By excluding a reseller from the Minimum Commitment amount, no matter his consumption, he is not charged with any extra amount based on their Commitment Amount, even if his consumption is less than the commitment amount. Distributors can apply the Ramp Up period to either specific resellers or all of them.

Ramp-Up Period - Rules

Below is a list of rules that our platform applies for utilizing the Ramp-Up period on Acronis Contract product subscriptions:

• The Ramp-Up period is provided for the first consecutive billing cycles of a paid subscription since that is a period the distributor gives to their resellers to adjust.

• The Ramp-up period start date must always be the subscription’s start date since it cannot start anytime after that.

• The Ramp-UP period can be applied only to new subscriptions and not to existing ones (either for their current billing cycle or on their renewals).

• The Ramp-Up period does not apply to trial subscriptions since the Minimum Commitment amount is non-existent.

• The Ramp-Up period’s default and minimum value before the 1st of November, 2023, was zero (0) months, whereas the maximum value was three (3) months. After the 1st of November, 2023, the Ramp-Up period’s default and minimum value is zero (0) months, whereas the maximum value is one (1) month. Please check the Vendor’s policy to be aligned.

• Distributors cannot deactivate the Ramp-Up period for some billing cycles and then reactivate it again.

• Even if an Acronis CSP PPU subscription is upgraded or downgraded, the applicable Ramp-UP period remains that of the former subscription and is utilized on the upgraded/downgraded subscription.

Enabling Ramp-Up Period for Acronis CSP Contract Products

The Ramp-Up period option can be enabled by navigating to any of the Acronis CSP Contract products (Tier 0 - Tier 7) in BSS and changing the "Ramp-Up Period (Billing Cycles)" option from the “Edit Recurring Charges” button found under the Pricing section. 

Open

By changing the default value of zero “0” (meaning not applied) to the values 1 - 120 (with 1 being the minimum and 120 being the maximum), the Ramp-Up period becomes enabled. Each value corresponds to the number of billing cycles (months); thus, the Ramp-Up period will be enabled for that number of months that you have defined.

• Ramp-Up period Start Date: will always be the start date of the first subscription billing cycle, no matter if its start date is “today”, a “past start date”, or a “future start date”.

• Ramp-Up period End Date: will always be the end date of the Xth subscription’s billing cycle end date, where “X” is the number of the configured Ramp-Up billing cycles.

Viewing Subscriptions with Ramp-Up Period in BSS

When an Acronis CSP contract subscription has active the Ramp-Up period, it can be viewed in BSS by navigating to BSS > Billing > Subscriptions and then locating it from the list of subscriptions.

Open

Upon clicking on the subscription, you can witness a ribbon stating that the “Ramp-Up period is active” and that the “Minimum Commitment amount will not apply for invoices created within <DD/MM/YY - DD/MM/YY> (a certain period)”. This period is derived from the configured Ramp-Up Billing Cycles number you defined.

Also, at the end of the ribbon, you can find the option “Extend ramp-up period”. For more information concerning the extension of the ramp-up period, please continue to the following section of this page.

Enabling Ramp-Up Period via a PPU Subscription

When an Acronis CSP contract product (Tier 0 - Tier 7) is ordered, and a paid Acronis CSP PPU subscription is created and provisioned but the "Ramp-Up Period (Billing Cycles)" option for the subscription’s product has the default value zero “0“, then the distributor can still enable the Ramp-Up period but only before the first invoice of the first billing cycle(month) is generated.
Therefore, by locating and opening in BSS the subscription for which you wish to enable the Ramp-Up period, a ribbon is displayed stating: “Commitment amount rule will apply from <subscription start date>. You can activate the ramp-up period until <subscription end date>“ and next to it, the option “Activate Ramp-up period“ is available.

By clicking the “Activate Ramp-up period” option, the following pop-up window contains one numeric field along with two informative elements, with which you can decide the activation period of the Ramp-Up that you wish the subscription to have.

More specifically, the elements of the pop-up window are the following:

• Activation for … billing cycles (Numeric Field): This is the number of billing cycles (months) for which the Ramp-Up period will be activated. Only numbers greater than zero “0“ are acceptable, while the default value is one “1“. The maximum number allowed is smaller than “120”. If an invalid value is filled in and the Save button is clicked, then the field becomes red, indicating that an erroneous value was filled in.

• Ramp-Up period Start Date: This static informative element depicts the Ramp-Up period’s Start Date and is always the current subscription’s billing cycle.

• Ramp-Up period End Date: This dynamic informative element depicts the Ramp-Up period’s End Date. It automatically calculates the End Date of the Ramp-Up period each time a numeric change occurs on the “Activation for … billing cycles (Numeric Field)“. As a result, when the pop-up window is loaded, since the default value of the billing cycles is one “1”, the End Date that is initially displayed is the End Date of the Ramp-Up period activated for 1 billing cycle.

When you (the distributor) select to activate the Ramp-Up period by clicking on the “Save” button, the Ramp-Up period is activated, and the subscription’s ribbon changes to the Extension ribbon.

