Multiparty private offers FAQ

Cloud marketplaces are outpacing cloud growth and becoming the centralized go-to-market channel of the future. Private offers empower custom deal making and are the key to unlocking enterprise customers and offer benefits like negotiated pricing, private terms and conditions, and specialized configurations. There are three types of private offers:

• Private offers for customers: Offer the ability for ISV partners to create a private offer to sell directly to a customer. If the customer has a cloud consumption commitment with Microsoft, the sale can count towards the customers' commitment if the offer is Azure IP co-sell incentivized. For more information, see ISV to customer private offers.
• Multiparty private offers: Multiparty private offers empower eligible partners to come together, create personalized offers with custom payouts, and sell directly to Microsoft customers with simplified selling through the marketplace. And for customers that have a cloud consumption commitment, every dollar of the sale counts toward their commitment when they purchase solutions that are Azure IP co-sell eligible. It also enables the customer's preferred partner to work with ISVs on marketplace deals and specify a custom price to that partner for the deal.
• CSP private offers: Offer the ability for ISV partners to extend a margin to motivate partners in the Cloud Solution Provider program (CSPs) to sell their solution. It gives ISVs an advocate for their product while helping ISVs scale to sell in the SMB market. For CSPs, it gives them the opportunity to package ISV solutions with their software and services sales to offer unique customer value. For more information, see ISV to CSP partner private offers and Marketplace margins.

Benefits vary depending on audience. Ultimately, the value of multiparty private offers is that the customer can maintain their trusted partner relationships. And partners can work together to create customized solutions for customers using their unique cloud services.

• Customer benefit: Many customers have preferred partners that they buy their software from. With multiparty private offers, customers can maintain their trusted partner relationships while streamlining the procurement and deployment of the solution through the commercial marketplace. Partners can procure ISV solutions on the customer's behalf and package that into the offer for the customer-simplifying the process and consolidating transactions. And now with multiparty private offers, customers with a cloud consumption commitment can count their purchase towards their cloud consumption commitment. Microsoft is unique in that 100 percent of sales count towards a customer's Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment automatically when customers buy eligible solutions. Using precommitted cloud spend is one of the main motivators for customers to buy through cloud marketplaces. With multiparty private offers, customers are able to purchase through their preferred partner and still have the sale count towards their cloud consumption commitment. For more information, see Azure Services and Marketplace offers that are eligible for MACC. ​​
• ISV partner benefit: Many customers utilize partners as trusted advisors for purchasing, implementation, and support decisions. Multiparty private offers unlock deals for ISVs when the partner owns the customer relationship and needs to be included in the transaction.
• Channel partner benefit: Multiparty private offers give partners selling software and services the ability to work with ISVs, create personalized offers with customized payouts together, and sell directly to Microsoft customers through the marketplace having the software sale count toward the customers' cloud consumption commitment. It unlocks new opportunities where partners can proactively collaborate on enterprise deal-making and help manage the customer's broad technology estate as trusted advisors.

Multiparty private offers are available to customers who purchase in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.

• Customers can purchase multiparty private offers with an Enterprise Agreement (EA), Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA), Indirect Enterprise Agreement (Indirect EA), and through web direct motions. Customers need to provide their partner or the ISV with their billing account ID. Customers can run the eligibility check tool and download the report to identify their billing account ID and verify if they're approved to purchase in marketplace. Find alternative ways to locate the billing account ID in the Azure portal. For customers with an Enterprise Agreement (EA) with Microsoft, billing account ID is the same as their EA enrollment number.

• Customers must also have their market currency matching their billing account currency to be eligible for multiparty private offers configured with absolute pricing for partner price. For example, Canadian customers with $CAD market currency and opt to set up with $USD billing account currency aren't eligible if the offer needs to be configured with absolute pricing for partner price, only discount price (percent discount) for partner price can be supported.

Any partner selling through multiparty private offers must be a member of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and be actively using the Microsoft commercial marketplace as a go-to-market and sales channel.

ISVs or partners that build software or SaaS solutions must have a transactable offer with public plans available to participate in multiparty private offers. If the ISV is new to Microsoft or doesn't yet have a transactable offer and needs assistance, the ISV Success program can help.

Channel partners must be enrolled in the commercial marketplace, and have a US or UK tax profile set up in Partner Center for marketplace. US partners must also file their resale certificates with Microsoft. UK partners must claim tax treaty benefit on their W-8BEN in the tax profile setup to be eligible to sell through multiparty private offers.

Sales through multiparty private offers are limited to customers purchasing in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.

ISVs across the globe are invited to participate. The only caveat is that the channel partner you work with needs to have a United States or United Kingdom tax profile set up in Partner Center and the customer needs to purchase in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada.

