Cloud Billing is a collection of tools that help you track and
understand your Google Cloud spending, pay your bill, and optimize
your costs.
This document covers the following topics:
- An [introduction to Cloud Billing tools](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#intro-tools).
- An [introduction to Cloud Billing accounts](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#billing_account),
and the relationship between Cloud Billing accounts,
Google payments profiles, and Google payments accounts. Your Cloud Billing account accrues and calculates costs for your
usage of resources and services in Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform,
Firebase, and Google AI Studio. These costs are routed to a
Google payments account to pay your bill.
- An [overview of resource management in Google Cloud](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#about_resource_management_for_billing). The way you organize your Google Cloud resources depends on your organization's structure and affects how you analyze your costs in the Cloud Billing reports.
## About Cloud Billing tools
The tools in Cloud Billing help you monitor your usage costs, forecast
your spending, and identify opportunities to save on costs.
### Get started
- **Take an interactive tour of Cloud Billing**. If you're new to
Google Cloud, this tutorial walks you through the basics of
understanding and managing your costs using the Google Cloud console.
[Launch the Cloud Billing tour](https://console.cloud.google.com/billing/overview?walkthrough_tutorial_id=billing_tour)
- **View your billing reports and cost trends**. The billing report helps you
answer questions like "Which Google Cloud services (such as Compute Engine or Cloud Storage) cost me the most?".
[Launch the Cloud Billing reports tour](https://console.cloud.google.com/billing/overview?walkthrough_tutorial_id=understanding_billing_reports)
### Pay your bill
- **Get an invoice, statement, or payment receipt.** You can access most of
your Cloud Billing documents in the Google Cloud console.
[Learn more about Cloud Billing documents](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/get-invoice)
- **Pay your invoice.** Make a payment to your Google Cloud monthly invoiced
account.
[Learn more about paying an invoice](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/pay-invoice)
- **Manage payment methods on your self-serve, automatically paid accounts.**
You can add, remove, or update credit cards, bank accounts, and other
supported payment methods.
[Learn more about managing payment methods](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/payment-methods)
- **Make a manual payment or pay early your self-serve, automatically paid
accounts.** You can make a manual payment to your
[*Postpay*](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#charging_cycle)
Google payments account that is linked to your
[self-serve, online Cloud Billing account](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#billing_account_types).
[Learn more about making a manual payment to a Postpay account](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/manual-payment)
### Monitor costs
- **Export your billing data to BigQuery**. Export your usage
and cost data to a BigQuery dataset, and use the dataset for
detailed analyses. You can also visualize your exported data in tools such as
Data Studio.
We recommend enabling the BigQuery export as early as possible,
so that the data reflects your Google Cloud usage from the beginning.
[Launch the Cloud Billing export to BigQuery tutorial](https://console.cloud.google.com/welcome?walkthrough_tutorial_id=billing_bigquery_export)
- **Create a budget and set up spending alerts**. Use budgets to track your
actual Google Cloud spend against your planned spending. Then, set up
alerts to stay informed of your spending.
[Launch the tutorial to learn about creating budgets](https://console.cloud.google.com/billing/overview?walkthrough_tutorial_id=billing_create_budgets)
- **Review anomalies for your projects**. Anomalies are spikes or deviations in
usage costs that differ from your expected spend, when compared to historical
spending patterns. The Anomalies dashboard displays all cost anomalies
associated with your projects, within the linked billing account.
[Learn more about cost anomalies](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/manage-anomalies)
### Optimize and control costs
- **Use AI-powered features to monitor and optimize costs**.
Cloud Billing uses AI to provide insights into your spending, such
as AI-driven cost forecasts, anomaly detection, the AI Cost Summary Agent,
and Gemini Cloud Assist insights in Billing Reports and the FinOps
hub.
[Learn more about AI-powered cost monitoring and cost optimization features](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/ai-powered-features)
- **Create a spend cap budget to automatically pause usage and cost accrual.**
Spend cap budgets help reduce unexpected or runaway costs for eligible
services. When a spend cap budget is enforced, usage of your specified
services is automatically paused until you *manually* lift the spend cap,
stopping charges for the service in the project where you set the spend cap
budget.
