The FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification (FOCUS) is an open technical specification for technology billing data that defines clear requirements for vendors to produce uniform billing datasets.

The FOCUS Project kicked off in 2023 with the goal of establishing a common format and terminology for billing datasets produced by technology vendors, and consumed by FinOps practitioners and vendor tooling.

Latest Version: FOCUS 1.4

The FOCUS Steering Committee ratified the FOCUS version 1.4 specification on June 4, 2026. The release adds 2 datasets, 47 columns, 6 attributes, 17 glossary entries, and 2 supported features. The improvements help satisfy these primary use cases:

Read the FOCUS 1.4 FinOps Insights article for more release notes.

FOCUS 1.3

The FOCUS Steering Committee ratified the FOCUS version 1.3 specification on December 4, 2025. The improvements in this FOCUS release help satisfy these primary use cases:

• Track Contract Commitments in a Dedicated Dataset: A new, supplemental “Contract Commitment” dataset isolates contract terms—start/end dates, remaining units, descriptions—from cost/usage rows. One query shows all active commitments. This is the first instance of extending FOCUS language to an adjacent dataset, giving practitioners a structured method to understand their contract commitments.
• Split Shared Costs and Understand of Data Generators’ Allocation Method: New allocation-specific columns let data generators expose how they split costs across workloads. Practitioners can now see the methodology, not just the output.
• Verify Data Recency and Completeness: Providers must now timestamp datasets (last-updated metadata) and flag completeness status. Users know immediately if data is final or subject to revision, giving them confidence in making decisions with it, and can avoid processing data which are not yet complete.
• Service Provider and Host Provider Columns: Users can now distinguish between the provider that makes a resource or service available for purchase (Service Provider) from the provider that the underlying resource or service is deployed on (Host Provider). This also disambiguates reseller relationships across entity types.

Read this FinOps Insights article for more release notes.

FOCUS 1.2

FOCUS version 1.2 was ratified by the FOCUS Steering Committee on May 29, 2025. It helps to satisfy these use cases:

• Cloud+ unified reporting: Combine SaaS, PaaS, and Cloud billing in one schema, so a single dashboard or SQL query now covers Practitioners’ scope of responsibility and reduces potential for duplicate charges.
• SaaS / PaaS | Virtual currency lifecycle: Analyze credit and token purchase patterns to confirm commitments match demand, track burn-down daily, forecast exhaustion, and avoid surprise overages, and rank charge categories that drive token consumption and target high-consumption drivers. Users can compare discounted vs. list token rates to quantify contract savings and identify future optimization opportunities.
• FinOps | Multi-currency normalization: Convert mixed-currency datasets (e.g., USD, EUR, tokens) to a single currency for budgeting and P&L analysis, with auditable exchange rates.
• Cloud | Invoice reconciliation & chargeback: Users can now associate every charge, credit, or refund to its provider invoice ID. They can also allocate shared costs accurately to business entities using BillingAccountType and SubAccountType dimensions. This allows them to surface provider credit memos and validate how each one reduces net spend. Practitioners can also aggregate billing data and reconcile it against invoices to flag reporting errors.
• Analytics | Unit-cost & density metric: Calculate cost-per x (e.g., GB stored, request, user) across providers, expose high-density spend, and prioritize savings opportunity areas.

FOCUS 1.1

Learn about FOCUS Version 1.1.

FOCUS Version 1.1 was ratified on November 7, 2024 . This version adds new Columns that deepen support for billing data generated by cloud service providers, giving FinOps Practitioners the ability to do more granular multi-cloud analysis on that multi-cloud data. This release also improves metadata to better support Extract Transform Load (ETL) processes, and includes normative changes for some existing FOCUS Columns.

See details of older versions via the Changelog.

Adoption of the Specification

See the Getting Started page to review available data exports from supporting technology vendors. Documentation for supporting  technology vendors across AI tools and serivces, cloud, SaaS, platform, infrastructure, and more are under review and will be released once available. Practitioners should expect that adoption of the Specification will happen at a different pace for each vendor.

Practitioner Adoption

FinOps Practitioners can get technology billing data in the FOCUS format from many technology providers, with many more on the way. Practitioners are beginning to use these uniform datasets to uncover insights that inform decision-making when performing FinOps Capabilities.

Vendor Adoption

FinOps vendors are also adopting the requirements of the Specification and its terminology for their tools and service offerings.

Release Planning and Roadmap

The FOCUS Steering Committee and Maintainers are now engaging in roadmap development and release planning.

Vendors and Practitioners can expect incremental releases over the next several years as the Specification is expanded to provide the data elements necessary to perform additional FinOps Capabilities and integrate additional types of IT spending.