The CSP partner private offer (also known as margin sharing) is a private offer type that motivates eligible partners to sell an ISV's solution. ISVs can make private offers and extend a margin to partners in the Cloud Solution Provider program (CSPs). It helps ISVs reach small and medium-sized customers by scaling through the Microsoft ecosystem of over 90,000 partners in the Cloud Solution Provider program. With margin sharing, the CSP partner owns the end-to-end customer relationship including the pricing strategy and billing. They bill the customer outside of the marketplace (the deal is done on the CSP's contracts).

All partners including partners enrolled in the CSP Program can participate in multiparty private offers and work with ISV partners to create custom private offers for customers with an enterprise agreement (EA) or Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA). The partner still owns the customer relationship but with multiparty private offers, the customer purchases directly through the marketplace and Microsoft bills the customer.

To prepare for the multiparty private offer opportunity, ISVs should have transactable solutions published to the commercial marketplace. Once they have their offer listed, they should use the current private offer capabilities and build relationships with other partners.

For partners in the CSP program, start selling ISV solutions via ISV to CSP margin Sharing private offers and expand to multiparty private offers.

For partners who aren't in the Cloud Solution Provider program, start building your network of partnerships with ISVs and identify Azure benefit eligible solutions.

Also, channel partners must enroll in the Microsoft commercial marketplace on Partner Center, and have a completed United States or United Kingdom tax profile associated to their marketplace seller ID. Channel partners with US tax profiles must provide their resale certificates to Microsoft in advance of any sales through this offering. Channel partners with UK tax profiles must claim tax treaty benefit on their W-8BEN form to be eligible to participate in multiparty private offerings.

Yes. Channel partners with US tax profiles must provide your resale certificate to Microsoft at least five business days before the sale of any multiparty private offer. 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 (CSP) program or Volume Licensing (VL) program. Your certificates must be accurately completed and signed and must include the state where your company is headquartered at a minimum. Your resale certificates 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. To file your tax exemption, request support through Partner Center. Provide your marketplace seller ID and supply the appropriate information.

Channel partners with UK tax profile must claim tax treaty benefit on their W-8BEN in their tax profile setup to be eligible to sell through multiparty private offers. To verify tax treaty benefit status in Partner Center, navigate to Account settings > Payout and tax profiles > Tax profile tab, the Tax Treaty Status should be True. If the Tax treaty status is False, you must update the tax profile and claim tax treaty benefit before you can sell a multiparty private offer. To claim tax treaty benefit, select "Yes" to the claim tax treaty question in the Tax Treaty Benefits section of the W-8BEN form.

Yes. Eligible channel partners (with US tax profiles and required resale certificate or UK tax profiles with tax treaty benefit) can sell to customers in all supported markets (US, UK, CA). For example, a partner located in UK that meets the UK tax profile requirements can sell to customers in United Kingdom, Unites States, and Canada.

Get support verifying you completed prerequisite tax and payment profile account setup steps by emailing channelready@microsoft.com.

For self-serve help on setting up tax and payment profiles, review the following video tutorials:

• Set up a commercial marketplace tax profile in Partner Center
• Set up a commercial marketplace payment profile in Partner Center

Multiparty private offers adhere to the policies and terms included in the Microsoft Publishers Agreement, the Commercial Marketplace Terms of Use, the commercial marketplace certification policies, and the commercial marketplace review policies. View the specific terms for multiparty private offers within the Microsoft publishers agreement Addendum B.

Multiparty private offers can be created for the following transactable marketplace offer types: SaaS, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Applications, and Azure Containers. Multiparty private offers don't support the sale of professional services to customers. Sales of software offers can't include professional services or hardware in the software price by policy. 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. Private offers aren't supported for products offered in Microsoft AppSource.

To create a multiparty private offer, you need the billing account ID of your customer. Customers can find the billing account information in the Azure portal either in:

• Cost Management + Billing > Settings > Properties or,
• If customer knows the subscription they plan to use for the purchase, select: Subscriptions > select the relevant subscription > Properties (or Billing Properties). The customer must be an owner or contributor on the billing account to access this information.

If a customer doesn't have a billing account, they can create one by signing up on Azure.com. See Billing account scopes in the Azure portal.

Applying the multiparty private offer at the Billing Account ID level means that if new subscriptions are added to the customer's Azure plan, the multiparty private offer automatically applies to those subscriptions also. No edits are required to the multiparty private offer.

Billing account information is only available to the customer. ISV partners or channel partners can't access it.

The customer start date and end dates define the window of time when your multiparty private offer prices are available for your customer to purchase. These dates are different from the term lengths (monthly, 1-year, 2-years, 3-years) of your included product(s) in the multiparty private offer and the customer's related subscription start and end dates.