[Learn more about the spend cap budgets](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/budgets-spend-caps)
- **View the FinOps hub for recommendations and utilization insights.**
With the FinOps hub, you can monitor and communicate your current savings,
explore recommended opportunities to optimize costs, gain utilization
insights for potential wasted usage, and plan your optimization goals.
[Learn more about the FinOps hub](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/finops-hub)
- **Sign up for Committed use discounts (CUDs)**. If your workloads have
predictable resource needs, you can purchase a Google Cloud commitment,
which gives you discounted prices in exchange for your commitment to use a
minimum level of resources for a specific term.
[Learn about CUDs for the services that you use](https://docs.cloud.google.com/docs/cuds).
[Get recommendations for CUDs](https://docs.cloud.google.com/docs/cuds-recommender).
If your organization has already signed up for CUDs,
[learn about analyzing the effectiveness of your commitments](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/cud-analysis).
- **Automate cost controls with programmatic notifications**. Use programmatic
notifications to automate cost control responses when you get a budget or
anomaly alert, such as forwarding alerts to other channels, or controlling
your resource usage by adjusting quotas.
[Launch the tutorial for automated responses to budget notifications](https://console.cloud.google.com/welcome?walkthrough_tutorial_id=billing--budget--cost_enforcement)
[Learn more about programmatic notifications](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/budgets-programmatic-notifications)
## About Cloud Billing accounts and Google payments profiles
A *Cloud Billing account* is set up in Google Cloud and defines
who pays for a given set of Google Cloud resources and
Google Maps Platform APIs.
This account is used to track all of the costs (charges and savings) incurred by
your Google Cloud usage in all projects linked to the Cloud Billing account.
[Access control to a Cloud Billing account](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-access)
is established by IAM roles.
A Cloud Billing account is associated with a [*Google payments profile*](https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/topic/9017382?ref_topic=9037778).
The Google payments account includes a payment instrument to which costs are
charged.
| Cloud Billing account | Google payments center |
|---|---|
| **A Cloud Billing account**: - Is a cloud-level resource managed in the Google Cloud console. - Is connected to a Google payments profile, which includes a payment instrument, defining how you pay for your charges. - Tracks all of the costs (charges and savings) incurred by your Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform, Firebase, and Google AI Studio usage in all of the projects linked to the Cloud Billing account. - For [self-serve, online accounts](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#billing_account_types), results in monthly statements per Cloud Billing account, except when [split charging cycles](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/split-charging-cycle) apply. - For [invoiced accounts](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#billing_account_types), results in a single invoice per Cloud Billing account, except when [split invoicing](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/split-invoice) applies. - Operates in a single currency. - Defines who pays for a given set of resources. - Has [billing-specific roles and permissions](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/grant-access-to-billing) (established by IAM roles) to control access to billing-related functions, such as cost reports, budgets, and FinOps tools. - Can be configured with specific Cloud Billing IAM permissions that grant *equivalent* [payments user permissions](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-contacts#permissions). With payments-equivalent permissions, Cloud Billing users can access and perform certain tasks on the associated payments profile and linked payments account, such as view payments-related documents, update payments methods, and make a payment. | **A Google payments profile**: - Is a Google-level resource managed in the [Google payments center](https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/topic/9017382?ref_topic=9037778). - Operates in a single currency. - Stores information like your country/region (which is used to determine the currency of your payments account), the [payments profile type](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#payments_profile_types), and the name, address, and tax ID (when required legally) of who is responsible for the profile. - Connects to all of your Google services (such as Google Ads, Google Cloud, Google Workspace, and Fi phone service). - Is associated with Google payments accounts to provide a platform to process payments for all Google services (not only Google Cloud). - Stores your various payment instruments (credit cards, debit cards, bank accounts, and other payment methods you've used to buy through Google in the past). - Has [Google payments-specific users and permissions](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-contacts) to control access to payments-related functions. **A Google payments account**: - Is linked to a Cloud Billing account and pays for the charges that are accrued by the Cloud Billing account. - Is