The billing process for an Acronis CSP Contract product is similar to processes that are pay-per-use (PPU), also known as consumption-based. The only difference here is that those Contract products are bound to a Minimum Commitment as explained on the "Defining the Acronis CSP Contract Products" page. An analysis follows on what you should expect from the billing process of such a Contract product along with an invoice example.

How the interworks.cloud Platform Bills an Acronis Contract Product

From the Acronis API, our system receives the sell price for the consumed Acronis services, which is the price that Acronis proposes to the distributors to charge their service providers(resellers). Moreover, with the addition of the field "Distributor Discount" inside the Acronis Cyber Cloud Service Manager, our system can calculate the Cost Price for the consumed services. As a result, our system has both the Cost Price (what Acronis charges to the Distributor) and the Sell Price (what Acronis suggests to each Distributor to charge the Resellers) for each Acronis service the reseller has consumed for his customers.

There are two options with which you, as a distributor, can bill your service providers (resellers).

1. Ours and Acronis's suggestion is to invoice your reseller(s) based on the exact Acronis prices, as you do not have to assign a price-list to your reseller(s). This means that at the end of the monthly billing cycle, the system will collect the Sell Price from the Acronis API, and then the generated invoice will contain charges based on those Sell Prices. You do not have to do anything else.
2. However, if you wish to invoice your reseller(s) based on markup, margin, or discount, then you have to assign a price-list to your reseller(s). Proceed to the following section of this page for the setup analysis that applies only to this billing option.

Configuring Custom Pricing to Acronis Contract Product for Resellers (Applies Only for #2 Billing Option)

If you are an indirect CSP and you want to set discounts for the Acronis Contract products to your resellers, you must add the Acronis Contract product to the resellers' price-lists. The process is the following:

1. Locate your reseller price-list in Billing > Price Lists.
   
   
2. Go to Products tab and select Quick Add > Products. In the pop-up form, search for the Acronis Cyber Cloud for Service Providers - Tier product, choose it, and click the "Insert to Selected" button.
   
   
   
3. Then, click the button "Same pricing rule" for defining the discount you give for the Acronis Contract product in the selected price list.
   
   
4. When you add the Acronis Contract product to one of your resellers price-list, you should select as a pricing rule the "Percent Markup - Cost Price", the "Percent Margin - Cost Price", and the "Percent of Sell Price". The markup, margin, or sell price percentage must be set to the field next to the pricing rule.
   
5. That's it. You have successfully added a custom-priced Acronis Contract product to your reseller's price-list.

Invoicing an Acronis CSP Contract Product

With the completion of the order execution, our system will generate an invoice each month, at the end of the billing period cycle. The reseller will know exactly what he pays for his Acronis Contract product since the invoice generated will be analytical in order to accommodate the pay-as-you-go charges in relation to the Contract's Minimum Commitment amount. In the following example, you can find such an analysis. 

As you can witness within the invoice, one Acronis service (provided from the reseller to his end-customer) corresponds to one invoice item.
Also, the logic of the Acronis Contract invoices is that when the latest usage costs (highlighted with blue color) are less than or equal to the Minimum Commitment (highlighted with green color at the end), then the invoice will display in detail those costs as well as the remaining amount to reach the Minimum Commitment price, also known as "Minimum Commitment Amount Fee". Otherwise, when the latest usage costs exceed the Minimum Commitment, then the invoice will display in detail only those extra costs.

Invoicing Procedure Example:

Let us assume that a reseller is being invoiced in Euro.

1. The system will obtain the Acronis services sell prices based on the reseller's commitment level. 
2. The system will apply either those unchanged sell prices to the reseller's Contract invoice, if no custom Acronis price-list has been assigned to the reseller by his distributor (see billing option #1), or the custom margin, or mark-up, or discount that the distributor has applied to that Contract via a price-list for his reseller (see billing option #1).
3. Then the system will calculate whether the Minimum Commitment of the Contract was reached, surpassed, or is less, and then the invoice items will be depicted accordingly. By "depicted accordingly" we mean the following:
   1. If the Minimum Commitment amount was reached and/or surpassed, then the invoice will only depict the relative Acronis services as invoiced items (highlighted with blue color).
   2. If the Minimum Commitment amount was not reached, then the invoice will depict the relative Acronis services as invoiced items (highlighted with blue color) as well as the remaining amount fee that is required for reaching the Contract's predefined Minimum Commitment (highlighted with green color).

Support for Unsupported Acronis CSP Currencies

The "Acronis Cyber Cloud" Service Manager is responsible for returning the usages and the invoice items in the subscription currency that is retrieved from BSS. However, when a currency does not exist in the Acronis Excel Pricelist, then no prices are available for depicting the usages and the invoices, other than the supported ones, which exist by default in the Acronis Excel Pricelist and are the following:

• EUR

• USD

• AUD

• GBP

• JPY

• CAD

Consequently, the following guide can be utilized as a solution in order for you to support currencies other than those defined in the Acronis Excel pricelist.

As a distributor, you can begin by setting a primary currency on the "Acronis Cyber Cloud" Service Manager's Instance Settings, for the Service Manager to understand which is the currency for which it must get the prices and convert those to another currency.

1. By navigating to BSS Setup > Administration > System Options > Applications Setup and locating the cloud application "Acronis Cyber Cloud for Service Providers", you can click on the Settings button, next to it.
   
   
   
2. Next, you need to choose the instance for which you wish to enable the support of unsupported currencies. In this example, we have chosen the first instance named "Acronis for SPs". Inside this instance's settings, the drop-down menu named "Primary Currency" is where you must set the currency that you are billed from Acronis which must be included inside the Acronis Excel Pricelist. This (required) field displays only the Acronis supported currencies, based on the Pricelist, by utilizing a three letter mnemonic.
   
   
   
3. After you have set the primary currency with which you are billed from Acronis, you then have to activate that currency in your organization, if it is not already activated. By navigating to BSS Setup > Administration > System Options > Select Currencies you can check if, for example, the euro (EUR) currency is your primary and activated currency. 
   
   If the currency is not in the list, you can locate it from the upper drop-down menu of available currencies and by providing the "Ordering" number (1) and clicking on the plus  icon, you can add it to the list as your organization's primary currency. 
   
   
4. Lastly, you have to set the corresponding exchange rates, between the base/primary currency i.e. Euro (EUR) and the subscription (unsupported) currency that you wish to sell Acronis products with. By navigating to BSS Setup > Administration > System Options > Current Rates you can locate, for example, the exchange rate between the (EUR) currency and the (HRK) currency and set their respective exchange rate, by clicking on the respective "Current Rate" field and filling in the exchange rate with up to five decimals. Lastly, you need to click on the Update button in order for the exchange rate to be updated and saved.

   

The calculations for the sell and cost prices between the base/primary currency and the subscription currencies are automatically generated by the BSS platform, based on the provided exchange rates. Consequently, the latest prices are fed back to the BSS in order to be used for depicting usages and invoice items.