How to use the Forecast page controls to customize your view, compare periods, and drill into cost layer details.
The Forecast page is the primary place to review your cloud cost structure and understand how spending is trending across Cost Layers. Beyond the table itself, a set of controls in the top-right of the page give you flexible ways to look at the data — and clicking into any Actuals cell opens a detailed comparison panel.
The calendar button in the top right controls the time window shown across the table and chart. Click it to open the date range picker.The picker has two settings:Granularity — toggle between Month and Quarter columns. Quarter view condenses the table, useful when reviewing longer time windows with your finance team.Range presets — choose a common window with one click:
Preset
What it shows
Last 6 months
Six months of actuals, ending with the most recent complete month
Next 12 months
The current month through the next 12 months of forecast
3mo + 9mo
Three months of actuals plus nine months of forecast (default)
6mo + 6mo
Six months of actuals plus six months of forecast
Current year
January through December of the current calendar year
YTD
January through the current month
You can also set a custom Start and End date using the date pickers, then click Apply.
Changes the numbers in the table from dollar amounts to a percentage view.
Option
What it shows
None
Absolute cost in dollars (default)
As Percent of Total
Each cost layer as a share of total cloud spend
Percent of Parent Cost Layer
Each child cost layer as a share of its parent layer
The percent-of-parent view is particularly useful when reviewing cost allocation — it shows how spend distributes within a layer (for example, how much of Production is Compute vs. Database vs. Data Transfer).
The chart icon (bar chart icon, third from the right) changes the visualization above the table.
Option
Description
Layers (Stacked)
Stacked bar chart — each color represents a top-level Cost Layer, and heights show total spend per period. Best for seeing total cloud spend at a glance.
Line (Series)
Line chart — each Cost Layer is a separate line. Best for seeing trends within individual layers over time.
Area (% of total)
Area chart — shows each Cost Layer as a share of total spend. Best for seeing how the cost mix is shifting over time.
Clicking any Actuals cell in the table opens a detailed comparison panel on the right side of the screen.The panel shows the selected Cost Layer compared against the prior month. Because calendar months have different numbers of days, Cloud Capital normalizes spend to a 28-day equivalent so the comparison is fair — a 31-day month with the same daily run rate won’t look artificially higher than a 28-day month.The comparison includes:Month header — shows which two months are being compared, for example “February 2026 vs January 2026.”Comparison bar — a visual bar showing how the two months compare. The prior month is shown at full width; the current month is scaled proportionally, with the percentage change labeled.Daily Spend Average — the average daily spend for each month. The prior month’s value appears in parentheses, so you can see at a glance whether spending is trending up or down on a per-day basis.Effective Savings Rate — the commitment savings rate for each month. This shows whether commitment coverage is improving or eroding month over month.Daily cost chart — a bar chart of day-by-day amortized spend since the beginning of the comparison month. Useful for spotting specific days or events that caused cost spikes.
Scrolling down in the panel reveals the Top Services Comparison table.This table lists the cloud services that contributed most to spend in this Cost Layer, showing each service’s share of total cost for both months and the change between them. This is one of the fastest ways to understand why a cost layer moved — whether it was a specific service scaling up, a deployment that changed resource utilization, or a commitment change affecting net cost.
Cell detail is only available for Actuals columns. Forecast columns do not have month-over-month comparison data since they represent projected values rather than recorded spend.
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