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On June 3, 2025, the FinOps Foundation released the FOCUS 1.2 standard, introducing key enhancements to help FinOps teams analyze, manage, and optimize cloud costs. We’re excited to announce that Microsoft Cost Management now supports exporting cost data using the FOCUS 1.2 schema, available in preview. This update empowers organizations to accelerate their FinOps journey with richer, more standardized data.

FOCUS 1.2 provides FinOps teams with a unified, auditable, and highly detailed dataset that simplifies cost management across cloud, SaaS, and PaaS services. By integrating billing data into a single schema, teams can streamline operations and use one dashboard or query for all technology spend—eliminating redundant workflows.

The dataset is in preview as a few fields required for full FOCUS 1.2 conformance are not yet populated. These will be enabled in future updates as supporting capabilities become available.

What’s new in the FOCUS 1.2-preview dataset

This release introduces several important enhancements designed to make cost management more powerful and intuitive.

Several extension columns have been renamed to align to FOCUS 1.2:

• x_InvoiceId is now InvoiceId.


• x_PricingCurrency is now PricingCurrency.


• x_SkuMeterName is now SkuMeter.

In addition to these, you’ll also find a few new columns to provide richer insights and greater flexibility:

• ServiceSubcategory is a provider-agnostic breakdown of ServiceCategory.


• x_ServiceModel is the cloud service model (IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS) for the service being charged for.


• x_SkuPlanName is the marketplace plan name. This was inadvertently left out of our previous FOCUS dataset versions.


• x_AmortizationClass indicates if a charge is a principal payment that will be amortized or is an effective charge that is amortized over time. This can be used to filter out principal charges when summing ListCost and ContractedCost to avoid double-counting.

Lastly, the following columns were added to align to FOCUS 1.2 but are not being set yet. These columns are currently null (empty) and will be populated as new capabilities become available. You will not need to update the FOCUS version when they are specified.

• CapacityReservationId


• CapacityReservationStatus


• CommitmentDiscountQuantity


• CommitmentDiscountUnit


• SkuPriceDetails

Updates for all FOCUS datasets

As part of this update, the following columns were also updated in all FOCUS dataset versions to better align with FOCUS requirements and provide a more complete dataset.

• x_SkuTier is now set to a unique tier ID.


• SubAccountName, x_AccountId, x_AccountName, x_AccountOwnerId, x_InvoiceSectionId, x_InvoiceSectionName, and x_PricingUnitDescription no longer use placeholder values like “Unassigned” and “-2” to meet FOCUS requirements.

Next steps

To learn more about the FOCUS 1.2 schema and its capabilities, please refer to the FOCUS cost and usage details file schema.

To get started, simply create a new export and select the FOCUS 1.2-preview dataset version. We look forward to seeing how these enhancements help you drive greater value and efficiency in your FinOps practice.