10 Features Every MSP Needs in a Cloud Cost Management Platform

For managed service providers (MSPs), cloud billing is a margin-sensitive business decision that affects profitability, client trust, and scalability. The 2025 State of FinOps report found that more than half of FinOps teams cite waste reduction, cost allocation, and forecasting as their top priorities, proof that MSP clients expect more than simple spend reports.

As FinOps matures, MSPs are expected to deliver more than cost visibility; they’re expected to drive accountability, savings, and scalability for their clients. 

This article outlines the 10 essential features every MSP should prioritize when evaluating a cloud cost management platform:

With the right features, MSPs can move beyond cost tracking to deliver real client value while streamlining and automating the process.

1. Multi-Tenant Support with Customization Capabilities

Multi-tenant support is the foundation for scalability, and customization is equally critical. Clients want reporting that shows viewing spend by department, team, or project. A strong role-based access system (RBAS) lets the right stakeholders see the right data, while protecting sensitive information.

In complex cloud environments, customizable dashboards support cloud cost allocation by customer, keeping teams aligned. Finance receives clear budget breakdowns, and engineering sees workload-level data they can act on.

Example: An MSP managing a retail client sets up executive dashboards showing overall cloud spend on AWS and Azure. At the same time, the engineering team views Kubernetes cluster usage for their e-commerce app. Role-based feature access allows finance to see budget summaries and engineers to access workload data for optimization.

Best practice: Select a platform that mirrors your client’s organizational structure and supports flexible role assignments so reporting aligns with each stakeholder’s priorities.

Umbrella offers a multi-tenant architecture with role-based access and flexible dashboards, enabling MSPs to customize cost views by client, team, or project and scale efficiently without sacrificing clarity or control.

Benefits of implementing multi-tenant support with customization:

• Manage dozens or hundreds of clients from a single platform. 
• Provide tailored dashboards for executives, finance, and engineering. 
• Strengthen client trust through transparent, relevant reporting.

2. AI-Powered Anomaly Detection to Catch Spend Surges in Real-Time

Cloud costs can spike in hours due to misconfigurations, runaway workloads, or unplanned usage. With an estimated 21–50% of cloud spend wasted, MSPs need a way to spot overspending before it erodes margins. Cloud spend anomaly detection, multi-tenant, provides them with that visibility, surfacing unexpected cost increases in real-time and tracing them back to the exact workload or service, so they can take action.

Example: A client accidentally leaves a fleet of test instances running over a weekend, driving up compute costs far beyond forecast. With AI anomaly detection, the spike is flagged the same day and traced back to the idle instances. The MSP can then step in to shut them down or use automation rules to pause unused resources before the costs escalate further.

Best practice: Utilize anomaly detection that adapts to historical patterns rather than static thresholds, which allows alerts to surface real risks, not false positives.

Umbrella offers AI-powered anomaly detection that flags spend surges faster than cloud-native tools, with cloud cost visibility that shows which service or project is driving the increase.

Benefits of anomaly detection:

• Stop runaway costs before they hit client budgets. 
• Reduce escalations by addressing issues before clients notice. 
• Strengthen margins with proactive cost control.
  

3. Re-Billing Automation and Margin Tracking

A high-quality cloud cost management platform makes re-billing simple and accurate, with support for markups, discounts, tiers, and shared costs. Manual reconciliation is slow and prone to errors, but automated rebilling ensures accuracy at scale.

 In FinOps, margin tracking is directly tied to financial accountability, helping MSPs understand what clients are spending, as well as the costs associated with delivering those services. The result is transparent billing that fosters client trust and provides margin visibility, thereby protecting profitability.

Example: An MSP supporting a SaaS company rebills cloud services with a 15% markup. The platform automatically applies the markup across AWS compute, Azure storage, and Kubernetes clusters, then generates a client-ready invoice. At the same time, the MSP can see gross margin by service SKU to confirm profitability.

Best practice: Use a billing margin reconciliation tool with built-in audit trails. This proves billing accuracy, defends against disputes, and makes it easy to adjust when usage patterns shift.

Umbrella offers an advanced Re-Billing Wizard with flexible rules, markups, discounts, and margin visibility down to the client or SKU level.

