Using service-linked roles for Billing Conductor

AWS Billing Conductor uses AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service-linked roles. A service-linked role is a unique type of IAM role that is linked directly to Billing Conductor. Service-linked roles are predefined by Billing Conductor and include all the permissions that the service requires to call other AWS services on your behalf.

A service-linked role makes setting up Billing Conductor easier because you don’t have to manually add the necessary permissions. Billing Conductor defines the permissions of its service-linked roles, and unless defined otherwise, only Billing Conductor can assume its roles. The defined permissions include the trust policy and the permissions policy, and that permissions policy cannot be attached to any other IAM entity.

You can delete a service-linked role only after first deleting their related resources. This protects your Billing Conductor resources because you can't inadvertently remove permission to access the resources.

For information about other services that support service-linked roles, see AWS services that work with IAM and look for the services that have Yes in the Service-linked roles column. Choose a Yes with a link to view the service-linked role documentation for that service.

Service-linked role permissions for Billing Conductor

Billing Conductor uses the service-linked role named AWSServiceRoleForBillingConductor – this role allows Billing Conductor to create and manage billing groups in your account on your behalf.

The AWSServiceRoleForBillingConductor service-linked role trusts the following services to assume the role:

The role permissions policy named AWSBillingConductorRolePolicy allows Billing Conductor to complete the following actions on the specified resources:

For the full policy document, including the JSON, see AWSBillingConductorRolePolicy in the AWS Managed Policy Reference Guide.

You must configure permissions to allow your users, groups, or roles to create, edit, or delete a service-linked role. For more information, see Service-linked role permissions in the IAM User Guide.

Creating a service-linked role for Billing Conductor

You don't need to manually create a service-linked role. When you enable the automatic billing group creation preference for a billing transfer, Billing Conductor creates the service-linked role for you.

Editing a service-linked role for Billing Conductor

Billing Conductor does not allow you to edit the AWSServiceRoleForBillingConductor service-linked role. After you create a service-linked role, you cannot change the name of the role because various entities might reference the role. However, you can edit the description of the role using IAM. For more information, see Editing a service-linked role in the IAM User Guide.

Deleting a service-linked role for Billing Conductor

If you no longer need to use a feature or service that requires a service-linked role, we recommend that you delete that role. That way you don’t have an unused entity that is not actively monitored or maintained. However, you must clean up your service-linked role before you can manually delete it.

Clean up the service-linked role

Before you can delete the AWSServiceRoleForBillingConductor service-linked role, you must disable every automatic billing group creation preference that references it. While any enabled preference references the role, Billing Conductor reports the role as in use and the deletion is blocked.

Manually delete the service-linked role

After you disable the referencing preferences, use the IAM console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS API to delete the AWSServiceRoleForBillingConductor service-linked role. For more information, see Deleting a service-linked role in the IAM User Guide.

Supported Regions for Billing Conductor service-linked roles

Billing Conductor supports using service-linked roles in all of the Regions where the service is available. For more information, see AWS Regions and endpoints.