Extending the Ramp-Up Period

A distributor can extend the Ramp-Up period on Acronis subscriptions that have an active Ramp-Up period by clicking on the respective button located on the ribbon.

The “Extend ramp-up period” allows you (the distributor) to extend the Ramp-Up period for many more periods(months) than those defined on the product (which automatically applies to all subscriptions created for this product). As a result, when an extension of the Ramp-Up period is applied to a given subscription, the change affects only that subscription.

By clicking the “Extend ramp-up period” button, a popup window is displayed containing one numeric field along with two informative elements, with which you will be able to decide the extension period that you wish to add for the Ramp-Up period of the subscription.

More specifically, the elements of the pop-up window are the following:

• Extend for … billing cycles (Numeric Field): This is the number of billing cycles (months) for which the Ramp-Up period will be extended. Only numbers greater than zero “0“ are acceptable, while the default value is one “1“. The maximum number allowed is “120” minus the previous Ramp-Up period. If an invalid value is filled in and the Save button is clicked, then the field becomes red, indicating that an erroneous value was filled in.

• Ramp-Up period Start Date: This static informative element depicts the Ramp-Up period’s Start Date.

• Ramp-Up period End Date: This dynamic informative element depicts the Ramp-Up period’s End Date. It automatically calculates the End Date of the Ramp-Up period each time a numeric change occurs on the “Extend for … billing cycles (Numeric Field)“. As a result, when the pop-up window is loaded, since the default value of the billing cycles is one “1”, the End Date that is initially displayed is the End Date of the Ramp-Up period extended by 1 billing cycle.

When you (the distributor) select to extend the ramp-up period by clicking on the “Save” button, the Ramp-Up period changes to the newly extended Ramp-Up period, which is also updated and displayed on the subscription’s ribbon: ”Ramp-up period is extended until <… new Ramp-Up period End Date>”.

Upgrading PPU Trial Subscription to Paid with Ramp-up Period

When an Acronis CSP PPU trial subscription is upgraded to paid, the system checks the Ramp-Up period settings on the paid Acronis CSP PPU product and applies or does not apply the Ramp-Up period to the paid subscription as previously described when a new subscription is created.

Upgrading/Downgrading a PPU Subscription with Ramp-Up Period

The Ramp-Up period is applied even when a subscription is upgraded or downgrade. However, the Ramp-Up period is applied for the remaining billing cycles after the subscription’s upgrade/downgrade. This means that the Ramp-Up period is activated only once, and it always starts from the first subscription billing cycle Start Date. It does not start again if the subscription is upgraded or downgraded.

Ramp-up Period Expiration

At some point in time, an Acronis CSP PPU subscription will have its Ramp-Up period expired. However, the distributor can extend it for one more billing cycle before the last invoice becomes generated. Yet, when the Ramp-Up period expires:

• It becomes terminated, meaning that it is deactivated for the current billing cycle and every other billing cycle that follows.

• The ribbon during this “grace period” displays the message: “Commitment amount rule will apply from <subscription current billing cycle end date>. You can extend the ramp-up period until <subscription current billing cycle end date>.”.

• A different option appears on the ribbon with the name “Extend/Remove ramp-up period”, where only the extend option is available and not the remove option.
  
  

By clicking on the “Extend/Remove ramp-up period“ option, the final Ramp-Up extension period (of one month) is added to the subscription.

After that one last billing cycle, you will not be able to extend the Ramp-Up period anymore.
As a result, the “Ramp-Up period“ ribbon is removed, and the invoice for the previous cycle is generated, and it now includes the Minimum Commitment amount fee.
 

Creating Reports For Subscriptions with Ramp-Up Period

To create a report for Acronis CSP PPU subscriptions with a Ramp-Up period, you must create a “New Report” and under the 1st step choose the “Subscriptions” data type and then the associated data option of “Renewals”.

At the 2nd step of the report’s creation, you can find three new column fields:

1. The “Ramp-Up period Start Date“ column field is utilized for displaying the subscription’s Ramp-Up start date.

2. The “Ramp-Up period End Date“ column field is utilized for displaying the subscription’s Ramp-Up end date.

3. the "Ramp-Up period Activated" column field is utilized for displaying which subscriptions have an activated Ramp-Up billing cycle and which do not.

All three fields are located under the “Subscriptions“ General Columns as well as under the “Renewals” General Columns.

Creating Custom Notification For Subscriptions with Ramp-Up Period

The above-mentioned fields, “Ramp-Up period Start Date“, “Ramp-Up period End Date“, and “Ramp-Up period Activated“, are also available as merge fields when you wish to create a custom notification for Subscriptions having the Ramp-Up period activated. Therefore, to notify and inform a specific BSS user from your operations team, of such subscriptions, please navigate to BSS Setup >Administration > Notifications > Customer Notification Details > Subscriptions, then click on the "New Notification" button, and apply the following condition inside your custom notification report.

• Entity = "Subscriptions", Field = "Ramp-up period Activated", Operator = "is equal to", Value = "Yes".
  
  

Table of Contents