AWS cost review field notes
Heliodor | support@heliodor.cloud

Review spending in a consistent order: establish the baseline, explain usage, identify changes and check their impact. This keeps a cost review connected to workload needs.

ESTABLISH A BASELINE
[ ] Select a representative time period and note seasonal demand.
[ ] Record credits, tax, support fees and costs excluded from comparisons.
[ ] Separate accounts, teams, products and shared platform costs.

EXPLAIN CONSUMPTION
[ ] Find the services, regions and usage types driving the largest changes.
[ ] Check idle resources, resource schedules and storage retention.
[ ] Review data transfer paths and logs before changing the architecture.

ASSESS ACTIONS
[ ] Validate rightsizing recommendations with utilisation and performance data.
[ ] Estimate implementation effort and operational risk for each change.
[ ] Assess commitments against stable usage, term and future demand.

MEASURE & MAINTAIN
[ ] Agree an owner and approval route for each optimisation.
[ ] Compare the result with the baseline, accounting for demand changes.
[ ] Review budget alerts and anomalies as part of a recurring routine.

Share the key spending questions and a representative billing period. Avoid sending credentials or access keys by email.

Preparation guide; not an official AWS assessment.