Choose Accepted date as the start date to make the price available for the customer to purchase as soon as the multiparty private offer is accepted. If you want a private price to be available to the customer immediately on acceptance, choose Accepted date.

Choose Specific month to make the multiparty private price available in a future calendar month. For example, if you create a multiparty private offer on May 15 and want the private price to be available to the customer on June 1, select June. The multiparty private offer starts on the first day of the month and ends on the last day. You can't select specific start and end dates within the month. If your customer purchases the public version of your product before June 1, they won't see the private price you configured for them via the multiparty private offer nor receive the private price when they purchase before June 1. The time zone for the customer accept by date is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Accept by date is the private offer's expiration date. Your customer must accept the multiparty private offer before the end of this date in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), or the private offer expires. The End date specifies the date on which the multiparty private price and terms end. The time zone for the customer accept by date and end date is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

ISV partners can use a discounted price to provide a percentage-based discount on top of a publicly listed plan. You can only use it when the private price is lower than the publicly listed plan price. The absolute price can be used to specify a price point higher, lower, or equal to the publicly listed plan price, and can only be applied at a plan level. You can apply an absolute price to virtual machine software reservation offers but not for virtual machine offers or any plans that have a trial enabled.

No. Having multiple options on a private offer creates confusion for pre-negotiated enterprise sales and often results in purchase mistakes. You should create the private offer for the desired subscription term. Your public plan might include multiple purchase options for customers to self-serve at a public non-negotiated rate should you choose to offer this sales model.

Yes. ISVs can set custom market prices for non-US markets by using the existing import/export price functionality, and it isn't subject to Microsoft conversion for customer price. Channel partners set a percent markup from the price set by ISV and this percent applies to all currencies.

Within a multiparty private offer, the customer adjustment percent configured by channel partners applies uniformly to both the product pricing and the custom meter pricing.

Yes. ISVs and partners can attach up to five customer terms and conditions that the customer needs to accept as part of the multiparty private offer. Multiparty private offers currently don't support the ability for ISVs and partners to exchange partner-only terms for acceptance that don't get passed to the customer.

Yes. Withdrawing a multiparty private offer means your customer can no longer access it.

For ISVs: An ISV can only withdraw a multiparty private offer if the status is Pending partner action. An ISV can't withdraw a multiparty private offer if your partner on the deal already sent it to the customer and the status is Pending acceptance or Accepted by the customer.

For channel partners: Channel partners can only withdraw a multiparty private offer if the status is Pending acceptance. A channel partner can't withdraw a multiparty private offer if the customer accepted the multiparty private offer and the status is Accepted by the customer.

ISV partners can use Clone to make an editable copy of an existing multiparty private offer and publish as a new one. Clone can be used on any multiparty private offer regardless of its status.

Upgrade enables ISV partners to upgrade an existing accepted multiparty private offer. Marketplace only supports upgrades at renewal. For example, the upgraded offer Start and End date can't overlap with the existing multiparty private offer. ISV partners can only edit pricing, dates, terms, and notification contacts for the upgraded multiparty private offer before sending it to the channel partner to finalize and send to the customer for acceptance and purchase. If other changes are needed, such as another plan, create a new multiparty private offer.

Multiparty private offers can't be upgraded mid-term. An ISV partner can create an upgrade at any time before sending it to the channel partner to finalize and send to the customer for acceptance, but the upgrade only takes effect at the end of the existing multiparty private offer.

Yes. ISV partners and channel partners should use the same set of API calls to create a multiparty private offer for a customer.

Customers purchase multiparty private offers the same way they accept and purchase private offers today through the commercial marketplace. For more information, see purchase a private offer.

Any user within the customer's organization can see the details of the multiparty private offer. To accept a multiparty private offer, the user in the customer organization must be an owner or contributor of the subscription, and admin on the Azure account; see Roles and permissions. Without appropriate permissions, the user can't accept the multiparty private offer. To get access to the billing account, the user should contact the billing account admin or owner. A red notice at the top of the page indicates three people within the customer's organization who have the appropriate permissions to reach out to.

Yes. Customers are always invoiced in their billing account currency. For example, a Canada marketplace sale is in $CAD.

There are two different locations and associated currencies Microsoft tracks for customer, market, and billing account. Microsoft determines a customer's market location and market currency based on the customer's tenant. Customers are shown offer prices in their market currency in marketplace. The customer's Azure billing account settings determine the billing location and billing currency. Customers are invoiced in their billing account currency. Market currency and the billing account currency don't always match. For example, a customer located in Canada can have an Azure billing account set up with billing currency in $USD, this customer will see offer prices in $CAD based on their market currency, but are billed in $USD for transactions they make based on their Azure billing account currency.