assigned a [charging cycle](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#charging_cycle) that determines how and when you pay for your Cloud Billing account balances. - For [self-serve, online Cloud Billing accounts](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#billing_account_types), holds the primary and backup [forms of payment](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/payment-methods) used to pay for the costs accrued in the linked Cloud Billing account. - Functions as a [document center](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/get-invoice), where you can view invoices, statements, payment history, and other important documents for the payments account. - Controls who can view and receive invoices and other [communication](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#billing_contacts) related to the payments account. |
> [!CAUTION]
> **Important** : For Google Cloud and Google Maps Platform usage, if billing is disabled on your project - that is, the project isn't [linked to an active, valid Cloud Billing account](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-project#disable_billing_for_a_project) - you won't be able to use the Google Cloud and Google Maps Platform products and services enabled in your project. This is true even if your project only uses [Google Cloud and Google Maps Platform services that are free](https://docs.cloud.google.com/free/docs/gcp-free-tier). For Firebase and Google AI Studio usage in a project, if billing is disabled on the project, the project reverts to the *Free tier*.
### Cloud Billing account types
There are two types of Cloud Billing accounts:
- **Self-serve (or Online) account**
- The [billable status](https://docs.cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-features#confirm-billing-account) of a self-serve account is either **Free trial account** or **Paid account**.
- Payment instrument is a credit or debit card or ACH direct debit, [depending on availability in each country or region](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/resources/currency).
- If the billable status of the account is *Paid account* , and the [charging cycle](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-cycle) is **Postpay**, costs are charged automatically to the payment instrument connected to the Cloud Billing account.
- For Gemini API in AI Studio users, if the billable status of the account is *Paid account* , and the [charging cycle](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-cycle) is **Prepay** , if you enable auto-reload on your *payments account* , your reload amount is charged automatically to the payment instrument connected to the Google payments account. Learn more [about Prepay](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing#prepay) and [auto-reload](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing#auto-reload).
- You can sign up for self-serve accounts online. Your [charging cycle](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-cycle) is assigned to your account when you first set up billing.
- The [documents](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/get-invoice)
generated for self-serve accounts include statements, payment receipts,
and tax invoices, and are accessible in the Google Cloud console\*.
\*If you have a *Prepay* payments account that you use to pay for
Gemini API in AI Studio, your documents for your Prepay account
are accessible in Google AI Studio in **Dashboard** \> **Usage**.
- **Invoiced (or Offline) account**
- The [billable status](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-cycle) of an invoiced account is **Paid account**.
- Payment instrument can be check or wire transfer.
- Invoices are [sent by mail](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-billing-account#update_mailing_address) or [electronically](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-billing-account#send-invoices-by-email).
- [Invoices](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/get-invoice) are also accessible in the Google Cloud console, as are payment receipts.
- You must be eligible for invoiced billing. [Learn more about invoiced billing eligibility](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/invoiced-billing).
### Google payments profile types
When you create a new Cloud Billing account, you are guided through a
process to connect the Cloud Billing account to a Google payments
profile. You can choose to use an existing payments profile,
or create a new profile.
When you're creating a new
[Google payments profile](https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/9028746),
you'll be asked to specify the profile type. This information must be accurate
for tax and identity verification. After you create your
payments profile, *this setting can't be changed*. When you
set up your Google payments profile, make sure to choose the type
that best fits how you plan to use your profile.
There are two types of Google payments profiles:
- **Individual**
- You're using your account for your own personal payments.
- If you register your payments profile as an individual, then only you can manage the profile. You won't be able to add or remove users, or change permissions on the profile.
- You are limited to one *Individual* type of payments profile per your [Google user account](https://docs.cloud.google.com/iam/docs/user-identities) or [Workforce Identity Federation user account](https://docs.cloud.google.com/iam/docs/workforce-identity-federation).
