For all short (5 min or less) background jobs, cron jobs, ETL jobs, event processing jobs, and other glue code, use [Azure Functions](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-overview). You not only have no servers to manage, but Azure Function pricing is incredibly cheap, with the first 1 million executions and 400,000 GB-seconds per month being completely free! After that, it's just £0.150 per million executions and £0.000012 for every GB-second.
If you have a lot of data in Azure Blob Storage, make sure to take advantage of [Azure Blob Lifecycle Management](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-lifecycle-management-concepts?tabs=azure-portal) to save money. You can configure the Azure Blob to move files older than a certain age either to cheaper [storage tiers](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blob-storage-tiers) or to delete those files entirely.
Use [Azure Advisor](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/advisor/advisor-cost-recommendations) to identify unused or underutilised Azure resources, such as old VM instances that no one is using any more.
Learn to use tools such as [Azure Advisor](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/advisor/advisor-cost-recommendations), and [Cloudyn](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management/overview) to understand where you're spending money. If you find something you can't explain, reach out to Azure Support, and they will help you track it down.
Learn to use tools such as [Azure Advisor](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/advisor/advisor-cost-recommendations), and [Azure Cost Analysis](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/costs/quick-acm-cost-analysis) to understand where you're spending money. If you find something you can't explain, reach out to Azure Support, and they will help you track it down.
Create [alerts](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management/cost-mgt-alerts-monitor-usage-spending) to notify you when your Azure bill crosses important thresholds. Make sure to have several levels of alerts: e.g., at the very least, one when the bill is a little high, one when it's really high, and one when it is approaching bankruptcy levels.