# Daily Hack #day75 - AWS Billing Federation

After **creating your AWS account**, you are signed in as the account owner, i.e., the **root user**. AWS recommends that we never use this account for everyday activities. Instead, we should create [our first IAM user](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html#create-iam-users), and use it for working with AWS. We would then sign in as a **root user only** to perform service **management tasks** such as changing your account or payment details.

If you follow this best practice, you may still end up signing in as a root user every now and then to **check your AWS bill** because, by default, **billing information is only available to a root user**. However, there is a better way. You can grant the *Billing and Cost Management* console access to your **IAM user**. Once you’ve done this, you will be able to access the Billing console from your **non-root user**. Here is how you can **“federate” billing access to an IAM user**.

First, you have to Activate IAM access in the [account settings](https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home?#/account):

Then, you can attach a **Billing policy to your IAM user**:

You can choose between full access or read-only access:

For a more detailed description of the billing federation, see [AWS docs](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/tutorial_billing.html).