Benefits of re-billing automation and margin tracking:

• Eliminate manual reconciliation across clients. 
• Gain visibility into profitability at every level. 
• Build trust with accurate, transparent invoices.

4. Built-In Waste Detection and Actionable Savings Insights

Cloud waste from idle resources to overprovisioned instances, can quietly eat into profitability. A strong CFM platform should automatically identify inefficiencies, rank them by potential savings, and provide clear steps to fix them. For MSPs, this shift focuses on proactive savings delivery, a FinOps practice that builds client trust and strengthens margins.

Example: A client has provisioned large volumes of block storage in AWS and Azure that remain unattached after workload migrations. Waste detection highlights orphaned storage, calculates the ongoing cost impact, and provides clear steps to decommission it before the charges accumulate.

Best practice: Partner with a platform with a broad range of waste categories across compute, storage, networking, and SaaS, enabling you to uncover opportunities beyond the obvious.

Umbrella offers over 80 categories of waste and tracks realized savings, providing MSPs with a clear way to demonstrate the financial impact of optimizations to clients.

Benefits of waste detection and actionable insights:

• Reduce client cloud costs without manual audits. 
• Prove value with measurable, trackable savings. 
• Protect MSP margins by eliminating waste before it compounds.

5. Forecasting Tools That Help Clients Plan Ahead

Forecasting is a core FinOps practice that enables MSPs to guide their clients’ budgets and procurement strategies. For MSPs, this turns cloud cost conversations into strategic planning sessions that strengthen client relationships.

Example: An MSP supporting a retail client uses forecasting to demonstrate how seasonal peaks, such as Black Friday, will impact compute and storage costs across AWS and Azure. This helps the client set budgets and reserve resources in advance.

Best practice: Use forecasting tools that account for both usage patterns and business context. Models should adapt over time, refining predictions as more data is collected.

Umbrella offers AI models trained on historical usage and client business metrics to generate cloud cost forecasting that supports planning, budgeting, and procurement decisions.

Benefits of forecasting tools:

• Anticipate the client’s spend before it spikes. 
• Support accurate budgeting and procurement planning. 
• Strengthen client trust with data-backed projections.

6. Visibility Across Cloud, SaaS, Kubernetes, and Internal Tools

With unified visibility, MSPs can bring together costs from AWS, Azure, GCP, SaaS apps, and Kubernetes clusters, giving clients a complete financial picture in one place. This includes centralizing this data, supporting custom tagging, and aligning costs to business units or projects. For MSPs, this means reducing shadow IT, surfacing unmanaged SaaS, and ensuring no spend slips through the cracks.

Example: An MSP working with a financial services client consolidates cloud costs from AWS and Azure with SaaS spend from Salesforce and Zoom. The platform consolidates these into a single dashboard, organized by departments such as sales, support, and product engineering.

Best practice: Select a platform that normalizes data across providers and SaaS vendors, while supporting cloud cost allocation by customer for accurate chargeback.

Umbrella offers unified cost visibility across public cloud, SaaS, Kubernetes, and internal tools, helping MSPs align spend to client business priorities.

Benefits of unified visibility:

• Eliminate blind spots across multi-cloud and SaaS environments. 
• Improve cost accountability with department- or project-level reporting. 
• Reduce financial and operational risk from shadow IT.

7. Reserved Instance Management and Optimization

Managing Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans is a critical way to lower long-term cloud costs. Still, it’s also a complex process because usage patterns shift, client needs vary, and reservations can easily become underutilized or misaligned.

Example: An MSP supporting multiple SaaS startups consolidates client demand for AWS compute resources. Instead of each client purchasing RIs separately, the MSP can make a bulk purchase, then allocate the savings proportionally. This reduces waste and maximizes discounts across the portfolio.

Best practice: Use a platform that continuously analyzes usage patterns, recommends optimal RIs or Savings Plans, and provides transparency into how commitments are performing.

Umbrella offers RI utilization across all clients, recommends new opportunities, and provides detailed reporting on EC2 cost optimization.

Benefits of RI management and optimization:

• Maximize long-term savings without risking overcommitment. 
• Improve forecasting by tying commitments to actual usage. 
• Strengthen client relationships with clear, transparent reporting on realized savings.