Offers with products configured with absolute price for partner price can't be extended to customers with mismatched market and billing account currencies, only discount price (percent discount) partner price configuration is supported for these customers.

If the multiparty private offer is due to begin on the Accepted date, the customer can go to the Azure portal to subscribe to the offer using any Azure Subscription associated with the billing account. They must use an Azure subscription associated with the configured billing account to get the private price. If the multiparty private offer includes pay-as-you-go offers (Virtual Machines) and was extended to an existing customer, the customer is charged using the private price as soon as the multiparty private offer is accepted.

For a multiparty private offer that includes SaaS, the customer must subscribe to the software as a service (SaaS) product first and then configure the product within 30 days of subscribing to the product.

If the ISV configured the multiparty private offer to begin at a future date, the customer can accept the multiparty private offer before the Accept by date but shouldn't subscribe to or deploy the product until after the Start date set for the multiparty private offer.

After the customer accepts the multiparty private offer, it can take up to 15 minutes for the private price to be reflected in the marketplace on the Private products details page. If the customer transacts within these 15 minutes, the marketplace still charges the customer correctly using the private price. Additionally, if the multiparty private offer is configured to start in a specific month, the customer doesn't see the multiparty private offer price nor do they receive the private price until that month.

Accepting a private offer doesn't initiate billing. Before billing begins, the customer must accept the multiparty private offer and then subscribe to the software as a service (SaaS) product or deploy the virtual machine or Azure application product contained in the multiparty private offer in the Azure portal.

For a multiparty private offer that includes a SaaS product, the customer must also configure the product within 30 days of subscribing to the product.

After a multiparty private offer is accepted, it's a legal agreement between you and the customer and hence it can't be changed.

If you need to change the multiparty private offer, you can submit a support ticket to cancel the current multiparty private offer and create a new one. 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 you can cancel it.

If the customer has auto renew enabled, and you didn't create a new multiparty private offer that your customer accepted, your customer will be charged the public list price of the plan they purchased.

A multiparty private must be unique and not overlap with another multiparty private offer or another customer private offer for the same customer billing account ID using the same public plan with overlapping private offer start and end dates regardless of the channel partner. Overlapping multiparty private offers are blocked at submission. To remedy this conflict, you can use or create another similar public plan and configure your multiparty private offer to your same customer with this different plan.

The SaaS fulfillment API is updated to return private offer ID when a subscription is for a multiparty private offer. Follow these steps to verify:

1. Retrieve the subscription ID and Plan ID as prerequisites. You can get them either through the Resolve (when purchase request comes to the landing page) or by way of the Get Subscription calls. Both return the correct Plan ID in the response.
2. Then, call the SaaS fulfillment subscription APIs, and pass in the correct Plan ID from the previous step. The response returns the multiparty private offer ID as the external ID if the subscription is for a multiparty private offer. For example:

"sourceOffers": [ //sourceOffers is returned when planId is passed as filter parameter (note that this plan is the one that the customer purchased).
{
"externalId": "<guid>" //private offer id, returned when purchase is made through private offer.
}
]

Payouts to ISVs and channel partners follow the commercial marketplace payout schedules and processes. For more information, see Payout policy details.

Microsoft pays partners in the currency selected for their marketplace seller account payment profile in Partner Center. When the customer billing currency is different than partner payment currency, an FX conversion occurs, and you can see this conversion in your Earnings workspace reports.

The standard commercial marketplace agency fee applies to ISVs on the partner price they configure to their channel partner. The standard marketplace fee isn't applied to the channel partner's markup. For more information, see Multiparty private offers.

Sales of multiparty private offers are available in Partner Center Earnings, under earnings and reports. Look for the column isPrivateOffer to determine if the sale is a private offer sale.

Multiparty private offer sales details are also available in marketplace insights reporting within the Revenue, Orders, Usage, and Customers dashboards, exports, and via programmatic access. Within the Revenue dashboard, partners can use the "multiparty" filter to view data specific to multiparty private offer sales. Within the marketplace insights reporting, ISVs have visibility to the customer, their products, and their partner on the deal along with the partner price they configured for their partner. Channel partners have visibility to the customer, the products, their ISV on the deal, the partner price they received from their ISV, the customer adjustment they configured, and the customer's price. For more information, see access insights for the commercial marketplace in Partner Center.

To reconcile the Earnings report with the Revenue or Orders report, use OrderID in the Earnings report and purchaseRecordID from the Revenue or Orders report as the common unique identifier. For more information, reference the information on the data dictionary.