What is Billing Frequency?

With this flexible payment method, the total amount that the customer has to pay is the same (since there are no interest rates applied) but that amount can be paid in monthly/quarterly/semi-annually/annually installments and not in a one-time payment. Yet, not all Microsoft Software Subscription and NCE products are eligible. The unit of each Microsoft Software Subscription and NCE product dictates the available Billing Frequency, and the customers, upon purchase, can select the one that best suits their needs.

Nevertheless, before analyzing how the Billing Frequency functions, we will first focus on the basic terminology, the rules, the units, and the types of products that are affected by the Billing Frequency.

Definitions of Terms

The following terms define the actual differences and relations between them since these terms are used in the entirety of this page.

• The Billing Term (a.k.a Unit, Billing Cycle) in the recurring products shows the duration of a subscription.

• The Billing Frequency (monthly, bi-monthly, annually) is the time interval between two installments.

• The Installments are the parts (12, 24, 36, e.t.c.) into which an amount is divided for equal payment.

• Billing Plan is the combination of the Billing Frequency and the Installments (e.i., 36 monthly installments for the triennial unit)

Billing Frequency Availability Per Product Type

The following two product types support the Billing Frequency functionality.

1. Software Subscriptions

2. New Commerce Experience (NCE)

Billing Frequency Rules

The following rules govern the functionality of the Billing Frequency mechanism.

• The Billing Frequency can only function if the required Units (Billing Cycles) per currency are also enabled in your BSS organization.

• The Billing Frequency can only be in multiples of the monthly Unit (the lowest measurement unit is 1 month).

• The Billing Frequency functions only for Recurring Charges but not for One-Time Charges.

• The Billing Frequency is not yet implemented for Assets (e.g., units License & Instance).

• All products that have the Billing Frequencies enabled are, by default, excluded from Prorata. (This rule does not affect the last bullet from this list of rules.)

• A service purchased with installments will check for Credit Limit availability against the total amount of the order.

• Although the order Item and subscription amount will display the full price, only in the invoice is where the current installment amount will be displayed.

• Edit Pricing is allowed in subscriptions with installments (as well as for New Commerce Experience (NCE) subscriptions) for both the Current cycle (under conditions) and the Next cycle.

• Billing Frequency is available for zero-priced subscriptions.

• Subscription suspensions are supported by the Billing Frequency.

• Only full cancelation of subscriptions is supported by the Billing Frequency:

  • All pending (not invoiced) installments will be canceled.

  • A prorated refund will be calculated for the installment of the current billing cycle, and a credit invoice will be issued (credit invoices for subscriptions with installments are not created upon cancelation since they are generated from the billing service.)

• If a BSS account Prorata day changes, then the due date of the pending (not invoiced) installments also changes to align with the new Prorata day.

Types of Products

Although there are two types of products (Subscriptions & Assets) in BSS that have the Recurring Charges (unit group type), only the Subscriptions are available with the Billing Frequency. In later releases, Assets will also support it.

For recurring products, the number of Installments is calculated by dividing the Billing Term by the Billing Frequency (Installments = Billing Term / Billing Frequency).

Example for a product with an Annual Billing Term (12 months):

Activating the Billing Frequency

The Billing Frequency (of the Software Subscriptions and NCE products) can be enabled by navigating to BSS Setup > Administration > System Options > Applications Setup and locating the Microsoft Cloud Services service manager. By choosing the preferred instance, you need first to enable the checkbox named Enable NCE Billing Frequency to activate it. By default, the checkbox is disabled. This checkbox is only applicable for the NCE billing frequency since the Software Subscription billing frequency is activated by default, without the need for a checkbox.

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Afterwards, you need to click on the Save button and then run the Get Services Definition process for the system to automatically set the available Billing Plans for the applicable Microsoft Software Subscription and NCE products.

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Consequently, after activating the Enable NCE Billing Frequency option, the system updates the NCE products of your Microsoft catalog with their corresponding Billing Plans. Therefore, once a Microsoft NCE product is selected during the creation of an order, either via BSS or Storefront, depending on its Billing Frequency eligibility, the users can choose the preferred Billing Plan that best suits their needs.
In the following section of this page, we analyze the option with which you can manage the availability of Billing Plans per account.

Managing the Availability of Billing Plans on Accounts

After the required activation of the NCE Billing Frequency checkbox, the Enable Billing Plans checkbox option is offered for you to be in control over the availability of Billing Plans (installments) for your accounts. This checkbox can be enabled or disabled from the Ordering options of a BSS account. By default, the checkbox is set to the disabled state meaning that for all your BSS accounts, no Billing Plans (installments) are available.

• By enabling this checkbox, both the BSS and Storefront platforms will offer Billing Plans on eligible NCE products during their ordering.

• By disabling the checkbox, the Billing Plans will not be offered even if the NCE products are eligible by Microsoft.

To enable or disable the Billing Plan (installments) automatically as a bulk action for multiple accounts, please navigate to BSS > Office > Accounts. On the Accounts list click the Actions button and select the option Manage Billing Plans.

On the following pop-up window, you have the options to enable or disable the Billing Plans (installments) for either the selected accounts (from the Accounts list) or for all the accounts on the BSS platform.

