Create a new self-serve Cloud Billing account

This document describes how to create a self-serve, online Cloud Billing account to automatically pay for your Google Cloud and Google Maps Platform usage costs. If you're interested in setting up a Cloud Billing account that is billed by invoice, visit Apply for monthly invoiced billing.

Before you begin

Before you create a new billing account, we recommend you do the following:

• Review the information about Cloud Billing accounts to determine if a new Cloud Billing account is the right solution for your needs.
• Ensure that you have the required permissions to create a Cloud Billing account.

About Cloud Billing accounts

• Cloud Billing accounts pay for usage costs in Google Cloud projects and Google Maps Platform projects. Cloud Billing accounts don't pay for Google Workspace accounts. Google Workspace customers need a separate Google Workspace billing account.

  Product	Billing account needed to pay for product usage costs
  Google Cloud	Cloud Billing account
  Google Maps Platform	Cloud Billing account
  Google Cloud & Google Maps Platform	1 Cloud Billing account
  Google Workspace	Google Workspace billing account
  Google Cloud & Google Workspace	1 Cloud Billing account + 1 Google Workspace billing account

• A project and its service-level resources are linked to one Cloud Billing account at a time.

• A Cloud Billing account operates in a single currency and is linked to a Google payments profile.

• A Cloud Billing account can be linked to one or more projects.

• Usage costs are tracked by Project and are charged to the linked Cloud Billing account.

  Important: Projects that are not linked to an active Cloud Billing account can't use Google Cloud or Google Maps Platform services. This is true even if you only use services that are free.

• If you want to change the Cloud Billing account that you're using to pay for a project (that is, link a project to a different Cloud Billing account), see Enable, disable, or change billing for a project.

• You can manage your Cloud Billing accounts using the Google Cloud console. For more information about the Google Cloud console, visit General guide to the console.

Permissions required for this task

The permissions required to create a Cloud Billing account depend on your configuration of Google Cloud or Google Maps Platform.

For more information about Cloud Billing permissions, see:

• Overview of access control
• Create custom roles for Cloud Billing
• Understanding predefined Identity and Access Management roles for Cloud Billing

For more information about Google payments permissions, see Manage payments users, permissions, and notification settings.

Add a new Cloud Billing account

To create a new self-serve (autopay) Cloud Billing account, complete the following steps.

1. Sign in to the Manage billing accounts page in the Google Cloud console.

   Sign in to Manage billing accounts

2. Click Create account.

   1. Enter the Name of the Cloud Billing account. This is the name of the billing account that displays in billing account selectors and tabular lists or reports that display the billing account name.

   2. Depending on your configuration, you also need to select one of the following:

      • Organization: If you see an Organization drop-down, then you must select an Organization before you can continue.

      • Country: If you are prompted to select a Country, select the country that corresponds with your billing mailing address.

        • The country you select affects the payment options available in the next step.
        • The currency for your Cloud Billing account is automatically assigned based on the country you select.
        • Your country determines what payment methods you can use to pay for your incurred usage costs.
        • Choose your country (and currency) carefully, as you can't change these selections later. If you need to edit the country on an existing Cloud Billing account, you'll need to create a new billing account.

   3. Click Continue.

3. Choose the Google payments profile that will be associated with this Cloud Billing account. A payments profile is shared and used across all Google products (such as Google Workspace, Google Cloud, Google Fi, and more). You can choose an existing Google payments profile, or create a new payments profile. If you choose to create a new profile, follow the instructions on the screen to set up your Google payments profile.

   Important: About the Account Type

   • If you are creating a new Google payments profile, when setting your Account type, be aware that this setting is permanent and may be used for tax (such as value-added tax (VAT)) and identity verification.

     If this is for a business, organization, partnership, or educational institution, or if you want more than one person to have access to the profile, select Business. Otherwise, select Individual. Individual account types allow for only one user to be associated with the Google payments profile.

