GCP Billing export

The GCP Billing export integration lets the package track real dollar costs for your BigQuery queries and storage over time, instead of estimating them from bytes processed.

Without billing export, the package computes costs from pricing formulas (configurable in package settings). With billing export, you get exact invoice-level costs directly from GCP.

What it enables

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Step 1 — Enable Cloud Billing export in GCP

Follow the official GCP documentation to set up the detailed usage cost export to BigQuery. The key steps are:

1. Open Billing → Billing export in the GCP Console.
2. Select BigQuery export → Detailed usage cost.
3. Choose a project and dataset where the export will be written.
4. Enable the export — GCP will create a table named gcp_billing_export_resource_v1_* in your dataset.

tip

Use the Detailed usage cost export (not the Standard one) — it provides SKU-level granularity which gives the package much more accurate per-job cost attribution.

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Step 2 — Configure the package

Add the following variables to your dbt_project.yml:

# dbt_project.yml
vars:
  enable_gcp_billing_export: true
  gcp_billing_export_storage_project: 'my-billing-project'   # project that holds the export dataset
  gcp_billing_export_dataset: 'my_billing_dataset'           # dataset where GCP writes the export
  gcp_billing_export_table: 'gcp_billing_export_resource_v1' # table name (without date suffix)

Or set them as environment variables:

export DBT_BQ_MONITORING_ENABLE_GCP_BILLING_EXPORT="true"
export DBT_BQ_MONITORING_GCP_BILLING_EXPORT_STORAGE_PROJECT="my-billing-project"
export DBT_BQ_MONITORING_GCP_BILLING_EXPORT_DATASET="my_billing_dataset"
export DBT_BQ_MONITORING_GCP_BILLING_EXPORT_TABLE="gcp_billing_export_resource_v1"

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Variables reference

Variable	Environment Variable	Description	Default
enable_gcp_billing_export	DBT_BQ_MONITORING_ENABLE_GCP_BILLING_EXPORT	Toggle billing export integration	false
gcp_billing_export_storage_project	DBT_BQ_MONITORING_GCP_BILLING_EXPORT_STORAGE_PROJECT	GCP project containing the billing export dataset	required if enabled
gcp_billing_export_dataset	DBT_BQ_MONITORING_GCP_BILLING_EXPORT_DATASET	Dataset where GCP writes billing data	required if enabled
gcp_billing_export_table	DBT_BQ_MONITORING_GCP_BILLING_EXPORT_TABLE	Table name for billing export (without date suffix)	required if enabled
lookback_incremental_billing_window_days	DBT_BQ_MONITORING_LOOKBACK_INCREMENTAL_BILLING_WINDOW_DAYS	Days to re-read for late-arriving billing records	3

note

Billing data can arrive late (up to 48 hours). The lookback_incremental_billing_window_days variable (default: 3) controls how far back to re-read billing data on each incremental run to catch late-arriving records.

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Verifying the setup

After running the package, check that costs are populated:

dbt run -s gcp_billing_export_resource_v1
dbt run-operation debug_dbt_bigquery_monitoring_variables

Then query the datamart:

SELECT
  day,
  cost_category,
  ROUND(SUM(cost), 2) AS total_cost
FROM {{ ref('daily_spend') }}
WHERE day >= DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 7 DAY)
GROUP BY 1, 2
ORDER BY 1 DESC