Cost Labels [beta]

Learn more about Cost Labels in North.Cloud's Cost Streams.

Introducing Cost Labels

Cost Labels in North's Cost Streams are a lightweight way to visually group streams and give your team fast context for spend, trends, or initiatives—without the operational controls of BUs.

Every Cost Label has:

• A name (displayed throughout the UI)

• An optional description (for context, e.g. “Customer-related costs”)

• A customizable color (for instant recognition and grouping in all visualizations)

You can assign any stream—or multiple streams—to one or more Cost Labels, making it easy to organize and spot spend groupings across projects, products, or ad hoc initiatives.

Cost Labels are only for visual organization and reporting. They do not control assignments, notifications, alerting, or budget actions. Unlike Business Units (BUs), Cost Labels do not enforce accountability or drive budget status—they simply let you tag and roll up cost views as you see fit.

How to Use Cost Labels

• Create Cost Labels for any grouping important to your business (for example: “Customer Facing,” “Internal Tools,” “Experimentation,” “Compliance”).

• Assign streams to Cost Labels for clear visual aggregation across dashboards.

• Each stream can have one or more Cost Labels, and you may group multiple streams under a single label for consolidated reporting and exploration.

• Cost Labels only aggregate costs for visualization purposes and do not affect the underlying allocation or ownership rules.

Constraints & Best Practices

• You can group streams across Cost Labels as needed, even if they span different teams or BUs.

• There are no restrictions based on organizational except for double-accounting rules on the same cost label.

Example Use Cases

• Highlight all streams related to a launch (“Launch Q4” Cost Label, bright blue)

• Visually track major compliance costs across services (“SOC2” Cost Label, purple)

• Group experimental, trial, or innovation streams (“Labs” Cost Label, yellow)

• Identify internal vs. customer-facing spend in cross-sectional reports

Use Cost Labels in tandem with BUs for fine-grained visual insight and broad organizational clarity, enabling both action and rapid context in every North Cost Streams dashboard!