# Using budgets for Savings Plans
You can use AWS Budgets to set budgets for your Savings Plan utilization, coverage, and costs. You can track your costs as you continue to optimize through AWS.
You can create and set up a budget for your Savings Plans in two ways:
+ [Using a template (simplified)](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/latest/userguide/sp-create-savingsplans-budget-template.html)
+ [Customizing a budget (advanced)](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/savingsplans/latest/userguide/sp-create-savingsplans-budget.html)
For more information, see [Managing Your Costs with AWS Budgets](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2/budgets-managing-costs.html) in the *AWS Cost Management User Guide*.
# Using a template to create a Savings Plans budget
Use the following procedure to create a coverage budget for your Savings Plans using a template.
You can create a budget using a template with recommended configurations. Budget templates are a simplified way to start using AWS Budgets, with a single page workflow, unlike the 5-step workflow that is required for [Customizing a budget (advanced)](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cost-management/latest/userguide/custom-budgets.html).
**To create a Savings Plans coverage budget using a template**
1. Open the Billing and Cost Management console at [https://console.aws.amazon.com/costmanagement/](https://console.aws.amazon.com/costmanagement/).
1. In the navigation pane, choose **Budgets**.
1. At the top of the page, choose **Create budget**.
1. Under **Budget setup**, choose **Use a template (simplified)**.
1. Under **Templates**, choose **Daily Savings Plans coverage budget**.
1. For **Budget name**, enter the name of your budget. Your budget name must be unique within your account and can use A-Z, a-z, spaces, and the following characters:
```
_.:/=+-%@
```
1. For **Coverage threshold**, enter the coverage percentage that you want AWS to notify you at. For example, for a coverage budget where you want to stay above 80 percent, enter **80**. Budget notifies you when your overall coverage goes below 80 percent.
1. For **Email recipients**, enter the email addresses that you want the notifications to be sent to. Separate multiple email addresses with a comma. A notification can have up to 10 email addresses.
1. Choose **Create budget**.
# Customizing a Savings Plans budget
Use the following procedure to create a customized budget for Savings Plans utilization or Savings Plans coverage.
You can customize a budget to set parameters specific to your use case. You can customize the time period, the start month, and specific accounts. Creating a customized budget involves a 5-step workflow.
**To create a Savings Plans budget**
1. Open the Billing and Cost Management console at [https://console.aws.amazon.com/costmanagement/](https://console.aws.amazon.com/costmanagement/).
1. In the navigation pane, choose **Budgets**.
1. At the top of the page, choose **Create budget**.
1. Under **Budget setup**, choose **Customize (advanced)**.
1. Under **Budget types**, choose **Savings Plans budget**.
1. Choose **Next**.
1. For **Budget name**, enter the name of your budget. Your budget name must be unique within your account and can use A-Z, a-z, spaces, and the following characters:
```
_.:/=+-%@
```
1. For **Period**, choose how often you want the budget to reset the actual and forecasted spend. Choose **Daily** for every day, **Monthly** for every month, **Quarterly** for every three months, or **Annually** for every year. All budget times are in UTC.
1. For **Monitor my spend against**, choose what you want the budget to track.
**Utilization of Savings Plans** is how much of your Savings Plans you've used.
**Coverage of Savings Plans** is how much of your usage a Savings Plan covers.
1. For **Utilization threshold**, enter the utilization percentage that you want AWS to notify you at. For example, for a utilization budget where you want to stay above 90 percent Savings Plans utilization, enter **90**, and the budget notifies you when your overall Savings Plans utilization goes below 90 percent.
1. For **Coverage threshold**, enter the coverage percentage that you want AWS to notify you at. For example, for a coverage budget where you want to stay above 80 percent, enter **80**. Budget notifies you when your overall coverage goes below 80 percent.
1. Under **Budget scope**, add [filtering](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2/budgets-create-filters.html) and use advanced options to narrow the set of cost information tracked as part of your budget.
1. Choose **Next**.
1. Under **Alert settings**, choose whether to send budget alerts via email and/or Amazon SNS topic.
1. For **Email recipients**, enter the email addresses that you want the notifications to be sent to. Separate multiple email addresses with a comma. A notification can have up to 10 email addresses.
1. (Optional) For **Amazon SNS ARN**, enter the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for your Amazon SNS topic.
If you want to use an Amazon SNS topic for your notification but don't have one, see [Create a Topic](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/CreateTopic.html) in the *Amazon Simple Notification Service Developer Guide*.
AWS verifies that your budget has permission to send notifications to your Amazon SNS topic by sending a test email to your Amazon SNS topic.
For a sample policy and instructions on granting your budget permissions, see [Creating an Amazon SNS Topic for Budget Notifications](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2/budgets-sns-policy.html). A notification can be subscribed to only one Amazon SNS topic.
1. Choose **Next**.
1. Choose **Create budget**.