Billing accounts

As we saw when creating a project in the previous chapter, all project billing is associated with billing accounts. A single billing account can be associated with multiple projects, and a given project can have one or more billing accounts. This provides some level of flexibility on how your projects are paid for. A billing account is composed of four parts:

• One or more authorized payment users with associated permissions
• One or more payment methods
• Budgets and alerts for the billing account
• Payment settings such as tax exemption status

Billing accounts can be managed in the Google Cloud Console under Navigation menu | Billing. From here, you can manage existing billing accounts and create new ones. Start by selecting the billing account you wish to manage. In the overview, you will see a breakdown of costs in the current billing window, as well as any credits tied to your account. If you've signed up for the free trial, you will see the amount of free trial credits remaining along with the number of days remaining before the free trial credits expire. The billing account overview also shows any projects associated with the current billing account, as well as transaction history.