Ordering & Billing NCE Products
The ordering experience for the NCE products, via both the NCE Commercial and NCE Public Sector product types, is similar to the process you have accustomed for the legacy Office 365 products. On this page, we will explain the process, but we will mainly focus on the differences and how our platform manages them. The main differences are the following:
Add-ons sold separately from base offers. Add-ons will be listed like the rest of primary products and purchased separately and independently.
No prorated charges are available for the NCE subscriptions. Our platform is fully aligned with Microsoft’s NCE subscription cycle to match subscription dates, support the cancellation window and provide a better reconciliation experience.
Prices are calculated automatically for all NCE products* based on end customer’s country (except for the Specialized Offer (NCE) products).
Price Protection is automatically assigned to all the applicable NCE products with their respective billing term.
Promotions are applied automatically, but there are currently limitations concerning the triennial NCE products with auto-applicable promotions** as well as with the Specialized Offer (NCE) products.
Specialized Offer (NCE) products, can be purchased via the BSS and Storefront portals as long as their prices are first agreed upon with Microsoft and then those prices have been manually added to those products. Once those products become available for purchase (since their prices have been provided) they are available in multiple SKUs. These SKUs have specific descriptions, terms, and billing plans, so you have to review which SKU corresponds to the method of payment and term you wish to complete your purchase with.
Ordering NCE Products
The ordering method for purchasing NCE Commercial and Public Sector products is the same as the one used for purchasing legacy Office 365 products, and it is described in detail in the KB section Ordering an Office 365 Servicearchived. All the business rules that apply now for the legacy products (acceptance of MCA, INN validation, etc.) are also in place for the NCE products.
The major difference is that the prices are calculated automatically (except for the Specialized Offer NCE products) based on the country of the end customer, and any promotions (whenever applicable) are applied automatically (but with limitations* for the triennial NCE products and the Specialized Offer NCE Products). When your resellers and customers login into your Storefront, they will see an indicative price, and the correct price will be calculated on the first page of the basket.
Prices Calculation for NCE Products
The system calculates the cost and sell prices of the NCE products (excluding the Specialized Offer NCE products) with the following process:
End Customer’s currency is included in the Pricing Excel file that Microsoft has published for the end customer’s country.
CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are retrieved from the Microsoft pricing file
Should a promotion discount exist, it is applied to calculate the discounted CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices.
Should the customer’s pricelist exist, it is applied to calculate the order item’s unit cost and unit price.
Microsoft does not support the End Customer’s currency
CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are retrieved from the Microsoft pricing file. We retrieve the prices in the currency the exchange rate has been set up and from the Microsoft pricing file defined in the tool (the “Market Country Pricelist”).
For example, If you have defined for the Mexican pesos an exchange rate with the USD currency and Mexico as the Market Country Pricelist, we will retrieve the USD prices from the Mexico pricing file.CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are calculated for the customer’s currency using the FX rate defined in the conversion tool.
Should a promotion discount exist, it is applied for calculating the discounted CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices.
Should the customer’s pricelist exist, it is applied to calculate the order item’s unit cost and unit price.
Our system will not be able to calculate the prices if the customer’s currency is not included in Microsoft pricing Excel file and you haven’t defined an FX rate for this currency. In this case, the ordering process will be terminated informing the customer that the system cannot calculate the prices.
Prices Calculation for Discontinued NCE Products
Customers cannot purchase a Discontinued NCE product (also known as End-of-Sales [EoS]) after Microsoft has marked it as such. However, for existing and active subscriptions containing a discontinued NCE product, the following logic applies:
When a Microsoft NCE product is marked by Microsoft as discontinued, its pricing information, from the Microsoft Preview Pricing Excel file, is saved internally to our platform. This includes the latest effective cost and sell prices for each Microsoft-supported currency and country of your Microsoft instance(s) that you sell to. The stored cost and sell prices of the discontinued products are then utilized for existing subscriptions (which contain these products), for invoicing and renewal purposes. This means that when a subscription is up for renewal, our platform automatically retrieves the correct price, so there is no need to handle pricing manually. It's important to note that adding or reducing licenses for existing subscriptions with discontinued NCE products is unaffected. NCE subscriptions are price-protected throughout their effective period, and any applicable promotional discounts will still apply. Also, cancelations and suspensions are unaffected. However, upgrades to discontinued NCE products are not allowed.
The system calculates the cost and sell prices of the discontinued NCE products with the following process:
The End Customer’s currency was included in the Pricing Excel file that Microsoft has published for the end customer’s country, once the NCE product was marked as discontinued.
CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are retrieved from the stored location inside the platform since the pricing mechanism already knows that these NCE products are marked as discontinued from Microsoft and do not have prices anymore inside Microsoft’s pricing Excel file.
Should a promotion discount exist, it is applied to the stored (last effective) prices to calculate the discounted CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices.
Should the customer’s pricelist exist, it is applied to the stored (last effective) prices to calculate the order item’s unit cost and unit price.
Microsoft does not support the End Customer’s currency in the Pricing Excel file that Microsoft has published, once the NCE product was marked as discontinued.
CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are retrieved from the stored location inside the platform since the pricing mechanism already knows that these NCE products are marked as discontinued by Microsoft. Also, the system retrieves the non-supported prices in the currency the exchange rate has been set up and from the Microsoft pricing file defined in the tool (the “Market Country Pricelist”).
For example, if you have defined for the Mexican pesos an exchange rate with the USD currency and Mexico as the Market Country price list, the system will retrieve the last USD prices that are stored inside the platform from the Mexico pricing file.CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are calculated for the customer’s currency using the FX rate defined in the conversion tool in addition to the utilization of the stored supported prices.
Should a promotion discount exist, it is applied to the stored (last effective) prices to calculate the discounted CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices.
Should the customer’s pricelist exist, it is applied to the stored (last effective) prices to calculate the order item’s unit cost and unit price.
Therefore, even if an existing active subscription contains a discontinued NCE product, our pricing mechanism can support it, even upon renewal, using either the stored Microsoft Excel pricesheets or the Foreign Exchange (FX) rate tool of our platform, in case the currency is unsupported by Microsoft.
Country Tenants & Tenant Resellers
Concerning the automatically retrieved and applied pricing for NCE products, the tenant reseller organizations as well as the country tenants, inherit the configuration of the pricing of those NCE products from their Parent organization. Therefore, the automatically applied prices to tenant organizations that are also based on the applied pricelists (root price list & tenant price list) allow them to order NCE products, for their end customers, as well as invoice them. Additionally, tenant reseller organizations can upgrade and downgrade NCE subscriptions while the parent organization is updated with those changes via backordering.
Backordering
Backordering is available for tenant reseller organizations, and the billing for the subscriptions created in the root organization is based on the pricing rules we use for all NCE subscriptions.