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Multiparty private offers (for channel partners)

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Multiparty private offers empower partners to come together, create personalized offers, and sell directly to Microsoft customers with simplified selling through the marketplace. For customers that have a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC), every dollar of the sale counts toward their MACC commitment when they purchase solutions that are Azure IP co-sell and MACC eligible.


Overview of the multiparty private offers experience:

  1. The independent software vendor (ISV) creates a private offer and sends it to the channel partner.
  2. The channel partner finalizes the offer and extends it to the customer.
  3. The customer buys through the commercial marketplace.
  4. Microsoft invoices the customer according to their billing terms with Microsoft.
  5. Microsoft pays the ISV and the channel partner.

Customers in United States, United Kingdom, and Canada markets are supported for multiparty private offers.

Channel partner prerequisites to sell a multiparty private offer

You must meet these prerequisites to create a multiparty private offer for customers:

Review this table for geo-specific requirements channel partners must meet for supported tax profile countries:

Tax profile country Geo-specific requirements
US Filed your resale certificates.
UK Claimed tax treaty benefits, tax treaty benefit status must be valid and not expired.

Note

To sell multiparty private offers, you must have a completed United States or United Kingdom tax profile in Partner Center for marketplace associated with your seller ID. You can verify this in Partner Center under the Account settings > Payout and tax profiles > Tax profiles tab. The tax profile country/region associated with your seller ID needs to be the United States or United Kingdom. If you don't see the Payout and tax profiles in the left navigational menu, contact your marketplace owner role within your company for permissions or to complete this step.

File resale certificates (United States)

Channel partners with a tax profile in the United States must provide your resale certificate(s) to Microsoft via a Support Request at least 5 business days before the sale of any multiparty private offer. Your resale certificate(s) must be on file at Microsoft before you sell multiparty private offers, or sales tax might be charged on your purchase as required by various tax laws.

  • Resale certificates must be provided for each seller ID used to sell multiparty private offers, and must be provided even if your company already provided them for other programs such as the Cloud Solution Provider program.
  • Your certificate(s) must be accurately completed and signed and must include the state where your company is headquartered at a minimum.
  • Each state has different exemption certificates for resale in addition to state-approved multi-jurisdictional certificates issued by some organizations. Work with your tax advisor to decide what is relevant for your legal address and registered states.
  • Depending on your location, your local government might govern your resale certificates in addition to, or in lieu of your state Department of Revenue (or similar department) and must be managed accordingly.
  • While many locations have blanket certificates that are renewed annually, some locations can renew at two or more years. Verify this and other information by checking your certificate or contacting your local tax authority.

To file your tax exemption(s), request support through Partner Center. Provide your marketplace seller ID, a tax contact for your company, and your resale certificate as an attachment.

Note

You can locate your seller ID in Partner Center under Account settings > Identifiers > Publisher within your organizational profile. Your company must have a completed United States tax profile in Partner Center for marketplace associated to your seller ID. You can verify this in Partner Center under Account settings > Payout and tax profiles > Tax profiles tab. The tax profile country/region associated with your seller ID needs to be the United States. If you don't see the Payout and tax profiles in the left navigational menu, contact your marketplace owner role within your company for permissions or to complete this step.

Claim tax treaty benefit (United Kingdom)

Channel partners with tax profile in United Kingdom must claim tax treaty benefits on the W-8BEN form in your tax profile setup before the sale of any multiparty private offer. You must have valid tax treaty benefit status on your tax profile before you're eligible to participate in multiparty private offer. To claim tax treaty benefit in your tax profile, in the Tax Treaty Benefits section of your W-8BEN form, select "Yes" to the question on claiming a reduced rate of withholding under a tax treaty.

Configure your multiparty private offers

Configure your multiparty private offers from the Private offers dashboard within the left-nav menu of the Marketplace offers workspace in Partner Center.

