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Understand your bill and reconciliation data in Partner Center

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Appropriate roles: Billing admin | Admin agent

Understand your bill clearly.

Find your reconciliation file

You can find your invoices in the Billing workspace in Partner Center.

You can also find your billing history or overview, Azure spending trends, and reconciliation files in this workspace.

To find and download your legacy reconciliation files:

  1. Sign in to Partner Center and select the Billing workspace.

  2. Go to the Billing history task menu.

  3. Naviage to the Billing history page.

  4. Select the Recurring tab.

  5. Choose the appropriate year.

  6. Select the drop-down arrow next to the billing period.

To get new commerce reconciliation files:

  1. Sign in to Partner Center and select the Billing workspace.

  2. Go to the Billing overview (NCE) task menu.

  3. Navigate to the Billing | Billing Overview (NCE) page.

  4. Choose the year in the upper right corner.

  5. Select the invoice number.

  6. Find the reconciliation file on the side panel.

  7. Select Download report.

  8. 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.

  9. Monitor your download's progress on the Reports (NCE) page using the status column of the request line item.

Note

You can asynchronously download all new commerce reconciliation files from the Partner Center portal.

Understand reconciliation files

The reconciliation files give a detailed list of your charges and credits, helping you track financial transactions accurately. To create invoices for customers, use customer details in the reconciliation files. For more information on how to effectively reconciliation files, see how to use the reconciliation files.

Understand billed and unbilled reconciliation files (or line items)

Reconciliation files (or line items) provide a detailed record of every charge or credit for the billing period. These records play a vital role in maintaining precise billing accuracy and empowering proactive financial decisions.

Billed or closed billing period reconciliation file: This file includes all finalized charges and credits from a specific billing period. Its purpose is to ensure that every invoiced amount aligns with the services delivered and to match the total of all line items correctly with the corresponding invoice.

  • For instance, if you're billed for 100 units of a service in January, this file lists these 100 units to confirm consistency with the invoice.
  • Covers all charge types, including usage-based (for example, pay-as-you-go services) and non-usage-based (for example, flat fees or license-based subscriptions).

Unbilled or open billing period estimates file: This file provides almost real-time projections of charges and credits for an active billing period that isn't yet invoiced. The goal is to help you forecast costs and optimize budgets.

  • Updated regularly to reflect ongoing usage and contractual charges.
  • Split into two separate files: one for usage-based charges and another for non-usage-based charges.
  • Exclusively available for partners in the new commerce experience (NCE) of the Cloud Solution Provider program (CSP).

By consistently using reconciliation files, you can enhance billing accuracy and financial planning, leading to more efficient and reliable business operations.

What products are included in the new commerce invoice reconciliation line items?

  • Azure pay-as-you-go
  • Azure reservation
  • Azure savings plan
  • License-based product or online services, such as Office, Dynamics, and Power Apps
  • Perpetual software
  • Software subscription
  • Marketplace or non-Microsoft SaaS product

What products are included in the new commerce daily rated usage reconciliation line items?

  • Azure pay-as-you-go
  • Azure reservation: usage is shown, but charges only appear once usage exceeds the prepurchased capacity limit
  • Azure savings plan: usage is shown, but charges only appear once usage exceeds the committed amount limit

Map taxes or VAT to your invoice reconciliation line items

Here's how to validate an invoice with taxes or VAT:

  1. Add the Tax values from your legacy license-based reconciliation data.
  2. Add the TaxAmount values from your legacy usage-based reconciliation data.
  3. Add the TaxTotal values from your new commerce reconciliation data.

Why are some products visible only in invoice reconciliation line items and not in daily rated usage line items?

Invoice reconciliation data includes all billing line items for every product, while daily rated usage data only shows products that charge based on usage. Some products charge a fixed fee based on the number of licenses rather than daily usage, so they aren't included in daily rated usage data.

Products under Azure subscriptions might incur fixed monthly, annual, or one-time fees. Although their daily charges are zero, their daily usage still appears in the daily rated usage data.

Note

Each billing event results in either charges or credits. These charges and credits are reflected as invoice reconciliation line items according to the billing plan.

Why does my invoice reconciliation data show a zero-tax amount when the invoice has taxes?

For some countries/regions, we calculate tax on the total amount, not each line item. In these places, you might notice a small difference between the sum of line-item tax and total tax because of rounding to two decimal places. Each line item's tax is calculated and rounded individually, causing slight discrepancies when summed.

For example, consider two items that cost $9.75 and $10.25, with a tax rate of 10%. The total before tax is $20, and the total tax is $2. The line-item tax might appear as follows: Product 1 ($9.75 * 0.10 = $0.975, rounded to $0.98) and Product 2 ($10.25 * 0.10 = $1.025, rounded to $1.03).

