# Custom Cost Centers

Connect custom cost centers alongside the native cost centers supported by Finout. This integration allows you to consolidate costs from any source or system into a unified view, combining custom expenditures with your cloud expenses using Virtual Tags for further cost consolidation.

Custom cost centers are integrated via CSV files hosted on S3.

**To connect a custom cost center:**

1. Upload data in CSV format to an S3 bucket that Finout has access to:
   * **CSV Format**:

     ```
     "UsageDate","Cost","Dimension1","Dimension2"
     "2022-06-07","12.12","X","US"
     "2022-06-07","6.22","Y","US"
     "2022-06-08","0.05","X,"US"
     ```
   * **Mandatory fields**:

     * **UsageDate** - Date the cost was incurred (YYYY-MM-DD format)
     * **Cost** - Amount in USD (double precision)

     <div data-gb-custom-block data-tag="hint" data-style="info" class="hint hint-info"><p><strong>Note</strong>:</p><ul><li>Additional dimensions can be added, as a dedicated column per dimension.</li><li>Data should be uploaded as a single CSV file per day.</li></ul></div>
2. Contact Finout support or open a support ticket and send them the CSV file stored in the S3 bucket.

   Once approved and ingested, your custom cost center will appear in Finout alongside native cost centers. This may take up to 48 hours from onboarding.<br>

   <div data-gb-custom-block data-tag="hint" data-style="info" class="hint hint-info"><p><strong>Note</strong>: Finout will automatically ingest every file created or updated since the previous ingestion; when past files are edited, their up-to-date versions will overwrite existing data.</p></div>

#### Next Steps

Once your custom cost center is running, you can:

* View and analyze custom costs in your cost dashboards
* Create custom cost categories and dimensions
* Set up alerts and anomaly detection on custom cost data
* Use Virtual Tags to consolidate and allocate costs across your organization

<br>


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