  1. Sign in to Partner Center using the account associated with the marketplace seller ID you provided to ISVs to add you to the multiparty private offer.
  2. Select Marketplace offers from the home page.
  3. Select Private offers from the left-nav menu to open the dashboard.
  4. Select the Multiparty tab.
  5. Multiparty private offers with the status Pending partner action are ready for you to update and send to customers for acceptance and purchase. Select the name of the multiparty private offer you're ready to action.

Note

The ISV that created the multiparty private offer and sent it to you is the originator of the multiparty private offer.

Offer setup

Within the offer setup, verify the customer information, products, pricing, and terms associated to the multiparty private offer are correct. Adjust the pricing and optionally add your terms. If there's an issue with the information included in the multiparty private offer, request the originator withdraw it, update it, and resubmit it to you. Before any sales, provide your resale certificates to Microsoft if you have a United States tax profile, or claim tax treaty benefit on your W-8BEN if you have a United Kingdom tax profile.

  • Customer terms and conditions: Optionally, upload a PDF copy of the terms and conditions you want your customer to accept as part of the multiparty private offer. Your terms and conditions aren't visible to the ISV, just to your customer. A total of five attachments can be uploaded between you and the ISV.

    1. Select + Add terms and conditions.
    2. Attach the PDF copy of the terms and conditions your customer must accept as part of the multiparty private offer.
    3. Type in a unique Customer-facing document name for each customer term and condition you upload. This document name is visible to your customer in Azure portal.

    Note

    Your terms and conditions must adhere to Microsoft supported billing models, offer types, and the Microsoft Publishers Agreement.

  • Customer renewals: ISVs will indicate if this customer is a renewal or a new customer. Learn more about this benefit for your ISVs.

  • Notification contacts: Provide up to five email addresses for the people within your company as Notification contacts to receive email updates on the status of the multiparty private offer. These emails are sent when your offer status changes to Pending partner action, Pending acceptance, Accepted, or Expired.

  • Prepared by contact: You must also provide a Prepared by email address, which is displayed to the customer in the private offer listing in the Azure portal.

  • Product offers: Review the partner price set by the ISV, then set the price increase to the customer as a percentage. Enter your Customer adjustment % with up to 8 decimal digits to achieve more precision. The adjustment % you enter is used to calculate the estimated price to the customer and applies uniformly to both the product pricing and custom meter pricing. The final price to your customer can be affected by other factors that might apply to your customer's organization.

    Example 1: This example illustrates how a customer adjustment % can be applied on top of your partner price to calculate the customer price.

    1. Partner price: $100.00.
    2. Customer adjustment %: you enter 10%.
    3. Customer price: $110.00.
    4. Calculation is $100 + ($100 x 10%) = $110.00 plus applicable taxes.

    Example 2: This example illustrates how the customer adjustment % can be applied to achieve the desired customer price from the partner price you received.

    1. Partner price: $95.00.
    2. Desired customer price: $105.00 plus applicable taxes.
    3. Customer adjustment %: you enter 10.52631579%
    4. Calculation is ($105.00 - $95.00)/$95.00 = 10.52631579%.
    5. Verify this customer adjustment % will generate your desired customer price. Calculate $95.00 + ($95.00 x 10.52631579%) = $105.00 to confirm and edit the customer adjustment % as needed.

    For customers outside of United States, you can export the pricing data sheet to review the partner price in the market currency of the customer. You won't be able to change the exchange rate applied. If the partner price in the customer's market currency isn't as expected, contact the ISV to withdraw the offer and adjust the price as appropriate. For products that support absolute price configuration, you can request the ISV to override the targeted market price via the import pricing data sheet capability to bypass the exchange rate managed by Microsoft. To further understand how exchange rates work in marketplace, review the Commercial Marketplace foreign exchange FAQs.

    If the ISV configured a discounted partner price to you, the customer price adjustment % you enter can't exceed the discount the ISV provided to you. If you need to configure a customer price adjustment that exceeds the discount the ISV provided to you, request the ISV to withdraw the multiparty private offer and configure an absolute partner price to remove this limitation.