- **Organization** (also referred to as *Business*)
- You're paying on behalf of a business, organization, partnership, or educational institution.
- You use Google payments center to pay for Google products or services such as Play apps and games, and services like Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform, Google Workspace, Google Ads, and Fi phone service.
- An Organization (or Business) profile lets you add other users to the Google payments profile you manage, so that more than one person can access or manage a payments profile.
- All users who are added to an Organization (or Business) profile can see the payment information on that profile.
- You can create multiple payments profiles with the *Organization* type.
### Google payments accounts
When you create a new Cloud Billing account, you are guided through a
process to connect the Cloud Billing account to a Google payments
profile. The payments profile is associated with one or more
Google payments accounts. The Cloud Billing account is linked to a
*Google payments account* to pay for your charges.
- **Google payments profile**: The payments profile
represents the legal entity responsible for bills associated with a
Google payments account. The legal entity is the organization or
individual to which a payments account is registered. A
Google payments profile stores information like your account type, your
country or region, the currency of the account, the organization or
individual name and address, and various payment methods.
- **Google payments account** : The payments account contains
information about *how* and *when* you pay, including your
[billing account type](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#billing_account_types)
(invoiced or online), the
[forms of payment](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/payment-methods)
in use on the payments account (such as a credit card or
bank account), and your
[charging cycle](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-cycle)
(such as invoice terms, or Prepay or Postpay charges), as well as your
document delivery addresses.
### Charging cycle
The charging cycle on your Cloud Billing account determines how and
when you pay for your Google Cloud services and other eligible services,
such as Gemini API in AI Studio, Google Maps Platform, and Firebase.
For self-serve Cloud Billing accounts, your Google Cloud costs
are charged in the following ways, depending on the charging cycle assigned
to the Google payments account:
- **Postpay** (with monthly automatic payments): Costs are charged on a regular monthly cycle.
- **Postpay** (with automatic payments triggered by threshold billing): Costs are charged when your account has accrued a specific amount.
- **Prepay** : Costs are automatically deducted from your prepaid credit balance as you incur charges (available for [Gemini API in AI Studio usage](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing)).
For self-serve Cloud Billing accounts, your charging cycle is
automatically assigned when you create the account. Every self-serve account is
assigned a *Postpay* charging cycle. Depending on the services you use, your
self-serve account might also be assigned a *Prepay* charging cycle that is
used to pay for certain services.
[Learn more about split charging cycles](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/split-charging-cycle).
You don't get to choose your *Postpay* charging cycle type, and you can't edit
the charging cycle type.
For invoiced Cloud Billing accounts, you typically receive one
invoice per month, except when
[split invoicing](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/split-invoice)
applies. The amount of time you have to pay your invoice (your payment terms)
is determined by the agreement you made with Google.
- [Find your charging cycle](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-cycle)
- [Learn more about threshold billing](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-cycle#threshold-billing)
- [Learn more about split charging cycles for online billing accounts](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/split-charging-cycle)
### Billing contacts
A Cloud Billing account includes one or more contacts that are defined
on the
[*Google payments profile and payments account*](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-contacts)
that is connected to the Cloud Billing account. These contacts are
people who are designated to receive billing information specific to the payment
instrument on file (for example, when a credit card needs to be updated). To
access and manage this list of contacts, you can use the
[Google payments center](https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/7162853)
or you can use the
[Google Cloud console](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-contacts).
### Subaccounts
Subaccounts are intended for resellers. If you are a reseller, you can
use subaccounts to represent your customers' charges for the purpose of
chargebacks.
Cloud Billing subaccounts allow you to group charges from
projects together on a separate section of your invoice. A
billing subaccount is a Cloud Billing account that is owned by a
reseller's parent Cloud Billing account. The usage
charges for all billing subaccounts are paid for by the reseller's parent
Cloud Billing account. Note that the parent Cloud Billing
account must be on
[invoiced billing](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/invoiced-billing).
