Azure budget alerts tell you when a budget crosses a share of its amount: 50%, 80%, 100%. That is useful, but a 50% alert on day 25 of the month and a 50% alert on day 6 mean very different things. The second one is a problem; the first one is fine.

Here is a simple pace check you can do by hand for any budget, and then how we automated it.

1. List your budgets and their scopes

In the Azure portal, open Cost Management > Budgets . A budget is set on a scope (a subscription, a resource group, a management group or a billing scope), has an amount and a reset period, and sends alerts on actual or forecasted cost at the thresholds you set. A budget never stops anything: it measures and notifies.

Write down, for each budget: the scope, the amount, the period and the spend so far this period.

2.…