box, select the Alibaba Cloud accounts to authorize for this billing account, and click Confirm. The new administrator appears in the list.
- You can add up to 20 Alibaba Cloud accounts as administrators at a time.
Remove an account administrator:
- In the Account Administrator list, find the account to remove and click Remove Authorization in the Actions column. In the dialog box, click OK.
- After removal, the account no longer appears in the administrator list.

Note

Enterprise users who have enabled the Account Sharing can use Account Sharing to centralize asset management and share benefits across multiple accounts. Account Sharing overview.

FAQ

Why don't my billing charges match my cash balance changes?

The system prioritizes credit limit and coupons over cash balance. Check your bill to see if these assets covered part of the cost.

Where did my refund go?

Refunds are returned to the original payment source or credited to your billing account as cash balance. Check the status on the Expenses and Costs > Resource Unsubscription page.