A subaccount behaves like a Cloud Billing account in most ways: it can
have projects linked to it, Cloud Billing data exports can be
configured on it, and it can have IAM roles defined on it. Any
charges made to projects linked to the subaccount are grouped and subtotalled
on the invoice, or multiple invoices when
[split invoicing](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/split-invoice)
applies, and the effect on resource management is that access control policy
can be entirely segregated on the subaccount to allow for customer separation
and management.
The [Cloud Billing Account API](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/apis)
lets you create and manage subaccounts. Use the API to connect to your existing
systems and provision new customers or chargeback groups programmatically.
## About resource management for billing
You can configure billing on Google Cloud in a variety of
ways to meet different needs. This section introduces the core concepts for your
organization and for billing, and discusses how to use them effectively.
For information on organizing your resources to effectively monitor your costs,
see the
[Guide to Cloud Billing Resource Organization \& Access Management](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/onboarding-checklist).
### About resources
In the context of Google Cloud, a resource can refer to service-level
resources that are used to process your workloads, such as virtual machines and
databases, or to account-level resources that sit above the services, such as
projects, folders, and the organization.
### Resource management
Resource management focuses on how you should configure and grant access to
the various cloud resources for your company/team, specifically the setup and
organization of the account-level resources that sit above the service-level
resources. Account-level resources are the resources involved in setting
up and administering your Google Cloud account.
### Resource hierarchy
Google Cloud resources are organized hierarchically. This hierarchy lets
you map your organization's operational structure to Google Cloud, and
to manage access control and permissions for groups of related resources. The
[resource hierarchy](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/cloud-platform-resource-hierarchy)
provides logical attachment points for access management policies
([Identity and Access Management](https://docs.cloud.google.com/iam/docs/overview)) and
[Organization policies](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/organization-policy/overview).
Both IAM and Organization policies are inherited through the
hierarchy, and the effective policy at each node of the hierarchy is the result
of policies directly applied at the node and policies inherited from its
ancestors.
The following diagram shows an example resource hierarchy illustrating the core
account-level resources involved in administering your Google Cloud
account.
### Domain
- Your company Domain is the primary identity of your organization and establishes your company's identity with Google services, including Google Cloud.
- You use the Domain to manage the users in your organization.
- At the domain level, you define which users should be associated with your organization when using Google Cloud.
- Domain is also where you can universally administer policy for your users and devices (for example, enable 2-step verification or reset passwords for any users in your organization).
- The Domain is linked to either a [Google Workspace](https://gsuite.google.com) or [Cloud Identity](https://docs.cloud.google.com/identity) account.
- The Google Workspace or Cloud Identity account is associated with exactly one Organization.
- You manage the domain-level functionality using the **Google Admin Console
(admin.google.com)**.
For more information on the hierarchy of resources, see the
[Resource Manager documentation](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/cloud-platform-resource-hierarchy).
### Organization
- An organization is the root node of the Google Cloud hierarchy of resources.
- All Google Cloud resources that belong to an organization are grouped under the organization node, allowing you to define settings, permissions, and policies for all projects, folders, resources, and Cloud Billing accounts it parents.
- An organization is associated with exactly one Domain (established with either a Google Workspace or Cloud Identity account), and is created automatically when you set up your Domain in Google Cloud.
- Using an organization, you can centrally manage your Google Cloud resources and your users' access to those resources. This includes:
- Proactive management: reorganize resources as needed (for example, restructuring or spinning up a new division may require new projects and folders).
- Reactive management: an organization resource provides a safety net to regain access to lost resources (for example, if one of your team members loses their access or leaves the company).
- The various roles and resources that are related to Google Cloud (including the organization, projects, folders, resources, and Cloud Billing accounts) are managed within the Google Cloud console.
For more information on organizations, see the following documentation:
- [Creating and managing organizations](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/creating-managing-organization)
- [Viewing and managing organization resources](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/organization-resource-management)
- [Managing multiple organizations](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/managing-multiple-orgs)
### Folders
- Folders are a grouping mechanism and can contain projects, other folders, or a combination of both.
