billing account contributor role under MCA

Hello @Jack Gajjar

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Q&A platform.

The MCA billing roles documentation doesn't explicitly call out "create budget" as a line item in its task tables, which makes this confusing. Let me clarify based on what the official documentation actually states.

The Billing Account Contributor (MCA) role alone does not allow you to create budgets at the subscription level. Subscription-level budgets require an Azure RBAC role on that subscription — not an MCA billing role.

MCA billing roles and Azure RBAC roles operate at different scopes, and budget creation permissions depend on which scope you're targeting:

1. Subscription-Level Budgets (Azure RBAC Scopes)

As documented in the Tutorial: Create and manage budgets, the permissions required to create budgets at subscription/resource group/management group scopes are:

• Owner — Can create, modify, or delete budgets for a subscription
• Contributor or Cost Management Contributor — Can create, modify, or delete their own budgets
• Reader or Cost Management Reader — Can only view budgets

These are Azure RBAC roles, not MCA billing roles. The Billing Account Contributor role does not grant these permissions at the subscription level.

2. MCA Billing Scopes (Billing Account / Billing Profile / Invoice Section)

The MCA administrative roles documentation describes the Billing Account Contributor as: "Manage everything except permissions on the billing account." The billing profile section also states: "Users with roles on a billing profile can view cost, set budget, and manage and pay its invoices."

However, the detailed task permission tables for billing account and billing profile roles do not explicitly list budget creation as a line item which is exactly the documentation gap you've identified.

If the goal is to create budgets at the subscription level, assign one of the following Azure RBAC roles on the target subscription:

• Cost Management Contributor (recommended — least privilege for budget management)
• Contributor
• Owner

You can assign this alongside the MCA Billing Account Contributor role — they are not mutually exclusive.

References

• Tutorial: Create and manage budgets — Prerequisites & Permissions
• Understand MCA administrative roles in Azure
• Assign access to Cost Management data

Hope this clears things up! If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

Thanks,

Suchitra.

Hello @Jack Gajjar

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@Suchitra Suregaunkar Your reply seems to contradict the Q&A Assist (AI generated) response.

From reading Point 2 of your reply: "The MCA administrative roles documentation describes the Billing Account Contributor as: "Manage everything except permissions on the billing account." The billing profile section also states: "Users with roles on a billing profile can view cost, set budget, and manage and pay its invoices.""

It suggests that as a Billing Account Contributor can set budget limits.
If I have read access across all the subscriptions from the top level Billing Account - would this allow me to set up budgets by selecting the scope to the required subscription? I do not want to set up a budget at Billing Account, Mgmt Group or Invoice section, but only at Subscription level

So, If I go to Budgets in Azure portal, then select the relevant scope to be a given subscription, would I be able to edit an existing budget value, or create a budget where there isn't one set up?

Hello @Jack Gajjar

Even if you navigate to Cost Management > Budgets in the Azure portal and change the scope selector to a specific subscription, your Billing Account Contributor role will not allow you to create or edit a budget there.

When you switch the scope in the Azure portal to a subscription, you are leaving the billing plane entirely and entering the Azure RBAC plane. At that point:

• The portal checks your Azure RBAC permissions on that subscription not your MCA billing role
• Your Billing Account Contributor role is simply not evaluated at subscription scope
• Read access inherited from the billing account gives you cost visibility (read), but not write/create on budgets

The "read access across all subscriptions from the top-level Billing Account" you mentioned is specifically cost data visibility — it lets you see spend. It does not translate to budget management permissions at the subscription RBAC scope.

The Permission Check for Budget Creation:

When you try to create or edit a budget at subscription scope, Azure checks for:

• Microsoft.Consumption/budgets/write — on the subscription RBAC scope

This permission is held by:

• Subscription Owner
• Subscription Contributor
• Cost Management Contributor (scoped to that subscription)

Your MCA billing role holds none of these.

The MCA docs saying "Billing Account Contributor can set budget" refers strictly to budgets at billing scopes (billing account, billing profile, invoice section). The moment you scope to a subscription, you need the Azure RBAC layer to have Contributor or Cost Management Contributor on that subscription regardless of what billing role you hold.

What you can do:

1. Assign yourself (or your finance team) the Cost Management Contributor role at each subscription you need to budget. This is the least-privilege way to enable subscription-level budget creation and alerts.
2. If you actually want a single budget that spans multiple subscriptions under the same billing profile, consider using a billing‐profile‐scope budget instead—MCA billing-profile contributors can set budgets there.

Thanks,

Suchitra.

Hello @Jack Gajjar

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Thanks,
Suchitra.