Transaction Amount Tax
Product 1 $9.75 $0.98
Product 2 $10.25 $1.03

Although the difference between the sum of line-item taxes ($2.01) and the total tax ($2) is just one cent, this discrepancy arises due to rounding each line-item tax to two decimal places, which can lead to noncompliance with tax regulations.

To ensure compliance with tax regulations and avoid discrepancies caused by rounding, taxes are now shown only on invoices, not on reconciliation line items. This approach keeps the pretax amount consistent across both your reconciliation data and invoice for any billing period. This change helps maintain accuracy in tax calculations, reduces potential errors, and ensures that your billing process is compliant with tax regulations.

Benefits:

  • Ensure compliance with tax regulations to reduce errors and risks.
  • Avoid unnecessary calculations to save time and money.
  • Provide clear and consistent information to enhance transparency and trust.
  • Offer an efficient billing process.

You received emails regarding this change and next steps.

Why are the charges on my invoice reconciliation data different from the daily rated usage line items?

Your invoice reconciliation and daily rated usage line items might not match exactly due to several factors:

  • Exclusion of products: The daily rated usage reconciliation charges only for pay-as-you-go resources (services billed based on usage) under Azure subscription, whereas the invoice reconciliation charges for all products and subscriptions for all your customers. For a list of products in the daily rated usage reconciliation, see products included in the daily rated usage reconciliation.

Here are key reasons for discrepancies between charges for the same products or subscriptions:

  • Taxes and adjustments: Invoice reconciliation might include taxes and fees, which aren't present in your daily rated usage data. To check the charges for a product or subscription, compare BillingPreTaxTotal in the daily rated usage with Subtotal in the invoice reconciliation. Before taxes and adjustments, these values should match or be close.

  • Discounts and credits: Discounts and credits, such as those from contract terms, service level agreements (SLA), promotional offers, or tier pricing, might lower your invoice amount. As a result of these discounts and credits, the invoice Subtotal might be lower than the daily rated usage BillingPreTaxTotal.

  • Decimal round off: Minor differences might occur due to rounding. The daily rated usage displays 10 decimal places for BillingPreTaxTotal, while the invoice reconciliation rounds Subtotal to two decimal places.

If you notice slight differences between your invoice reconciliation and daily rated usage data, don't be concerned. Reach out to our support team for more information, and be confident that you're billed accurately for your usage.

When should you contact the support team?

If you're unsure whether a reconciliation line item is correct, compare the attributes of both reconciliations before contacting our support team. To resolve any discrepancies, follow these steps:

  • Check quantity or billable quantity: Ensure that the billable quantities match for the same product or subscription in both reconciliations.

  • Review Customer ID: Ensure customer IDs are consistent in both reconciliations' pay-as-you-go charges.

  • Verify Product ID, SKU ID, or Subscription ID: Ensure no pay-as-you-go charges are missing or different in the reconciliations.

  • Compare Subtotal and BillingPreTaxTotal: Look for any differences greater than 3% to 5% between these values.

For any discrepancies, reach out to our support team for assistance.

Find reseller information in the reconciliation line items

To view the reseller for a purchased product or service, use these attributes of your reconciliation data. The reseller or tier 2 MPN ID is only visible in the reconciliation data for indirect providers.

Attribute/Column name Description Expected value
MpnId The Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program identifier of the Cloud Solution Provider program (CSP) partner (direct or indirect). The associated partner ID you mentioned while enrolling in the CSP program.
ResellerMpnId / Tier2MpnId The reseller of record for the subscription can be identified using Partner Center under each subscription for indirect providers. See expected values for the Reseller or Tier 2 MPN ID attribute or column

Expected values for the Reseller or Tier 2 MPN ID attribute or column

Depending on the reseller's involvement, the values for the reseller's MPN ID can vary as follows:

  • 0 or blank: Indicates no reseller is involved.
  • –1: Indicates that the reseller was removed from the partner relationship.
  • A reseller's MPN ID: Indicates that the reseller is involved.

To determine whether you're a direct bill partner (tier 1) or an indirect provider (tier 2), follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings (gear icon in the upper-right corner).
  2. Select Account Settings.
  3. Click on Legal Info.
  4. Expand Program Info.
  5. Check the Cloud Solution Provider Tier section to find your tier.

Before checking the reseller’s MPN ID in your billing reconciliation data, ensure the reseller is involved in the purchase by verifying their participation in the transaction records.

To learn more about how to involve a reseller in the purchasing process, see create customer subscriptions in Partner Center.

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