    Note

    Multiparty private offers do not support the sale of professional services to customers. Sales of software offers cannot include professional services or hardware in the software price by policy, therefore, the customer adjustment % you enter must not include the sale of these items. To sell your professional services to customers in the United States, Canada, or United Kingdom, create a customer private offer using the transactable professional service offer type.

  • Sales notes: Optionally, include up to 60 characters of text as a sales note. The information entered here isn't visible to your customer or the ISV, and only appears in your marketplace reporting within the download exports for the orders, usage, and revenue dashboards and through programmatic API access to marketplace analytics. Don't include any personally identifiable information including names or email addresses.

Review and submit

On the Review and submit page, view the estimated customer price as either a calculated price or a net discount, and edit your customer adjustment % if needed. The final price to your customer can be affected by other factors that might apply to your customer's organization.

Once submitted, the multiparty private offer is locked for edits. You can still withdraw the multiparty private offer while it's Pending customer acceptance. However, the ISV is unable to withdraw the multiparty private offer once you've submitted it and it is in a Pending acceptance state.

When you're ready, select Submit. You're returned to the dashboard where you can view the offer status. Your multiparty private offer is available within 15 minutes. Once the acceptance link is available, select the multiparty private offer and select Copy link in the actions above the dashboard to share it with your customer for acceptance. The customer must be an owner or contributor or signatory on the billing account to accept the offer. The notification contacts you specified on the multiparty private offer will be emailed once the offer is ready to be shared with your customer.

Note

Microsoft will not send an email to your customer. You can copy the private offer link and share it with your customer for acceptance. Your customer will also be able to see the multiparty private offer under the Private offer management pane in the Azure portal, assuming they have the correct permissions. To learn more, see Purchase a private offer.

View private offers status

To view the status of your multiparty private offer:

  1. Select Private offers from the left-nav menu.
  2. Select the Multiparty tab.
  3. Check the Status column.

Private offer status descriptions:

  • Draft: You've started creating a multiparty private offer but haven't yet submitted it.
  • In Progress: The multiparty private offer that you submitted is currently being published. This can take up to 15 minutes.
  • Pending partner action: The multiparty private offer you submitted is now available for your channel partner to update and send to the customer for acceptance.
  • Pending acceptance: The multiparty private offer is pending customer acceptance and can't be withdrawn by you as the ISV.
  • Accepted: The multiparty private offer was accepted by your customer. Once accepted, the multiparty private offer can't be changed.
  • Expired: The multiparty private offer expired before the customer accepted it. You can request your channel partner to withdraw the multiparty private offer. Once withdrawn by your channel partner, you'll be able to withdraw the multiparty private offer to make changes and submit it again.
  • Ended: The multiparty private offer has passed its end date.

Purchase status

You can track if your customer has subscribed to the Software as a Service (SaaS) products contained within the multiparty private offer after they accept the SaaS offer. Private offer purchase has two steps, accept and purchase. For SaaS offers, customers need to activate the subscription and configure their account. For more information on the customer purchase process, review the documentation to purchase or subscribe to the private offer and share this with your customers.

Note

Currently, this functionality only applies to SaaS offer types.

To see the multiparty private offer purchase status, select the View status link under Purchase status in the Private offers dashboard. The View status link only shows for multiparty private offers that have been accepted by the customer or have ended. After selecting the View status link, you'll get a view of any subscriptions the customer has set up for the products contained within the multiparty private offer, and the state of those subscriptions. If there are no entries within this view, then either:

  • The customer hasn't yet purchased the SaaS product within the multiparty private offer and you should follow up with the customer directly to help them purchase and activate the product (assuming the start date has already passed).
  • Or, the multiparty private offer only contains Azure Application or Virtual Machine offer types.

