Daily

Get your DigitalOcean spend by email each morning

A short email each day with your month-to-date usage and an estimate of yesterday's spend.

Runs: Daily
Apps: DigitalOcean
AI: Not needed
Access: billing:read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every day at 7:30am, email me my DigitalOcean month-to-date usage and the estimated spend for yesterday.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A small SaaS team runs a handful of Droplets, a managed database and a load balancer on DigitalOcean. The invoice arrives on the first of the month and sometimes it is double what everyone expected, because a forgotten test cluster or a snapshot habit ran for three weeks. By the time anyone sees the number, the money is spent and the only option left is to explain it to finance.

Every morning the automation reads your account balance, pulls the previous day's usage insight and emails you the month-to-date bill and yesterday's spend. It is a one-glance check, short enough to read in a few seconds, and it shows the trend building long before the invoice does.

Founders, freelancers hosting client projects and engineers who own a cloud budget get the most from it.

What you get out of it

Cost creep spotted within a day
If yesterday's spend jumps because someone resized a Droplet, the next morning's email shows it. You can resize back after one day of extra cost rather than thirty, which is much cheaper than catching the mistake once it is a month old.
No end-of-month invoice shock
Seeing month-to-date numbers build up each morning means the final bill matches what you were already expecting. It also gives you a talking point ready whenever someone asks why the bill rose, which makes budget conversations quiet ones.
Agency work billed accurately
If you host client projects on one account, daily totals help you match infrastructure cost to the invoices you send. That lets you quote hosting with real numbers, so it is never a silent loss on a fixed-price job.
A habit of looking at cost
The email arrives whether or not anyone remembered to open the billing page, which turns cost review from an occasional chore into a normal part of the day. The habit of glancing at cost is what stops small leaks becoming large ones.
History without a spreadsheet
Because each day's numbers arrive by email, you have a running record to search when someone asks what the bill looked like in the middle of last month. It is a plain log that needs no export, no formulas and no upkeep.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every morning ClickRuntime checks your DigitalOcean account.
It reads your usage so far this month and an estimate of what you spent yesterday.
Both figures arrive in your inbox as a short email.

Before it runs live

Connect DigitalOcean

What you get

RunsDaily

Get your DigitalOcean spend by email each morningtoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · DigitalOcean spendMonth-to-date usage: $38.52 Estimated spend 2026-10-18: $2.14

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other DigitalOcean steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

get_a_daily_balance_and_spend_report.pyexample

from datetime import date, timedelta
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, notify

DO = "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2"

def do(method, path, **kwargs):
    resp = http.request(method, f"{DO}{path}", headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN')}"}, **kwargs)
    resp.raise_for_status()
    return resp.json() if resp.content else {}

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    balance = do("GET", "/customers/my/balance")
    team = do("GET", "/account")["account"]["team"]["uuid"]
    day = date.today() - timedelta(days=1)
    insights = do("GET", f"/billing/do:team:{team}/insights/{day}/{day}")
    yesterday = sum(float(p["total_amount"]) for p in insights.get("data_points", []))
    notify.email_me(f"DigitalOcean: ${float(balance['month_to_date_usage']):,.2f} this month",
                    f"Month-to-date usage: ${float(balance['month_to_date_usage']):,.2f}\nEstimated spend {day}: ${yesterday:,.2f}")
    return {"mtd": balance["month_to_date_usage"], "yesterday": yesterday}

FAQ

Common questions

Does the report include the current balance or only usage?

It includes both: the account balance information, which shows month-to-date usage, and the daily insight for yesterday. The email lists the totals side by side so you can see how a single day compares with the month so far, and whether yesterday was a typical day or an outlier.

Which DigitalOcean token scope is required?

A personal access token with read scope is enough, since the automation only reads billing and insights data. You do not need a write token, which keeps the damage small if a token were ever exposed. The token is stored as a secret and is never shown in the email.

Can I get the report only on weekdays?

Yes. The schedule is simply when the automation fires, so it can run on weekdays only, once a week, or at a different hour. Daily is the usual choice because a cost mistake keeps costing money every day it continues, but a quieter rhythm is a small adjustment.

What permissions does it need?

billing:read. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

On a schedule