Having historic data and information of a subscription's usage records, for monitoring, comparison, or audit purposes, is essential. For this reason, we have introduced a reporting tool that helps the BSS user to view and export a legacy Azure subscription’s usage records along with the costs of the previous six billing cycles.
Accessing the Tool
To access the tool, please navigate to BSS Setup > Tools > Microsoft Cloud Services > Subscription's Usage Records.
Retrieving Usage Records from a Subscription
After selecting the tool, the BSS user lands on the following page, where the tool has three parameters for the user to submit in order for the retrieval process to be initiated.
The tool's parameters are the following:
Subscription ID: The BSS of the Azure subscription for which we need to get the historic records
Billing Period. This will be a drop-down where it will display the past 6 periods. If for example the Azure subscription are renewed every 28th of the month and we run the tool on the 11/03 the available periods will be: 28/01/2020 - 27/02/2020. 28/12/2020 - 27/01/2020 etc..
Pricelist. The system will display by default the pricelist that it is related with selected renewal record but the customer will have the option to change and select a different pricelist. There will be a check that a pricelist can be selected only if it includes the Azure product.
By running the tool, the system will display the list of the usage records with the following columns:
Charge Start Date: It will be the start date of the selected period. it will be the same for all records
Charge End Date: It will be the end date of the selected period. It will be the same for all records
Resource Group
Resource ID
Resource Name
Resource Category
Resource Sub Category
Region
Consumption / Unit
Usage Charges
The BSS user will able to export this list in an excel file.
The data we will be collected from what we keep already in our database, no API calls to MS
The values will be with not tax
Tool Notes: Tα usages είναι estimated και οχι τα actual που θα δει ο πελάτης στο τιμολόγιο.
- The displayed usage costs are estimated and not the actual ones that the customer would have gotten on the final invoice.
If a resource was deprecated, then the cost which will be displayed will be zero (0).
The usages have been rounded based on the number of decimals of the subscription.
The dates and timezones are formatted based on the BSS user's date format.
The tool runs ad-hoc and returns the usage records for a specific legacy Azure subscription at a specific billing period.
Once clicked, this is the view displayed at the BSS User:
As it can be seen, the only available field to be completed is Subscription ID. The other fields are locked until an ID is defined.
Once the ID of the subscription is defined, the “Get subscription Data” button needs to be clicked. This button retrieves all the available information for this azure subscription regarding its billing cycles and available pricing methods.
If an ID that corresponds to an azure legacy is used, the 2 dropdowns are populated and also 2 more buttons are displayed:
Usages from BSS
Usages from MS
If an ID that does not correspond to an azure legacy subscription is used, no error is displayed but also the two dropdowns are not populated. Buttons are displayed but they don’t work.
The previous Billing Cycles field is populated with all 6 previous billing cycles if found. The dates represent the BSS cycles as retrieved form the subscription. If a subscription is relatively new, only the previous available billing cycles will be available. Its default option is the exact previous billing cycle.
The Available Pricelists field is populated with the following options:
No Pricelist (default option)
Subscription Pricelist
Any PL found in this Organization that includes the azure legacy product that is contained in the subscription added above.
The No Pricelist option displays the Usage Charges with no PL assigned to them.
The Subscription Pricelist option displays the Usage Charges with the pricelist that this subscription had assigned to it during the selected billing cycle. Here, the following apply:
If no PL was assigned to the subscription for this specific billing cycle or it was assigned at one point but got de-assigned in the meantime, an informative message is displayed to the BSS User:
“Calculations do not include pricelist. No Pricelist is assigned to Subscription "Microsoft Azure (Enterprise)".”
If a PL was assigned, the name of the PL used for the calculations is displayed as an informative message again to the User:
“Pricelist "PLReseller01" used for calculations.”
Under Subscription Pricelist, all the available PLs found in this Organization that include the azure legacy product that is contained in the subscription added above.
Note here that or calculations we use the current amount and pricing method found in each PL as we do not keep history of what was used during the actual billing cycle.
So if for example PLReseller01 used to contain 10% Markup during the period 01/10/20-31/10/20 but on 01/11/20 the percentage was changed to 12%.
when this Tool will be used to view the usages of the previous billing cycle (01/10-31/10) using PL: PLReseller01 , the 12% Markup will be used in the calculations.
Functionality
As explained already, once the “Get Subscription Data” runs and populates the dropdowns, 2 new buttons are displayed.
The “Usages from BSS” button retrieves all the usages found in our db.
The “Usages from MS” button retrieves all the usages returned by Microsoft.
The columns of the Tool are:
Resource ID
Resource Name
Resource Group
Resource Category
Resource Sub Category
Consumption/ Unit
Usage charges
Charge start Date
Charge End Date
Filters are available for Group, Category and Subcategory.
Start and date dates are populated with the BSS start and end dates of the subscription with the date format (and timezone) of the BSS User.
All values inside are estimated amounts and not the actual usage charged.
The prices (in no PL option) are calculated based on the current ratecard (as we don't have history regarding ratecards and neither does Microsoft).
If a resource is deprecated and not included in the current ratecard the price that we will show is 0
No taxes are included.
In order to perform different calculations - based on a different PL- OR for a different billing cycle, the BSS User can make different selections in the dropdowns and click again either Usages from BSS or Usages from MS button.
If the User wants to clear the results and initiate a new search for a new subscription ID, a clear button has been added.
By clicking on it, all results regarding the previous subscription ID are lost and the process starts again by having only the Subscription ID and “Get Subscription Data” available.
Finally an “Export to Excel” button is available which will export the current view of the BSS User to a spreadsheet. This means that this action does not perform any extra retrieving of data but rather exports what is currently on the UI of the BSS User.
So for example, if the BSS User filters the resources and only “Virtual Machines” Category is displayed and then the export is performed, only the “Virtual Machines” Category will be exported.