Guide updated
A user reported a live-account test on September 27, 2026. Specific amounts, a single-action IAM policy, and the complete MCP flow were not independently recorded. Verify your own cloud account balance.
- Required credentials
- IAM Access Key ID + Secret Access Key
- Monitoring currency
- CNY · Chinese yuan
- What is monitored
- Available cloud account balance · Includes credit
- Official AvailableBalance read directly, without recalculation. Shared cloud account funds may include credit allowance; this is not withdrawable cash or an Ark wallet. Cash, credit, holds, and arrears are shown separately.
Connect Volcengine / Ark to Quota Monitor
Identify the paying cloud account
Check the account and available funds in the China-site Billing Center. For enterprise or centralized settlement, identify the actual funding account first. A business project is not a cloud wallet.
Create a dedicated IAM user and policy
Have an administrator create a dedicated user. Prefer a custom policy allowing only billing:QueryBalanceAcct on resource *. Do not grant payment, top-up, resource-management, or model-call access.
BillingCenterReadOnlyAccess is broader, covering Billing Center queries and exports. BillingCenterBillReadOnlyAccess covers bills but not account balances. Follow official permission docs and verify access on first use.
Create the user’s access key
An administrator should create and securely save matching AK/SK. The monitoring user needs no permissions to manage other users’ keys. Use long-term keys, not Ark keys, primary-account keys, or STS credentials requiring a Security Token.
Connect Volcengine in your project
Select Volcengine / Ark, enter AK and SK separately, and save. CNY is fixed. No region or Ark project ID is required. Both values are encrypted; only the AK’s last four characters are displayed.
Verify available funds
Refresh and compare the same account’s Billing Center available balance. Review cash, credit, frozen amounts, and arrears separately. Check account, time, and balance type before comparing.
What Quota Monitor reads from Volcengine / Ark
- China site only, not BytePlus. Ark resource packs, free tokens, Coding Plan, and Agent Plan quotas are excluded.
- Available funds account for cash, holds, credit, and arrears. Do not add the shared balance across projects. Missing details remain missing, not zero.
- No model calls, top-ups, cloud resource changes, or IAM changes. Snapshots remain subject to upstream billing delays.
- The dashboard shows the latest successful snapshot. Manual refresh queries the provider again but cannot eliminate upstream billing delays. An old balance is not a new result after a failed query.
Volcengine / Ark FAQ and troubleshooting
- Why can I not use an Ark API key?
- Cloud billing uses signed AK/SK requests, not a model Bearer key. Use an IAM user with balance-query access.
- Why are credentials or permissions rejected?
- Check matching active AK/SK and billing:QueryBalanceAcct. Bill-only access is insufficient. Do not grant administrator access to troubleshoot.
- Why is available balance greater than cash?
- Credit, holds, and arrears also affect available funds. We use AvailableBalance directly without treating credit as deposited cash or adding fields ourselves.
- What about signature, time, or stale-result errors?
- Check copying and key pairing. Ask an administrator to check the server clock for persistent time errors. A failed query preserves an old historical snapshot, not a new zero. Share only error codes and query times.
Official Volcengine / Ark references
- Official reference · www.volcengine.com/docs/6269/1223898(opens in a new tab)
- Official reference · www.volcengine.com/docs/6269/1186807(opens in a new tab)
- Official reference · docs.volcengine.com/docs/BillingCenter/AccountDescription(opens in a new tab)
- Official reference · www.volcengine.com/docs/6369/67269(opens in a new tab)
Prepared by Quota Monitor, not an official provider tutorial. Interfaces and permissions may change; check official pages. Verification is limited to the scope stated here.