Enabling Amazon AWS Billing Alerts

To eliminate billing surprises at the end of the month, an Amazon account can enable billing alerts which will monitor usage and send notifications when threshold limits are exceeded.  This is done through the "Account Activity" page for the user.

Log into the AWS Console, navigate to the Account Activity page, and click "Enable Now".

The site will take a minute to process your request, and then alert you when the task is completed.

After alerts are enabled, on the same Account Activity page there will be a link to "Set your first billing alarm".

After clicking the link, a dialog will pop up; Press "Create Alarm" from here.

Fill out the form below; specifically, enter the email addresses where notification should be sent, as well as the US dollar amount which is your threshold.

After clicking "Create Alarm" on the dialog box, the alarm is created and enabled.