The annual products are not new SKUs, they are the existing Microsoft plans with the annual billing option enabled. So, there is no need for executing any special process for activating them in your BSS.
Updating your Catalogue for Annual Products
The process for the automatic update of Microsoft products catalogue includes also the activation of the annual billing cycle to the plans that support it and the update of their annual prices. In this page we'll describe how this update is performed.
Enabling the Annual Billing Cycle to Certain Microsoft Products
When you perform the automatic update of the Microsoft products by running the "Get Services Definition" action, our system gets the available billing frequencies for each plan and activates the annual billing cycle if the plan supports it. The Catalog Status for the products that the annual billing cycle has been activated, is set to updated.
Updating the Annual Prices
The annual prices are updated automatically when you run the "Update Product Prices" tool. For Microsoft products that have the annual billing cycle enabled, we apply as annual price 12 times the monthly price
Updating your Pricelists to include the Annual Products
The indirect CSPs that are working price lists must add in these price lists pricing rules for the annual billing cycle.
If you are working with price groups in your price lists, then you need to add a pricing rule per price group in each price list.
If you are working with products in your price lists, you need to define a pricing rule for each product seperately
Billing an Annual Subscription
The annual subscriptions are billed from the purchase date and for a whole year. This means that are excluded from proration and no free period is applied.
Below is a parading for understanding the differences between monthly and annually subscriptions.
- Customer A is billed every 1st of the month and he purchased on 20th of October a monthly E3 plan
- Customer B is billed every 1st of the month and he purchased on 20th of October an annual E3 plan
Our system will generate the following invoices:
- Customer A
- on 20th of October an invoice with zero amount will be generated for the period 20/10 - 31/10 since this period will be the free period for this subscription.
- On 1st of November an invoice will be generated for the period 01/11 - 30/11. The invoice amount will be the monthly price for the E3 plan
- Customer B
- On 20th of October an invoice for the period 20/10/2017 - 19/10/2018 will be generated. The invoice amount will be the annual price for the E3 plan.