   • Depending on your country's tax requirements, you might need to enter additional tax information.

   • If you're choosing an existing Google payments profile to be associated with this Cloud Billing account, select a Business profile for Cloud account.

4. When you're done setting all the options and details, click Submit and enable billing.

About authorization requests

When you create a new account, you might notice a $0.00 transaction from Google on your bank or credit card statement. This is a pending authorization request between our billing system and the bank that issued your credit or debit card. In some countries, authorizations are $1 (which might be converted to local currency by your bank). These transactions might appear as pending on your statement for up to a month. These are authorization requests only, not actual charges. If you have questions, we recommend you contact your bank about the authorization status.

For information about verifying bank accounts, see Verify your bank account.

For information about adding backup methods of payment, see Add, remove, or update a payment method.

(India only) Verify your identity

Google is required to comply with applicable cybersecurity regulations in India when providing cloud services. If your Cloud Billing account address is in India, you must complete the mandatory identity verification process, described in this section.

After you create a new Cloud Billing account, you must complete the identity verification process within 30 days. If you don't complete the process within this timeframe, your Cloud Billing account and access to Google Cloud might be suspended.

1. To start the verification, open the Billing account overview page. At the prompt, select your Cloud Billing account.

   Go to Billing account overview

2. If your account needs to be verified, the page shows a banner to complete your identity verification. Click Verify now, and follow the prompts to provide your information.

Information required for organizations

If you're completing the verification for an organization, you must provide the following information:

• Your mobile phone number. You receive a verification code on your device.

• The names and designations of at least one individual who has executive management control, or influence over the management of the company.

• You might need additional documents to verify your organization, such as business registration documents, and proof of address documents. You can upload one of the following documents for verification:

  • Certificate of incorporation
  • Certificate of registration on conversion
  • Certificate of provisional registration
  • Amended certificate of registration
  • Registration of society
  • Udyam registration certificate
  • GST registration certificate
  • VAT Certificate
  • Registration certificate (Jammu and Kashmir)
  • A utility or phone bill (with a date in the last 60 days)

Information required for individuals

If you're using Google Cloud as an individual, you must provide documents that verify your identity and your address.

1. As your proof of identity, upload one of the following documents:

   • Passport
   • Driver's license
   • PAN card
   • Election Commission ID card

2. As your proof of address, upload one of the following documents:

   • A utility or phone bill (with a date in the last 60 days)

   • If your identity document also has your address on it, you can upload it again. Examples of identity documents with your address include the following:

     • Driver's license with address, either on the front or back
     • Election Commission ID card, with the address on the back
     • The last page of your Indian Passport

Verify your payments contact email address

To ensure you receive billing- and payments-related notifications, we might ask you to verify your email address on your Google payments profile.

To verify your email address, we'll send you a verification email to the email address you entered for your payments profile contact. To activate your Google payments email preferences, click the verification link in the email.

If you haven't received the verification email, here's how to request a new verification link:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Payment settings page.

   Go to Payment settings in Cloud Billing console

2. At the prompt, choose the Cloud Billing account that you want to verify.

   The Payment settings page opens for the selected Cloud Billing account.

3. Under Payments users, click Manage payments users.

4. In the Manage users list, find the email address you want to verify and click Resend verification email. If the email address has already been verified, this link is not available.

Until your primary contact email address is verified, you'll see a notification banner on the Payment Overview page in Billing. This notification is similar to "This payments profile has no verified primary contact. Critical email may not be received until the primary contact verifies their email".

Recommended next steps

To ensure that you can maintain your Cloud Billing account, pay your bills, and monitor your costs, after you create a new billing account, we recommend you also do the following:

• Configure access to billing accounts and payments profiles
• Create a FinOps administration project
• Set up budgets to track your spend
• Enable billing data export to BigQuery

Configure access to billing accounts and payments profiles

After you create a new Cloud Billing account, you might want to grant user permissions to additional users to access your billing account and Google payments profile.