- To use folders, you must have an [organization node](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/cloud-platform-resource-hierarchy).
- Folders and projects are all mapped under the organization node.
- Folders can be used to group resources that share common IAM policies.
- While a folder can contain multiple folders or resources, a given folder or resource can have exactly one parent.
For more details about using folders, see
[Creating and managing folders](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/creating-managing-folders).
### Projects
- All service-level resources are parented by projects, the base-level organizing entity in Google Cloud.
- Projects are *required* to use service-level resources (such as Compute Engine virtual machines, Pub/Sub topics, and Cloud Storage buckets).
- You can use projects to represent logical projects, teams, environments, or other collections that map to a business function or structure.
- Projects form the basis for enabling services, APIs, and IAM permissions.
- Any given resource can only exist in one project.
For more details about projects, see the following documentation:
- [Creating and managing projects](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/creating-managing-projects)
- [Moving a project](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/moving-projects-folders)
- [Migrating projects](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/project-migration)
### Resources
- Google Cloud service-level resources are the fundamental components that make up all Google Cloud services, such as Compute Engine virtual machines, Pub/Sub topics, and Cloud Storage buckets.
- For billing and access control purposes, resources exist at the lowest level of a hierarchy that also includes projects and an organization.
### Labels
- Labels help you categorize your Google Cloud resources (such as Compute Engine instances).
- A label is a key-value pair.
- You can attach labels to each resource, then filter the resources based on their labels.
- Labels are great for cost tracking at a granular level. Information about labels is forwarded to the billing system, so you can [analyze your charges](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/bq-examples) by label.
> [!NOTE]
> **Note:** Newly created labels can take up to a day to appear in Cloud Billing.
For more details about using labels, see
[Creating and managing labels](https://docs.cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/creating-managing-labels).
## Relationships between resources, Cloud Billing accounts, and Google payments profiles
Two types of relationships govern the interactions between organizations,
Cloud Billing accounts, and projects: ownership and
payment linkage.
- **Ownership** refers to IAM permission inheritance.
- **Payment linkages** define which Cloud Billing account pays for a given project.
*Ownership* of a Cloud Billing account is limited to a single
organization. *Payment linkage* of a project linked to a Cloud Billing
account is not limited by organization ownership. It is possible for a
Cloud Billing account to pay for projects that belong to an
organization that is different than the organization that owns the
Cloud Billing account. For more information on managing the
Cloud Billing account for your projects, see
[Enable, disable, or change billing for a project](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-project).
The following diagram shows the relationship of ownership and payment linkages for a sample organization.
In the diagram, the Organization node has ownership over Projects 1, 2, and 3,
meaning that it is the IAM permissions parent of the three
projects.
The Cloud Billing account is linked to Projects 1, 2, and 3, meaning
that it pays for costs incurred by the three projects.
> [!NOTE]
> **Note:** Although you link Cloud Billing accounts to projects, Cloud Billing accounts aren't parents of projects in an IAM sense, and therefore projects don't inherit permissions from the Cloud Billing account that they are linked to.
The Cloud Billing account is also associated with a Google payments
profile and linked to a
[Google payments account](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/concepts#billing_account) to pay the bills.
In this example, any users who are granted IAM billing roles
on the organization also have those roles on the Cloud Billing account
or the projects.
For information about granting IAM billing roles, see
[Overview of Cloud Billing access control](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-access).
## Related topics
- [Organize your resources for effective cost management](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/onboarding-checklist)
- [Split invoicing for agency model transactions](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/split-invoice)
- [Split charging cycles for Postpay and Prepay payments accounts](https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/split-charging-cycle)
-
[A Guide to Financial Governance in the Cloud](https://cloud.google.com/files/guide-to-financial-governance.pdf)
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[Video library: Best practices for monitoring and managing your costs.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIivdWyY5sqKeXavu1XuBNBDLBO31kzM0)