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| On this page, you can find two analyses. The first one concerns the monitoring of the consumption and usage charges of an Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud(ACPC) subscription whereas the second one concerns the means of canceling and suspending an ACPC subscription. |
There are two approaches that an Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud (ACPC) subscription can be managed in terms of monitoring its current consumption and usage records. The first one is via the BSS and the second one is via Storefront.
Pay-per-use (PPU) subscriptions have an overview of the current consumption as well as the usage records. This way, service providers will be aware of the resources that are currently used and their cost.
Monitoring Current Estimated Consumption & Usage Records
The Total Amount of the current consumption as well as the usage records, can both be monitored via BSS as well as via Storefront. Please note that the Storefront gauge is automatically renewed three times per day.
Current Estimated Consumption in BSS
For checking the current consumption in BSS, you can navigate to the ACPC Subscription overview page, and under the Product section, the "Unit Price" will represent the current consumption.
Usage Records in BSS
For checking the current usage records in BSS, you can navigate to the ACPC Subscription overview page, and under the Usage Records tab, the current billing period analysis of each resource of the subscription is displayed on a table list, having the subscription's currency.
Each time the "Usage Records" tab is selected, the usages are updated automatically and the depicted information is the latest available. However, during the update of the usages, only the usage records displayed on this tab are updated, not the subscription amount. This means that there might be differences between the subscription total amount and the sum of the usage amounts displayed on this tab. Also, please note that those usages are not saved in BSS.
The columns of the Usage Records table-list can be used for sorting purposes (ascending or descending order) and are the following four:
- Meter Name: Is the name of the resource followed by its SKU (separated by a comma), as it is provided by Acronis. In case Acronis does not provide us with an SKU, then it will not appear next to the resource name.
Quantity: Is the quantity of the resource, as it is provided by Acronis. This number is displayed rounded to the product’s number of decimals.
Rw ui textbox macro type note Zero Quantity Usage Records
Please note that usage records, in BSS and in Storefront, that have zero (0) "Quantity" are not displayed on any Usage Record list.- Unit: Is the unit(gigabytes) of the resource (wherever applicable), as it is provided by Acronis.
- Estimated Cost: Is the unit price of each usage multiplied by its quantity. In the Storefront, the Estimate Cost includes taxes.
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Available Currencies |
Current Estimated Consumption in Storefront
For checking the current consumption in Storefront, the Storefront user can navigate to the Subscription's overview page by clicking on it from the Active Subscriptions list found under the Billing tab. On the left side of the Subscription's overview page, the "Total Amount" of the current consumption is visible along with the date, the hour, and the GMT value of the last update.
Usage Records in Storefront
For checking the current usage records in Storefront, the Storefront user can navigate to the Subscription's overview page, by clicking on it from the Subscriptions list found under the Billing tab. On the right side of the Subscription's overview page, the "Usage Records" section is visible. In this section of the page, the current billing period analysis of each ACPC subscription resource is displayed on a table list, having the subscription's currency. The usages are updated each time the Subscription overview page is loaded.
Every element and logic described previously for the BSS Usage Records also applies for the Storefront Usage Records, with the following differences:
Taxation is applied to the Usage Record amounts (Estimated Cost) only when taxes apply to the ACPCsubscription.
The currency culture applies to the amounts displayed on the "Usage Records" section.
The Total "Estimated Cost" for each reseller's end-customer is displayed next to their "Customer" name.
Exporting Usage Records to an Excel File
The Usage Records table-list section contains also an excel icon. By clicking on it, the Storefront user can export and download the usages contained on every page of the "Usage Records" section. Each column displayed on the Subscription's overview page is the exact same found inside the exported excel sheet. Please note that the excel file contains one worksheet. The only differences, in the excel sheet, are that the currency is not displayed next to the amounts, the amounts are not rounded, and an additional column is added to indicate the reseller's end-customer name for each one of the usage records.
The Excel's file name consists of the following data: <End_customer's name_ACPC Subscription's name_UsageRecords_Date and time of the last invoice.xls> i.e., "Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud A_UsageRecords_11_19_2021_12_00_00.xls".
Excel Sheet Example:
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Further Management of an Acronis ACPC Product A direct customer or an end-customer can further manage their Acronis ACPC product via their Acronis Account by accessing the Acronis portal with their credentials. |
Canceling an ACPC Subscription
MSPs can cancel an ACPC Subscription belonging to their end customer(direct or reseller’s en customer) via both BSS and Storefront.
However, from the Storefront, users are creating a request for cancellation that is dispatched to BSS, whereas when the cancellation is performed directly from the BSS, the cancellation action is immediate. Therefore, the final cancellation takes place in BSS. Moreover, from the three cancellation execution types (Immediate, Specific Date, End of Billing Period) only the Immediate must be used, since the other two types are not yet fully functional.
When an Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud subscription is canceled this means that the customer's tenant account in Acronis is deleted by Acronis together with all the services and data. An MSP may want to delete a tenant in order to free up the resources that it uses. The usage statistics will be updated within a day after deletion. For large tenants, it might take longer. Deleting a tenant is irreversible!
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Check Mechanism During Cancellation From the last day of the current month until the 2nd day of next month, Acronis generates the excel pricing for invoicing of the billing cycle. If an MSP cancels a subscription from BSS in this specific time range then there might be inconsistencies concerning the usages from Acronis that have been generated before or after the cancellation and this may cause inconsistency between the billing items we have in comparison with Acronis. As we make the invoicing on the 2nd day of the next month and we may not have the same billing items with Acronis this may lead to inconsistency in invoices between us and Acronis. For this reason, we have implemented a check mechanism to display a message to prevent the cancellation of a subscription during this time period. Consequently, we strongly advise MSPs to cancel any ACPC subscription they wish after the 2nd day of the upcoming month so that both our and Acronis systems are inline and no billing inconsistencies arise. |
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Disclaimer on "Billing Runs" Between Acronis and Service Providers If the tenant does not exist at the time of the billing run, then from Acronis perspective, there will be no associated billable usage for the Service Provider of that customer. However, the billing algorithm from the Service Provider side may be different, for example taking the usage on a daily basis and averaging that over the month to invoice the customers even if they terminated before the end of the month. |
Suspending an ACPC Subscription
Suspension is available in BSS through the Shortcuts menu of the subscription view page. In case an MSP wants to restrict temporarily their end customers to use the Acronis services but continue to be charged, then they can suspend the subscription. This action disables the end customer's tenant account in Acronis Portal and their services are stopped from being provisioned but the billing of the tenant continues as their data are preserved and stored. Please note that resellers are unable to suspend subscriptions of their end customers but they need to communicate with the MSP to do that instead.
Expiration of an ACPC Subscriptions
By default, the ACPC subscriptions have their Auto-Renew option enabled. However, if subscriptions have their Auto-Renew option set to disabled then they are getting expired with Inactive status in BSS. This change however is wrong as the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud subscriptions have the Auto-Renew option automatically set to enabled by default, which means that any changes to this option will clash with the Acronis systems. Therefore, our suggestion when MSPs want for any reason to terminate an Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud subscription is to avoid editing the Auto-Renew option and either suspend or cancel the subscription.
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