8. Client-Facing Dashboards and White-Label Reporting

Clients want clear visibility into their cloud costs, and they want it in a format that feels professional and easy to understand. A strong platform should provide dashboards that MSPs can customize and brand, along with automated reporting that delivers insights on a set schedule. 

Example: An MSP creates a branded monthly report for a healthcare client, highlighting spend trends across AWS, Azure, and Kubernetes workloads. Executives see a clean, high-level summary, while engineers receive workload-specific details, all within the same white-labeled platform.

Best practice: Select a platform that allows customized reports per client or project and automatically delivers them to stakeholders. Scheduled reporting saves time and provides consistent communication.

Umbrella offers white-label dashboards and reporting tools that MSPs can tailor to each client, delivering cost insights in a format that builds trust and professionalism.

Benefits of client-facing dashboards and white-label reporting:

• Strengthen transparency with branded, client-ready reports. 
• Save time with scheduled reporting and automated updates. 
• Build client confidence with professional, easy-to-read dashboards.

9. Easy Integration with Existing MSP Tools

Most MSPs already run their businesses on platforms like Jira, ServiceNow, and ERP systems; a cloud cost management platform should fit seamlessly into those workflows, rather than creating another silo. 

Example: A cost anomaly flagged in the platform automatically generates a ServiceNow ticket, assigning it to the client’s support team with details on the affected AWS service. The issue is tracked and resolved without requiring manual intervention.

Best practice: Select a platform with open APIs and prebuilt integrations for the tools you already use. This reduces friction, speeds up response times, and tracks cost insights so that they don’t get lost outside of existing processes.

Umbrella offers integration with third-party systems like Jira and ServiceNow so MSPs can embed cost visibility directly into ticketing and client support workflows.

Benefits of easy integrations:

• Reduce workflow friction by centralizing cost insights. 
• Speed up resolution by connecting anomaly and waste detection to existing ticketing systems. 
• Improve client communication by delivering updates through familiar tools.

10. Single Sign-On and Enterprise Security Support

Managing multiple clients means managing dozens, sometimes hundreds, of users across different organizations. A cloud cost management platform should support Single Sign-On (SSO) to simplify access and offer secure authentication. For MSPs, it’s a requirement for compliance, auditing, and lifecycle management at scale.

Example: An MSP onboarding a new enterprise client connects the platform to the client’s identity provider. Employees can log in with their existing credentials, while role-based permissions ensure that finance, engineering, and executive users only see the data relevant to them.

Best practice: Select a platform that supports SSO and adheres to enterprise-grade security standards. Features like MFA, audit logs, and fine-grained role controls reduce risk while making it easier to manage users across multiple tenants.

Umbrella offers SSO for seamless, secure login experiences and includes enterprise-ready features that simplify compliance and user management across clients.

Benefits of SSO and enterprise security:

• Streamline user access with centralized login. 
• Strengthen compliance with audit trails and secure authentication. 
• Reduce administrative overhead by simplifying account lifecycle management. 

Select a Cloud Cost Platform Designed for MSP Priorities, Growth, and Margins

Selecting a cloud cost management platform with these 10 features helps MSPs simplify complexity, protect profitability, and deliver stronger outcomes for clients. The right platform should offer:

• Multi-tenant dashboards with role-based access. 
• Real-time cloud spend anomaly detection multi-tenant. 
• Automated re-billing with a billing margin reconciliation tool. 
• Waste detection with clear cost-saving actions. 
• Forecasting tools for accurate budgeting. 
• Unified visibility and cloud cost allocation by customer. 
• Reserved Instance optimization tied to usage. 
• White-label dashboards and reporting. 
• Integrations with Jira, ServiceNow, and other MSP tools. 
• Enterprise-grade security with SSO.

Umbrella was built around MSP priorities, profitability, growth, and client trust. With features such as AI anomaly detection, automated rebilling, 80+ waste categories, and multi-tenant dashboards, it provides providers with the tools to scale confidently while protecting their margins.

Ready to align with MSP priorities? Explore Cloud cost management for MSPs or book a demo to see how Umbrella helps you turn cloud complexity into growth.