What is Azure Automated Billing?

Azure Automated Billing is a feature that streamlines the process of billing your customers for their Azure consumption. Instead of manually uploading CSV files, the system automatically retrieves consumption data directly from Microsoft and applies your billing profiles to generate accurate invoices for your PSA (Professional Services Automation) system.

Key Features

• Automatic Consumption Download: System retrieves Azure consumption data directly from Microsoft Partner Center
• Smart Tenant Mapping: Easily map Azure tenants to your PSA companies
• Reserved Instance Management: Track and bill for Azure Reserved Instances and Savings Plans
• Flexible Billing Profiles: Apply markup percentages to Azure services automatically
• Billing Period Tracking: View historical consumption with cost and sell price breakdowns
• Approval Workflow: Review and approve billing before syncing to your PSA
  
• Alerts: 
  
• Approvals waiting: Consumption has been downloaded and processed. Approve to sync to your PSA
  
• Reserved Instances need cost/price: (Indirect CSP) - Alert to add your cost and price to bill reserved instances
  
• Reserved Instance expiring: Any reserved instances that are expiring in next 3 months

Direct CSP vs Indirect CSP

The Azure Automated Billing feature works differently depending on your Microsoft CSP model:

Direct CSP Partners

• System automatically discovers all Azure subscriptions from Partner Center
• Can trigger initial consumption download
• Unmapped tenants appear automatically for easy mapping
• Control which products to include: Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, Perpetual Software, Software Subscriptions
  
• Option to use finalised Microsoft bills (Available around the 8th or 9th of the month) or unbilled consumption data (available around the 3rd)

Indirect CSP Partners

• Must manually select tenant subscriptions information when adding companies
• Requires proper Azure permissions to retrieve subscription data
• Must configure Vendor Markup in Settings to account for distributor margins
• System queries Azure subscriptions after tenant selection

Workflow Overview

1. Configure Settings: Set up your vendor markup (if indirect), Billing profiles and start an initial Azure consumption download (Direct CSP)
2. Add Companies:
   
1. For Indirect CSP: Add your Azure tenants and select their subscription ID
   
2. Map Tenants: For Direct CSP, map discovered tenants from the Unmapped Tenants tab
3. Configure Billing: Apply billing profiles and set up agreement names
4. Indirect CSP - Set Reserved Instances Price: Set cost and sell prices for any reserved instances
5. Review Billing Periods: Check consumption data, preview invoices, and approve for processing
6. Sync to PSA: Approved billing automatically syncs to your PSA system

Available Tabs

The Azure section includes several tabs for managing your automated billing:

• Companies: View and manage all Azure companies set up for automatic billing
• Unmapped Tenants: Map newly discovered Azure subscriptions to PSA companies
• Billing Approvals: Review and approve consumption billing before PSA sync
• Settings: Configure billing period preferences, vendor markup

Next Steps

• For Direct CSP partners: See Azure Automated Billing - Initial Setup (Direct CSP)
• For Indirect CSP partners: See Azure Automated Billing - Initial Setup (Indirect CSP)