Cloud financial management
The discipline of governing cloud spend — visibility, allocation, commitments, optimization, and accountability across engineering and finance.
Updated 2026-04-303 min read
Definition
Cloud financial management (CFM) is the set of processes, tools, and operating models used to plan, monitor, optimize, and attribute public cloud spending — often implemented through FinOps practices that connect engineering, finance, and business owners.
Why it matters
CFM is how IT leaders make cloud spend defendable to the board: named owners, allocation policy, commitment strategy, and a cadence for reviewing waste before it compounds.
Related Terms
FinOps maturity
How far along an organization is in cloud financial management — from crawl to walk to run across inform, optimize, and operate.
Cloud cost allocation
Attributing cloud spend to teams, products, or environments using tags, accounts, and policies — the basis for showback and chargeback.
Cost forecasting
Projecting future technology spend from usage trends, commitments, and planned workload — not from last month's bill alone.