Link a Billing account to your project

Follow this step-by-step guide to link a billing account to your project.

Overview

A Billing account is used to define who pays for a given set of resources, and it can be linked to one or more projects. Project usage is tracked and charged to the linked Billing account. You can manage your Billing accounts using the Google Cloud Console. For more information about the Cloud Console, visit the General guide to the console.

This section is for guiding you through the process of linking a Billing account to your project. If you already linked it, the next step is going to enable the APIs to start installing functions!

1. Create a new Billing account

  1. In the Google Cloud Platform, click on Console.

  2. In the project drop-down at the top of the Google Cloud Console page, select your project.

  3. Open the console Navigation menu, and then select Billing.

If billing is NOT enabled:

  • If billing is not enabled on the project, a pop-up window opens, with text similar to:

    "This project is not linked to a billing account"

    • To enable billing on the project, select Link a billing account.

    • To view a list of billing accounts for your organization, select Manage billing accounts.

If billing is enabled:

  • If billing is enabled on the project, and if you have only one Billing account, the Billing Overview page is displayed.

  • If billing is enabled on the project, and if you have more than one Billing account, a pop-up window will display, with text similar to:

    "Billing account "[Your Billing Account]" is linked to this project"

    • To view the Billing Overview page for the Billing account that is linked to the project, select Go to the linked billing account.

    • To view a list of Billing accounts for your organization, select Manage billing accounts.

For information on viewing a list of all your projects and the Cloud Billing account linked to each project, see View projects linked to billing accounts.

4. Click LINK A BILLING ACCOUNT.

  • Depending on your configuration, you will also need to select one of the following:

    • If you see an Organization drop-down, then you must also select an Organization before you can continue.

    • If you are prompted to select a Country, select the country that corresponds with your billing mailing address. The country you select will affect the payment options available in the next step. The currency for your Billing account is automatically assigned based on the country you select.

    • Read and agree to the Terms of Service.

5. Click Continue.

6. Choose the Google payments profile that will be associated with this Billing account. A payments profile is shared and used across all Google products (such as Google Workspace, Google Cloud, Google Fi, and more). You can choose an existing payments profile, or create a new payments profile. If you choose to create, follow the instructions on the screen to set up your payments profile.

7. When you are done setting all the options and details, click Start my free trial.

By default, the person who creates the Billing account is a Billing Account Administrator for the Billing account.

New Google Cloud users can take advantage of a 90-day trial period that includes $300 in free Billing credits to explore and evaluate Google Cloud products and services.

2. Verify your email address

To ensure you receive billing-related notifications, GCP might ask you to verify your email address.

To verify your email address, look for a verification email in the Inbox for the email address you used as your billing account Primary contact, and then click the verification link in the email to activate your billing account.

About authorization requests

After setting up your account, you might notice a $0.00 transaction from Google which is a pending authorization request between our billing system and the bank that issued your credit or debit card. In some countries, authorizations are $1 (which might be converted to local currency by your bank). These transactions might appear as pending on your statement for up to a month. Please keep in mind they are authorization requests only, not actual charges. If you have questions, we recommend you contact your bank about the authorization status.

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