Marketplace offers billing
Appropriate roles: Billing admin
As a partner in the Cloud Solution Provider program (CSP), use Partner Center to purchase license-based SaaS products from Independent Software Vendor (ISV) publishers in the commercial marketplace. After you do so, you can access a bill for these types of purchases. The billing period starts on the first day of the calendar month and ends on the last day of the calendar month. Invoices are made available on the eighth day of the following month.
You can access invoices from either the Partner Center dashboard or by using Partner Center APIs.
Partners in the CSP program are billed for ISV commercial marketplace solutions purchased for a customer when they purchase those products from either Partner Center or from the Azure portal (using the customer's prior, CSP-purchased Azure tenant).
Note
If customers use their own Microsoft Entra tenant (not one purchased from a partner in the CSP program), customers can also choose to purchase their own ISV SaaS solution directly from (Microsoft AppSource or Azure Marketplace). If they do so, they'll receive their own bill directly from Microsoft. Likewise, if a partner in the CSP program sells an Azure subscription or the new Azure plan to the customer and grants the customer (or indirect reseller) role-based access to that tenant (assigning any role to the customer besides Reader), that customer (or indirect reseller) can also purchase commercial marketplace offers without prior approval or notification to the CSP partner. In these cases, Microsoft will not directly notify partners in the CSP program about purchases made by their customers. However, Microsoft does offer an optional Azure Monitor mechanism that you can use to set alerts or notifications about activity on an Azure subscription.
Access billing information for commercial marketplace products
The billing admin for your company receives an email when an invoice is ready to view. To access the latest invoice and reconciliation file for commercial marketplace product purchases:
Sign in to Partner Center and select the Billing workspace.
Go to the Billing overview (NCE) task menu > Billing | Billing Overview (NCE) page.
Choose the year in the upper right corner.
Select the invoice number.
Find the reconciliation file on the side panel.
Select Download report.
Look for a notification at the top of the page indicating that your file is being processed. This file should be available shortly on the Reports (NCE) page.
Monitor your download's progress on the Reports (NCE) page using the status column of the request line item.
These invoices and reconciliation files show Azure plan, Azure reservations, Azure savings plans, software, license-based, and commercial marketplace products. If you purchased subscriptions for a customer in a different currency, select the appropriate currency to access those invoices and reconciliation files.
To easily access and manage your invoices and reconciliation line items using API, see Partner Center APIs. The Partner Center APIs allow you to programmatically manage your invoices and reconciliation files efficiently.
To check your bill at any time based on the latest account activity, select a link under the Reports card > Estimates.
Note
To ensure clarity, we include taxes, charges, and credits when posting your new commerce invoices by the eighth day of the month. This approach might change the final amount due because these components are calculated based on the billing period's transactions.
More about invoices and recon files for commercial marketplace products
This section offers more information about invoice and reconciliation files for commercial marketplace SaaS subscriptions purchased for customers from non-Microsoft ISV publishers.
When you select invoices from the Billing | Billing Overview (NCE) page in the Partner Center task menu, you gain access to invoices and reconciliation files for charges related to both Microsoft and ISV purchases. These purchases might be associated with:
SaaS subscriptions (from either Microsoft or ISV publishers)
Azure plan
Azure reservations
Azure savings plans
Other subscription-based software (from either Microsoft or ISV publishers)
Examples of these purchases might include SUSE Linux software (a software subscription) or an Azure ISV SaaS product subscription.
Note
For more information about how to read invoice and recon files, see also Billing overview.
Tips on reading your invoice
When you purchase a license-based SaaS product from a non-Microsoft ISV publisher, you see the license fee charges on your invoice. This approach ensures billing transparency. Even when the ISV's SaaS product utilizes Azure infrastructure, the ISV is billed directly for Azure usage. The ISVs can track these charges in their Azure usage daily rated usage reconciliation file.
Your invoice is organized to help you understand charges and payment terms clearly.
Summary of charges: Page one of the invoice provides a summary of your billing details. Here, you find an overview of charges for the billing period, the invoice number, and payment terms, which require payment within 60 days of the invoice date. Additionally, it outlines payment methods, specifying how to pay by wire or check.
Detailed charges: Pages two and onwards detail charges for Microsoft and non-Microsoft ISV (license-based) purchases from the commercial marketplace. Non-Microsoft ISV purchases are identified by the publisher's name beneath each product name. For more specific billing details, refer to the reconciliation file.
Non-Microsoft ISV details: The final page gives more details about charges from ISVs, including the publisher's name and address if you're billed for license-based marketplace products from an ISV.
This structure ensures that all relevant information is easily accessible and understandable, helping you manage your invoices efficiently.
Tips on reading your reconciliation file
The new commerce (NCE) reconciliation file contains columns that map to the charges in your invoice. The PublisherName column indicates whether the purchase is from Microsoft or a non-Microsoft ISV publisher, helping you identify the charge source and manage vendor relationships more effectively.
If you see zero charges in your reconciliation line items, it might be due to an ISV "free trial" or a Bring Your Own License offer.
Free trial non-Microsoft ISV offers:
The free trial period covers the cost of the ISV's license-based SaaS product during that time, meaning you aren't charged for associated Azure infrastructure use of that SaaS product.
The free trial doesn't cover the cost of underlying Azure infrastructure usage for usage-based ISV offers, and those charges appear in a separate Azure reconciliation file.
Enrollment in the trial occurs automatically upon purchasing and deploying an ISV's product with a free trial. The trial period ends after the time defined by the ISV publisher, at which point the customer is charged. The reconciliation file might show two rows for a trial-eligible product: one for the trial period and one for the paid offer.
For more information about what each column represents, see Use your reconciliation files. See also Types of billing in Partner Center.