Each Cloud Billing account is linked to a Google payments profile. Access permissions for Cloud Billing and Google payments are configured in two different systems depending on what type of access you want to provide.

Cloud Billing account user permissions

Each Cloud Billing account needs at least one Billing Account Administrator. By default, the person who creates the Cloud Billing account is a Billing Account Administrator for that billing account. For redundancy, we recommend you configure more than one administrator on each Cloud Billing account.

You can grant different levels of access to billing accounts to your users, depending on what they need to do (for example: track spend, review cost anomalies, manage budgets, optimize costs, or review and pay invoices).

For more information, see Cloud Billing access control & permissions.

Google payments user permissions

Each Google payments account needs at least one Admin with all permissions, and one Primary Contact (the person Google will contact with any payments-related alerts or questions). By default, the person who creates the Google payments account is both the Admin with all permissions, and the Primary Contact. For redundancy, we recommend that you configure more than one Google payments administrator.

You can add other users to any Google payments business profile you manage and grant different levels of access to your users, depending on what they need to do (for example: manage payment methods or payments profile details). You can also configure user email preferences for receiving billing and payments emails.

For more information, see Manage Google payments users, permissions, and notification settings.

Create a FinOps administration project

To use many of the powerful tools available in Cloud Billing, you need a project that is linked to the billing account. We recommend that you configure a separate Google Cloud project to contain all of your FinOps and billing administration needs for a Cloud Billing account. There are many benefits to using a FinOps-focused project, including the following:

• You can contain all of the billing tools that are project-dependent into one common project, where you can precisely control who has access to the project and the tools contained within.
• If you want to use Gemini Cloud Assist in Cloud Billing, billing users will also need access to a project where the Gemini for Google Cloud API is enabled.
• To use any of the billing APIs, each API you use needs to be enabled in a project. You can use the same project to contain all of the billing APIs.
• Many of the billing tools partner with other Google Cloud products (such as BigQuery and Pub/Sub) that require a project when you set up the tool.
• There might be costs associated with the use of some billing tools (like the cost of running queries against your Cloud Billing cost data exported to BigQuery). With a FinOps-dedicated project, you can track any FinOps-related costs separately from your other Google Cloud costs.

For detailed guidance about creating and configuring a project, see Creating and managing projects.

Set up budgets to track your spend

You can create Cloud Billing budgets to monitor all of your Google Cloud charges in one place. A budget lets you track your actual Google Cloud spend against your planned spend. After you set a budget amount, you set budget alert threshold rules that are used to trigger email notifications. Budget alert emails help you stay informed about how your spend is tracking against your budget. You can also configure budget notifications to automate cost control responses.

For more information about budgets, see Create, edit, or delete budgets and budget alerts.

Enable billing data export to BigQuery

Managing and reporting costs effectively is an important part of financial stewardship, no matter your budget. Making data-driven decisions about your Google Cloud costs and usage starts with collecting the data you'll need to inform those decisions.

Cloud Billing export to BigQuery lets you export detailed Google Cloud billing data (such as usage, cost estimates, and pricing data) automatically throughout the day to a BigQuery dataset that you specify. Then you can access your Cloud Billing data from BigQuery for detailed analysis, or use a tool like Looker Studio to visualize your data. You can also use this export method to export data to a JSON file.

Timing is important. To access a more complete set of Google Cloud billing data for your analysis needs, we recommend that you enable Cloud Billing data export to BigQuery on each of your Cloud Billing accounts, at the same time that you create the Cloud Billing accounts.

For comprehensive guidance, see Export Cloud Billing data to BigQuery.

Related topics

• Modify your Cloud Billing account
• Close or re-open your Cloud Billing account
• View projects linked to a Cloud Billing account
• Enable, disable, or change billing for a project
• Add, remove, or update a payment method
• Resolve billing issues
• View your cost and payment history
• View your billing reports and cost trends