Google ACE Setting Up a Cloud Solution Environment Practice Question
A company has multiple Google Cloud projects and wants to track costs by department. They have already applied labels to resources with key 'department'. What is the next step to view costs grouped by department?
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
✓
Go to Billing > Reports and filter by 'department' label
Costs can be viewed in the Cloud Console under Billing > Reports. You can filter by labels to see costs grouped by label values.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Run gcloud billing accounts list and parse the output
Why it's wrong here
The `gcloud billing accounts list` command only enumerates billing accounts and their metadata (ID, name, open/closed status). It does not expose cost data, label dimensions, or per-project/aggregated spend. Parsing its output would yield no department-level cost breakdown, so this cannot satisfy the need to view costs grouped by the 'department' label.
- ✗
Set up a budget alert with department labels
Why it's wrong here
Budget alerts are threshold-based notifications: you can set a budget amount and optionally filter by labels, but the alert only fires when spend exceeds threshold. It never produces a report or a breakdown of costs by label. Alerts are for monitoring and triggering actions, not for reviewing cost groupings after the fact.
- ✗
Enable billing export to BigQuery and run a query
Why it's wrong here
Enabling billing export to BigQuery is a powerful method for detailed, custom, and historical cost analysis, but it is not necessary simply to view costs grouped by a label in the Google Cloud console. The Cloud Billing Reports page already provides label-based groupings without any export setup; BigQuery export is the right choice when you need programmatic queries or retention beyond the default data window.
- ✓
Go to Billing > Reports and filter by 'department' label
Why this is correct
The Cloud Billing Reports page provides a native console view of cost data and includes filtering by labels such as 'department'. Once you select the appropriate time range and filter by the 'department' label, the report dynamically groups costs by that label, giving you the required department-level breakdown instantly and without any additional configuration. This is the correct and most direct tool for this task.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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