Once you have made your choices, the following pop-up window displays the results on the number of accounts that were updated with this bulk action.

To enable or disable the Billing Plan (installments) manually for a single account, you can interact with the checkbox named Enable Billing Plans for that BSS account, by navigating to BSS > Office > Accounts and then edit the account so as to enable or disable the checkbox and save the change.

Once you have enabled the Billing Plans checkbox option on an account, you can witness on the view page of that account, under the Ordering section, a visual verification.

Billing Plans Extra Charge

Please continue to the Billing Plans Extra Charge page to check the analysis of the Billing Plans Extra Charge in the platform.

Billing Frequency in Storefront

Please continue to the Billing Frequency in Storefront page to check the analysis of the Billing Frequency in Storefront.

Billing Frequency in BSS

Please continue to the Billing Frequency in BSS page to check the analysis of the Billing Frequency in BSS.

Invoices with Billing Frequency

As we have already mentioned in the rules section of this page, although the order Item and subscription amount will display the full price, only in the invoice is where the current installment amount will be displayed. This means that the debit invoices, generated each month, will display the current installment amount and not the full price. Also, invoice Items with installments display the Quantity as well as the Unit Price.
Moreover, there are two cases of Billing Frequency related invoices in terms of whether the BSS account of the customer has or does not have Prorata.

1. If the customer’s account has Prorata, then all the due dates of the installments are based on this charged period, for example on the 15th of each month.

    

2. If the customer’s account does not have Prorata, then the mechanism checks the Billing Options of the product and:

   1. If it is up-front billing on the product, then all the due dates of the installments are based on the beginning of each monthly charge, for example, on the 9th of each month.

       

   2. Otherwise, all the due dates of the installments are based on the end of each monthly charge, for example, on the 19th of each month.

Display the Installment Number on Printed Invoices

A small edit is required for the invoice printout, for the printed invoices to display the product description with the installment number (as the one highlighted in green on the above screenshot). This action must be done only once and affects only the invoice items with installments.

The merge field that includes the installment information is the InvoiceLines.InvDisplayName field. We suggest adding the following code for the description column:

The final (beginning part) of each of the two rows must look like the following example, as illustrated by the screenshot above.

Once these changes are completed and the Invoice Print-Out Template is Saved, by clicking on the respective button, the invoice preview, as well as the printed invoices that contain order items with installments, will correctly display the installment number, each month, next to the product description.

Merge Fields for Billing Plans in Reports & Notifications

• Billing Plan: You can find under each report and notification for Subscriptions an added merge field called Billing Plan (with filter values Monthly, Semi-Annual, etc.). With this field, you can check as well as display the subscriptions that have either a monthly or a semi-annual billing plan. This merge field can be used in Reports, Notifications, Advanced Search, Email Templates, and Print-out Templates.

• Enable Billing Plans: You can find under each report and notification for Accounts an added merge field called Enable Billing Plans (with values Yes, No). With this field, you can check as well as display whether an account has enabled the Enable Billing Plans checkbox option or not. This merge field can be used in Reports, Notifications, Advanced Search, Email Templates, and Print-out Templates.

• Billing Plans Extra Charge: You can find under each report and notification for Subscriptions and Accounts an added merge field called Billing Plans Extra Charge (having as value the percent amount followed by two decimal integers. For example, the value will be “5.00“ for a 5.00%). With this field, you can check as well as display the Billing Plan Extra Charge that a subscription or an account has. This merge field can be used in Reports, Notifications, Advanced Search, Email Templates, and Print-out Templates.

Billing Plans During Subscription Renewal

Once a subscription with a billing plan reaches its renewal date, the subscription will automatically be renewed, and at the same time, it will create a new installment plan.
For example, if the subscription had a 12-month billing plan, the new installment plan will also be for 12 months.

Billing Plans for Tenant Resellers

Your Tenant Resellers can also enjoy the flexible payment method of Billing Plans for both their BSS and Storefront via backordering. For more information on enabling or disabling that functionality for your Tenant Resellers, please visit the Billing Frequency for Tenant Resellers page.

API Field for Billing Plans Extra Charge

A new informative field, called BillingFrequencyMarkup is responsible for providing the value of the Billing Plans Extra Charge via API commands and is available by utilizing the following five GET APIs calls that relate to the applied Extra Charge (Markup) on orders, subscriptions, and installment plans. More specifically:

• GET /api/orders/{orderId}/items/{itemId} : This command provides the ability to retrieve the Extra Charge (Markup) applied to an order item with a specific ID.

• GET /api/orders/{orderId}/items : This command provides the ability to retrieve the Extra Charge (Markup) applied to the order items of a specific order.

• GET /api/subscriptions/{subscriptionId} : This command provides the ability to retrieve the Extra Charge (Markup) applied to a subscription with a specific ID.

• GET /api/subscriptions : This command provides the ability to retrieve the Extra Charge (Markup) applied to a number of subscriptions from the list of subscriptions.

• GET /api/installmentplans/{id}/installments : This command provides the ability to retrieve the Extra Charge (Markup) applied to the installments of a subscription.

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