Azure Subscription Plan

Overview

The Azure Plan (Offer Id _ Part Number_ DZH318Z0BPS6_0001) is a new commerce experience in the Partner Center. With this new experience, partners will gain access to Azure services at pay-as-you-go rates for customers under the Microsoft Customer Agreement.

A new level Azure Plan container is added between the customer and the Azure subscriptions. All CSP subscriptions will be added in that Azure plan. The hierarchy model looks like

Customer > Azure Plan Subscription > Azure Plan Entitlements/Azure subscriptions.

You can have multiple Azure subscriptions in an Azure plan.

The following features are available for the Azure Plan:

1 CSP Cost Settings
- 1.1 Billing Setting
2 CSP Customer Billing & Invoices
3 CSP Usage and Cost Collection Implementation

Information:

Only one Azure plan can be created per customer.
Azure services through an Azure plan are priced in USD and billed in the customer country’s assigned currency.
- If the billing currency is non-USD, then the FX rates are determined monthly and applied to the following invoice.

CSP Cost Settings

HCP has a billing setting at individual customer levels. There is no concept of Partner center discount. The billing setting is used for cost calculation of services under cost and usage.

Billing Setting

HCP allows the setting of individual billing settings at a customer level.

Individual customer billing setting can be configured on HCP
- Under Administration > CSP Management > Click on Customers > Select the Account ID from the dropdown.
- Select the Customer > Click on Billing Settings tab & add a Markup Percentage > Click on Save.
Markup: The Cloud Admin can set a markup percentage (%) on the customer cost. This will add %s cost to all items over the pay-as-you-go Cost for this particular customer subscription(s).
The Markup formula for cost calculation:
Customer Margin markup Cost Calculation Formula = Market Unit Price(USD)*Exchange Rate*Usage*1+marginmarkup%
Example: if a service item’s cost per 1 unit of usage is 0.12 USD, then cost for 1500 units usage with exchange rate 106.56 on start of month of usage and 10% margin markup will be following: Actual Cost is (0.12*106.56*1500*1+0.1) = 21098.88 Yen.
In HCP, customer margins markup are stored in the DB with the time of records. At the time of cost calculation, the latest margin markup % is picked for the cost calculation. Say on June 10, the CA has applied a 10% margin markup on the customer, and then on August 10 it changed the margin markup to 5%. This has the following implication on the cost calculation for the customer
- Up to June 1 – All cost calculated up to June 1, will be without margin markup.
- June 1 – July 31 – All items cost is calculated with a 10% margin markup.
- August onward – All items cost is calculated with a 5% margin markup.
Discounts: The CA can set a discount percentage over the partner center cost. With the discount applied, all items costs will be calculated at the discounted rate over the partner center cost.
Discount formula for cost calculation:
Customer Discount Cost Calculation Formula = Market Unit Price(USD)*Exchange Rate*Usage*1-discount%
Example: If a service item’s cost per 1 unit of usage is 0.12 USD, then cost for 1500 units usage with exchange rate 106.56 on start of month of usage and 10% discount will be the following: Discounted Cost is (0.12*106.56*1500*1-0.1) = 17262.72 Yen
In HCP discounts are stored in the DB with a time of records. At the time of cost calculation latest discount valued is picked for the cost calculation. Say on June 10, CA applied a 10% discount on the customer and then on August 10 it changed discount to 5%. This has the following implication on the cost calculation for the customer
- Up to June 1 – All cost calculated up to June 1, will be without discount.
- June 1 – July 31 – All items cost is calculated at a discounted price of 10%.
- August onward – All items cost is calculated at a discounted price of 5%.
Tax rate: Custom tax rates defined at the customer level are not being used anywhere for Azure Plan

CSP Customer Billing & Invoices

For CSP Customer Billing & Invoices, refer section CSP Customer Billing & Invoices under CSP Classic Subscription. Customer invoice report generation for Azure Plan (G-invoice) is not supported as of now.

CSP Usage and Cost Collection Implementation

HCP allows cost and usage collection for all CSP customer subscriptions under Azure Plans for which monitoring is ON. The monitoring can only be turned on/off for all subscriptions under the plan and not for individual subscriptions.

Note: The monitoring can only be turned on/off for all subscriptions under the plan and not for individual subscriptions.

Monitoring ON allows HCP to have real-time daily cost and usage collection of all the subscriptions/entitlements under the Azure Plan.
- This can be seen under the Governance and Security Tab > Click on Cost and Usage.
To collect service usage, HCP runs cost and usage collection jobs daily to get current month (current period) consumption data for the Azure Plan on which the monitoring is enabled.
HCP cost and usage collector job uses Azure invoice unbilled commercial consumption line items API that provides access to consumption records for current month.
On the 1^st day of each month, it reconciles previous month (previous period) consumption data to cover up last day of the previous month data.