Purchase status can be:

  • Subscribed: The customer has subscribed to the product, configured the SaaS service and you've activated the subscription. No further action is required by you or the customer.
  • PendingFulfillmentStart: Possible reasons:
    • The customer has subscribed to the product but has yet to configure the SaaS service. You should follow up with the customer directly and ask them to complete the step to configure the SaaS service.
    • Or, the customer has subscribed and completed the configuration step, but the ISV hasn't activated the subscription yet. You should follow up with the ISV and ask them to activate the subscription so that billing can occur.
  • Suspended: The subscription has been suspended because a customer's payment wasn't received. Microsoft gives the customer a 30-day grace period before automatically canceling the subscription.
  • Unsubscribed: Possible reasons:
    • The ISV didn't activate the subscription by the 30-day deadline since the customer purchased and configured the SaaS service. You need to advise the customer directly to subscribe to the product again. The ISV should activate it within the 30-day deadline.
    • The subscription has been canceled either because a customer has requested to cancel the subscription, or the subscription was canceled because of nonpayment.
    • The subscription has expired.

Withdraw a multiparty private offer

Withdrawing a multiparty private offer means your customer will no longer be able to access it. A multiparty private offer can only be withdrawn by a channel partner if the status is Pending acceptance. A multiparty private offer can't be withdrawn by an ISV if the status is Accepted by the customer.

To withdraw a multiparty private offer:

  1. Select Private offers from the left-nav menu to open the dashboard.
  2. Select the Multiparty tab.
  3. Select the multiparty private offer you want to withdraw, then select Withdraw.
  4. Select Request withdraw.
  5. Your offer status is updated to Pending partner action (Draft) and can now be edited, if desired. If you also need the ISV as the originator of the multiparty private offer to make edits, request the ISV to also withdraw the multiparty private offer, update it, and submit it again to you to update and send to your customer for acceptance.

Upgrade a multiparty private offer

This option enables you to upgrade an existing accepted multiparty private offer and is applicable for multiparty private offers in either an accepted or ended state. Upgrades are only supported at time of renewal. For example, the upgraded offer start date and end date cannot overlap with the existing multiparty private offer. Through upgrade, ISVs can edit their partner pricing, customer private offer dates, customer terms and conditions, notification contacts, and sales note for the upgraded multiparty private offer but cannot change the product plan or product terms. Channel partners can edit their customer adjustment percentage, prepared by contact, customer terms and conditions, notification contacts, and sales note. If other changes are required, create a new multiparty private offer. To finalize the upgrade:

  1. Select Private offers from the left-nav menu to open the dashboard.
  2. Select the Multiparty tab.
  3. Select the multiparty private offer that your ISV initiated to upgrade and submitted to you.
  4. Edit the details on the Offer setup page as needed.
  5. Select Submit.

Cancelling an accepted multiparty private offer

Once the customer accepts the multiparty private offer, channel partners are no longer able to withdraw or edit the multiparty private offer. If the multiparty private offer was created with incorrect details such as incorrect pricing, incorrect public plan, or incorrect terms or dates, then you should work with the customer and ISV to submit a marketplace support request to cancel the multiparty private offer.

To do so, you or the ISV can create a support ticket in Partner Center and request the multiparty private offer to be canceled. To cancel the private offer, there must either be no purchases made by the customer for the products within the private offer, or the customer must unsubscribe to the products purchased within the private offer before it can be cancelled.

Provide the following information:

  • The private offer ID
  • The customer billing account ID
  • Reason for cancellation
  • Confirm whether refund is needed if the customer has already purchased. More purchase info is required if a refund is needed.
  • A screenshot with written confirmation from both the other partner involved in configuring the multiparty private offer and from the customer that they agree to the cancellation.

Upon cancellation, the multiparty private offer is removed from your multiparty private offer dashboard view in Partner Center and is also removed from the customer's Private offer management view in the Azure portal. After the cancellation is processed, the multiparty private offer price will no longer be applied if the customer was to purchase the plan that was contained in the canceled multiparty private offer.

Payout and reporting on multiparty private offers

The payout amount is based on the partner price you received and the customer adjustment % you applied to the product prices. For more information about marketplace payout process and policies, see Payout schedule and processes.

  • Payouts: Sales through multiparty private offers are in Earnings, specifically under earnings and reports.
  • Analytics: Sales through multiparty private offers are available in the commercial marketplace insights dashboards, reports, and through programmatic access.

Related content

Further reading

Video tutorials (YouTube)