How-to: Allow IAM users access to the AWS Billing Dashboard

By default, IAM users do not have access to the Billing dashboard and it’s not immediately obvious where to configure this, considering that setting an inline policy for ‘All Billing Actions’ as well as giving the full Admin or Billing credentials will also not enable the billing dashboard option.

Error Message

The error message looks like this:
You Need Permissions

You don’t have permission to access billing information for this account. Contact your AWS administrator if you need help. If you are an AWS administrator, you can provide permissions for your users or groups by making sure that (1) this account allows IAM and federated users to access billing information and (2) you have the required IAM permissions.

Solution

  • Log in to your account as ‘root’
  • Then, go to main account page: https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home?#/account
  • Scroll down to the section called: ‘IAM User and Role Access to Billing Information’,  and ignore the warning that ‘IAM user/role access to billing information is deactivated’
  • Click on the Edit button and put a checkmark on Activate IAM Access. Press Update and you’re done!