SAP-C02 Practice Question: Design Solutions for Organizational Complexity
A global company uses AWS Organizations with many OUs and accounts. The finance team needs to track costs by cost center, which is tagged on each resource. However, some resources are not tagged. Which solution will provide the MOST accurate cost allocation?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume tag-based filtering or reporting tools (Cost Explorer, Budgets, QuickSight) can handle untagged resources, but they cannot—only Cost Categories with a default rule can allocate costs for untagged resources.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use AWS Cost Categories to group costs by tag value and set a default rule for untagged resources.
AWS Cost Categories allow you to group costs by tag values and, crucially, set a default rule for untagged resources. This ensures that all resources—tagged or not—are assigned to a cost center, providing the most accurate cost allocation across the entire organization. Other options only filter or report on tagged resources, leaving untagged costs unallocated.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable cost allocation tags and use AWS Cost Explorer to filter by tag.
Why it's wrong here
Filtering does not allocate untagged resources; they are excluded.
- ✗
Create AWS Budgets reports for each cost center using tag filters.
Why it's wrong here
Budgets are for alerts, not cost allocation.
- ✗
Export AWS Cost and Usage Reports to Amazon QuickSight and use tag-based filtering.
Why it's wrong here
Tag-based filtering in Amazon QuickSight relies entirely on the presence of metadata; it cannot recover cost data for resources lacking the specified tags. This approach fails to address the requirement to account for untagged resources, which require AWS Cost Categories to map costs based on other attributes like Account IDs or service types. While useful for visualising granular spend once tagging is complete, QuickSight lacks the logic to categorise missing tags into a default cost centre.
- ✓
Use AWS Cost Categories to group costs by tag value and set a default rule for untagged resources.
Why this is correct
Cost Categories can group costs by tags and assign untagged resources to a default category.
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