Billing an Acronis Fixed Price with Overage Product

Owned by Panagiotis Papanastasiou
Last updated: Dec 12, 2022 by Oleg Melnykov (Deactivated)
5 min read

The billing process for a fixed price with overage Acronis product is similar to processes for the consumption-based but with the exception of the upfront billing of the fixed amount. An analysis follows on what you should expect from the billing process of such product along with an invoice example.

 

Fixed Price with Overage PPU Subscriptions Billing

A Fixed Price with Overage subscription will be billed based on the consumption of resources at the end of the billing cycle, by also taking into consideration the monthly Fixed Price defined at the product level.

At the end of the billing cycle, the Acronis Service Manager provides us with the usage costs of the resources and the sell prices. As such, we calculate the subscription’s total consumption, while taking into consideration the monthly Fixed Price to calculate if the total consumption of the subscription is higher or lower than the monthly Fixed Price defined. This is how the system decides if the generated invoice will be a debit invoice with the overage consumption or not.

 

Billing Rules

After setting the general billing options as well as the monthly Fixed Price of the Acronis PPU products analyzed on the pages Billing an Acronis Consumption Based Product and Defining Acronis Products with Fixed Price with Overage you are ready for their overall automated billing. The monthly Fixed Price of a PPU subscription is billed either upfront or at the end of the billing term, and the invoice due dates follow this exact logic. However, the invoicing of the monthly Fixed Price is different from the invoicing of the usages consumption. Every time the Fixed Price with Overage PPU subscription renews, an invoice is generated for the monthly Fixed Price based on the PPU Payment Option of the product regardless of whether an invoice for the total cost of usages consumption will be generated. More specifically:

  • No Invoice Generation: If the amount of the subscription, meaning the total cost of usages consumption, is lower or equal to the monthly Fixed Price, then no invoice is generated (either debit or credit).

  • Debit Invoice Generation: If the amount of the subscription, meaning the total cost of usages consumption overcomes the monthly Fixed Price, then a debit invoice is generated with the extra charges.

The decision for the system to generate an invoice or not depends on when the Service Manager returns the billing items for invoicing in our platform, in order to compare the overall subscription consumption with the Monthly Fixed Price.

Billing Example

Fixed Price with Overage Plan

Fixed Price with Overage Plan

Product Name

Acronis PPU Subscription Plan 100

Billing Model

Fixed Plan with Overage

Billing Option

Upfront Billing

Purchase Date (Billing Cycle)

01/06/22 (01/06/22 - 31/06/22)

Monthly Fixed Price

100€

Case Description

In the circumstance where the monthly Fixed Price = 100€, on the subscription creation, a debit invoice of 100€ will be generated, and at the end of the billing cycle we can have the following cases:

  • If the Total Consumption = 80€ < 100€ → No invoice will be generated.

  • If the Total Consumption = 100€ → No invoice will be generated

  • If the Total Consumption = 130€ > 100€ → A debit invoice will be generated with the difference 130€ - 100€ = 30€ that must be paid.

The percentage specified in the field Hybrid Storage Extra Charge is applied to the SKUs listed below:

  • Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud - Hybrid Storage (per GB) (SPBBMSENS)

  • Acronis Cyber Files Cloud - Hybrid Storage (per GB) (SP2AMSENS)

  • Advanced Disaster Recovery - Hybrid Storage (per GB) (SVFAMSENS)


    If their storage costs increase, the MSP can set an extra charge which will be applied to the price(s) specified in the pricelist.

    E.g.:
    For an MSP with a Tier-1 commitment, the cost for Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud - Hybrid Storage (per GB) (SKU: SPBBMSENS) is 0.068 / GB.

    The actual cost is higher, owing to resources which increase their costs for such (hybrid) products. Because of this, MSPs add a markup percentage on the instance, as seen in the figure above:

    The MSP cost is calculated as follows:
    0.068 + 0.068*0.2 = 0.0816 per GB

    The resulting cost is the one to which the markup will be applied, as defined in the account pricelist.

    If an MSP customer purchases based on a pricelist with a 10% markup, the customer will be charged:
    0.0816/(1-0.1) = 0.9067 per GB

Fixed Price with Overage Subscription Invoicing

A Fixed Price with Overage PPU subscription is invoiced automatically based on two factors:

  1. For the monthly Fixed Price defined, the invoice generation depends on the Payment Option (Upfront/No Upfront)
    and

  2. At the end of the Billing Period, when the amount of the subscription is higher than the monthly Fixed Price.

When a subscription is created, a debit invoice is generated to charge the customer.

At the end of the Billing Cycle, the system follows the below steps to generate or not an extra debit invoice:

  • Loads the external billing records from the Acronis Service Manager.

  • Calculates each billing item.

  • Sums up all the billing items to calculate and update the subscription final price.

  • Converts the subscription total amount to transaction currency based on the invoice exchange rate (when applicable).

  • Compares the subscription total amount with the monthly Fixed Price.

    • Case 1: No invoice is generated if the subscription Total Amount is less or equal to the monthly Fixed Price.

    • Case 2: If the subscription Total amount is more than the monthly Fixed Price, then a debit invoice is generated with a Unit Price, which is the rounded subscription Total Amount minus the monthly Fixed Price.

 

“Profit Analysis” Calculations Overview in BSS

Concerning the calculated Profit Analysis that is displayed in the Total Menu of the BSS, we have the following:

For example, if the Overage amount is 30,00 euros and the pricelist rule is 10% Margin, then the Total Cost = 27,27€ and Total Profit = 2,73€

Also, additional information is being displayed at the invoice level, to inform the user of the reason the invoice was generated.

  • In the invoice that is generated for the monthly Fixed Price, we display the text (Monthly Fixed Price) next to the product name in the Description column.

  • In the invoice that is generated for the Overage consumption, we display the text (Overage Charges) next to the product name in the Description column.