Reconciling Azure Charges with Microsoft

This page explains how you will reconcile the Azure charges our system generates for your customers with the charges you receive from Microsoft. For the reconciliation, you will use a report that you can create in your BSS.

Azure Reconciliation Report


Using our reporting engine, you can group the Azure usage invoice items per Azure subscription. The items can be grouped by:

  • Subscription - The name of the Azure subscription
  • SubscriptionId - the internal identifier we keep for a subscription
  • Subscription External Id - The Id of the Azure subscription in Microsoft systems.

For creating the reconciliation report you must do the following:

  1. Navigate to BSS > Reports > Reports and select "New Report"
  2. Step 1 - Select to create a report for Invoices and Invoice Items. Check also the option "Show the sums of the report only" for getting one line per Azure subscription. 
  3. Step 2 - Select the following fields 
    1. Invoice #: The BSS invoice code.
    2. Account: The end customer.
    3. Billing To: - The reseller of the end-customer.
    4. Subscription: - The name of the BSS Azure subscription.
    5. Subscription External Id: Microsoft Subscription ID.
    6. Total Cost: The total cost of the invoice item.
    7. Usage: The invoice item identifier (identifies the "Azure Plan" and the (Legacy) "MS Azure" invoice items)

    For the "Total Cost" field, you must select the sum function. The rest fields will be for grouping.

    Concerning the "Usage" field, the identification mapping is the following:

    Azure edition

    Value

    New Azure plan

    Azure Plan

    Legacy Azure

    MS Azure

  4. Step 3 - Reports Criteria - In this step add the following criteria:
    1. Define the billing period by setting the "Start Date" and the "End Date" of the invoice items. The Azure subscriptions in our system are billed on your Microsoft cut-off date.  
    2. Define that you want your report to include only the Azure usage invoice items by defining that the field "Usage" is equal to the Azure Plan and/or MS Azure values. The invoice items that are for the Azure usage are not related with a BSS product, that's why this condition will bring only these items.


  5. Step 6 - Report Results - The results you will get from this report will have one line per Azure subscription. Also, as you can witness, the Usage column clearly identifies the "Azure Plan" invoice items and the (Legacy) "MS Azure" invoice items. You can export the results in an excel file for comparing them with the reconciliation file you have received from Microsoft for your Azure subscriptions. 


Reconciliation Process


The total cost per Azure subscription you have in your report is the amount you have charged to your customer. The reconciliation file from Microsoft includes the cost per Azure subscription that you are paying. For comparing the numbers, you must do the following:

  1. Download the Azure reconciliation file from Microsoft. You can find this file in Microsoft partner center portal  in Billing section.
  2. Calculate the cost for each subscription in Microsoft reconciliation file by grouping the line per SubscirptionId. The cost is the column PretaxEffectiveRate

  3. Calculate the cost of the Azure subscription from the total amount you have in your report in BSS.  If for example, you sell Azure with a 5% margin above you cost, for a subscription with total = $608.27 the cost is Total Cost * (1 - margin) → cost = 608.27 * 0.95 = $577.85
  4. Compare the cost you calculated with the cost you have from Microsoft reconciliation file.




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