---
sourceDocument: Australia Asset Management
sourceDocumentLink: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/it-asset-management
Release :
- australia
ft:locale :
- en-US
ft:publication_title :
- Australia Asset Management
ft:clusterId :
- itam
bundleId :
- itam
workflow :
- Technology
---
# Business hours
# Business hours {#ariaid-title1}
Release version: Australia
Updated March 12, 2026
 3 minutes to read
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## Summary of Business hours
The Business hours feature in ServiceNow Cloud Cost Management helps customers optimize cloud resource usage by applying policies that identify and manage resources running outside of defined business hours.
By scheduling resources to run only during specified business hours, customers can significantly reduce cloud spending.
This feature supports AWS and GCP databases (via the insightsadmin role), while Azure support is limited to compute resources.
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## How Business hours Work
* Each Billing Download job triggers multiple jobs, including Business Hours, which analyze usage and spending data to update actionable recommendations.
* For each policy, the system examines the CMDB to find resources matching the criteria and updates reports showing business and non-business hour usage over the past 30 days.
* Business Hours operations integrate with ServiceNow Change Management to enforce on/off schedules via change requests, which can be generated per resource or for all matching resources collectively.
* After change request approval, resource start/stop actions are scheduled according to the policy.
* Processes repeat with each billing data update to maintain accuracy.
**Important specifics:**
* **AWS:** Instances in Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs) are excluded from Business Hours operations to avoid conflicts, visible on the Excluded Resources tab.
* **Google Cloud:** Managed Instance Groups (MIGs) are supported, enabling scalable, highly available workloads with automated management features.
## Business hours Policy Example
An example Finance department policy includes:
* Active status, applying policies upon each billing update
* Manual approval type (Normal Change), requiring user approval for change requests before scheduling
* Business hours defined as 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with specified power-on and power-off flows
* Resource criteria: AWS provider, specific service account, and tagged as Department=Finance
* Upon approval, resources start and stop according to the schedule, with slight timing variations due to system demand
## Approval Types and Their Effects
* **Auto-approval (Standard Change):** Automatically generates and approves change requests, applies schedules, and adds resources to reports without manual intervention.
* **Manual approval (Normal Change):** Generates change requests requiring approval by users with the snchangewrite role before applying schedules and updating reports.
* **Report-only:** Generates recommendations and reports without applying schedules or creating change requests, useful for monitoring purposes.
## Additional Capabilities
* Users can define or update Business hours policies to tailor resource scheduling to organizational needs.
* Resources can be excluded from all Cloud Cost Management reports when necessary.
This feature empowers ServiceNow customers to efficiently manage cloud resource runtime, control costs, and maintain governance through integrated change management workflows.
A Business hours job applies policies to identify resources that are running when they should be powered off, reports them, and can start and stop them on a schedule that you specify. Running only during specified business
hours can significantly reduce your cloud spend.
The insights_admin role can create policies for AWS and GCP databases.
Note:
Azure only supports compute, not database.
## How the Business hours feature works {#bh-cloudin__section_qrv_1k5_phb}
Each successful execution of a Billing Download job triggers the Budget Forecast, Business Hours, Commitments, Rightsizing, and Unused resources jobs to analyze the spend and usage data and to update the actionable recommendations in the reports. Business Hours jobs follow this process.Figure 1. How the Business Hours feature works
1. For each Business hours policy, examine the CMDB to identify resources that match the policy criteria.
2. For each resource that matches a policy, update Business hours reports that show spend for business hours and non-business hours usage for the last 30 days.
3. Business hours operations are directly integrated with the ServiceNow® Change Management feature. For Manual Approval or Auto-approval policy types, generate change requests to enforce the on/off schedule that is defined in the policy. Either of the following, depending on policy settings:
* Generate a change request for each resource that matches a policy.
* Generate a single change request that applies to all CIs that match the policy.
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4. When a change request is approved, schedule the on/off actions for the associated resources as specified in the policy.
5. Repeat the process whenever billing data is updated.
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Important:
AWS only:
* AWS Auto Scaling group (ASG) operations act to maintain minimum capacity for ASG-member resources. To avoid conflicts with ASG operations, the Cloud Cost Management app excludes all instances that are part of an Auto Scaling group from Business Hours operations.
* You can view ASG-member resources on the Excluded Resources tab for Business Hours.
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Google Cloud only: The instance can be defined as a Managed instance groups (MIGs). MIGs let you operate applications on multiple identical VMs. You can make your workloads scalable
and highly available by taking advantage of automated MIG services, including: auto-scaling, auto-healing, regional (multiple zone) deployment, and automatic updating.
## Business hours policy
The Finance department policy example has the following settings:
* The policy is active, which is applied every time billing and usage data is updated.
* The approval type is Manual approval (Normal Change), which means that, after a qualified user approves the change request, the schedule for resources that match the policy is adjusted.
* The Business hours (on/off) schedule is ON from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
* The power-on and power-off flows are specified.
* Only resources that meet the following resource criteria match the policy:
* The cloud provider is AWS and the service account is Billing 15970.
* The resource has a tag with the name Department with the value Finance.
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After the policy is applied, for each resource that matches the policy and where the change request was approved, the system starts the resource at 8:00AM and stops it at 5:00PM. The actual start and stop times vary slightly due
to changes in system demand and the time that it takes for the resource to start and stop.
## Business hours approval types {#bh-cloudin__section_kjx_tm3_3jb}
For each resource that matches the policy criteria, the actions that the policy takes depend on the approval type:
Auto-approval (Standard Change)
approval type
:
* Generate a recommendation to apply the specified business hours and add the resource to the Business hours reports.
* Generate and then auto-approve a change request for the change group.
* Add the resource to the Business hours reports.
* Apply the Business hours schedule to the resource.
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Manual approval (Normal Change)
approval type
:
* Generate a recommendation to apply the specified business hours schedule and add the resource to the Business hours reports.
* Generate a change request for members of the change group.
* Add the resource to the Business hours reports.
* Any member of the group with the sn_change_write role can approve the change request.
* When approved, apply the Business hours schedule to the resource.
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Report-only approval type
:
* Generate a recommendation to apply the specified business hours.
* Add the resource to the Business hours reports.
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**Related tasks**
* [Define or update a Business hours policy](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/_kkB6IFcBm7FnD8rmMZ6Jw "A Business hours job applies policies to identify resources that are running when they should be powered off, reports them, and can start and stop them on a schedule that you specify. Running only during specified business hours can significantly reduce your cloud spend.")
* [Exclude a resource from all Cloud Cost Management reports](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/Ew3Z9yFG_f3JJMCOX90Ngg "To ensure that cost data for a particular resource doesn’t appear in a report, you exclude the resource by adding it to the Excluded Resources list.")
**Related topics**
* [Change Management](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/access?context=c_ITILChangeManagement&version=australia&pubname=australia-it-service-management&ft:locale=en-US)