Azure Enterprise Agreement billing runs through an enrolment with departments, accounts and a prepayment, Microsoft Customer Agreement billing through billing profiles with invoice sections, a Cloud Solution Provider bills through a partner account, and pay-as-you-go invoices every subscription on its own. For prices, invoices and cost exports the account type matters more than any single service, because it fixes the currency the usage is priced in, the level at which the invoice is generated and which columns the export carries at all.
Pricing dimensions
The table lists the mechanisms of an Azure billing account: what each one changes in prices, invoice and hierarchy, and where it is optional. The cross-provider view is under billing accounts and hierarchies.
| Mechanism | What it changes | Prices and invoice | Where it is optional |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go (Microsoft Online Services Program, offer MS-AZR-0003P) | a billing account holding subscriptions; a new account may create at most five | list prices; one invoice per subscription; the billing period does not follow the calendar month | the entry through the website, also for the free account |
| Enterprise Agreement (enrolment, offer MS-AZR-0017P) | the enrolment is the billing account, below it departments, then accounts with one account owner each and up to 5,000 subscriptions | a contractual price sheet in the local currency for the term; the invoice is generated at enrolment level and sent to the bill-to contact; one with more than 1,000 line items is split | departments are optional; an indirect EA runs through a partner who must first enable cost visibility |
| Azure Prepayment (formerly monetary commitment) | an annual amount paid upfront, from which consumption is drawn | an invoice arises only for service overage, for Marketplace and for services billed separately; credit alerts fire at 90 and 100 percent | EA only; in the extended term after the end date, prices fall back to pay-as-you-go rates |
| Departments and spending quotas | a cost centre per department, a quota with email warnings to department owners, for example at 50 or 75 percent | no price change; a grouping in reports and in the export (InvoiceSectionName) | optional; department administrators see prices only with the "DA view charges" policy on |
| Microsoft Customer Agreement (Azure plan, offer MS-AZR-0017G) | a billing account with billing profiles that inherit country and currency, and per profile invoice sections to which subscriptions and purchases are assigned; up to 10,000 subscriptions for an enterprise | Azure is priced in USD worldwide and converted to the billing currency at a monthly rate; one invoice per billing profile and month, invoice date typically five to twelve days after the period ends, payment terms net 30 | invoice sections are optional; policies per profile can block Marketplace and reservation purchases |
| Cloud Solution Provider (Microsoft Partner Agreement) | the partner holds the billing account with one profile per currency; the customer is a customer scope inside it | the customer is invoiced by the partner, not by Microsoft; in the customer tenant Cost Management shows consumption at pay-as-you-go list prices, and only once the partner enables the policy | reservations show as zero there; classic CSP subscriptions (MS-AZR-0145P) are unsupported; Dev/Test is not sold through CSP |
| Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) | a contractual promise of Azure spend over a period, for direct EA and MCA accounts | not a price but a counter: invoiced, eligible Azure and Marketplace spend decrements the balance; consumption covered by credits or prepayment does not, while buying the prepayment itself does | optional; milestones possible; a shortfall is charged as a prepayment credit, with warning emails 90, 60 and 30 days before expiry |
| Billing entity per country | under the Limited Risk Distributor model the local Microsoft subsidiary is the selling entity, per the invoice documentation among others for Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the United Kingdom; otherwise Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited bills EMEA | the licensor for EMEA stays MIOL; the FAQ's example is Italy, with customers moved on 2024-03-01 and a changed tax line | not a choice; the contracting entity appears on the invoice under sold to and bill to |
| Purchase options | reservations and savings plans apply under EA and MCA, under CSP the partner buys them | separate purchase rows in the export | Azure reservations |
Invoices, exports and APIs
Invoices. The invoice level is the first difference: the subscription for pay-as-you-go, the enrolment for an EA with one invoice for the overage and a separate one for Marketplace, the billing profile for an MCA with the invoice sections as blocks in which Charges - Azure Credit + Tax is summed per product order and service family. For MCA the invoice documentation lists unit price in the pricing currency, quantity, charges or credits, Azure credit applied, tax rate and tax amount per line. Under CSP there is no Microsoft invoice to the customer. How a cloud invoice is built in general is under cloud invoice anatomy.
Exports. The cost export carries different columns per account type. EA and pay-as-you-go have AccountName, AccountOwnerId, PartNumber, OfferId and BillingPeriod, and there BillingProfileId is the enrolment or the subscription. MCA has instead BillingProfileId, InvoiceSectionId, InvoiceSectionName, PricingCurrency, ExchangeRatePricingToBilling, CostInPricingCurrency, costInUsd, InvoiceId, ServicePeriodStartDate and ServicePeriodEndDate; on an EA InvoiceSectionName is the department. Partner accounts (MPA) add CustomerName, CustomerTenantId, PartnerName, PartnerEarnedCreditApplied, PartnerEarnedCreditRate and ResellerMpnId. The three price columns exist for every type: PayGPrice is the list price, UnitPrice the contracted price, EffectivePrice the rate actually paid. On an EA pricing and billing currency are the same (except Spot, priced in USD); on an MCA the pricing currency is USD. Reconciliation: on an EA Cost = EffectivePrice × Quantity; on an MCA the sum in the pricing currency is converted with ExchangeRatePricingToBilling; after the invoice is issued a rounding row with MeterCategory RoundingAdjustment appears at enrolment or profile level. The procedure is in reconciling exports with the invoice, the export itself in Azure cost exports.
In the FOCUS export BillingAccountId is the enrolment on an EA and the billing profile on an MCA, with the Microsoft billing account in x_BillingAccountId; x_InvoiceSectionId carries the MCA invoice section or the EA department, x_CustomerId, x_PartnerCreditRate and x_ResellerId the CSP fields, InvoiceIssuerName the invoicing party, and every price and cost column is in BillingCurrency rather than the pricing currency (FOCUS columns). Data arrives within 8 to 24 hours for EA and MCA and within up to 72 hours for pay-as-you-go; the portal views show 13 months, older data comes from the Exports API.
APIs. The Billing API lists billing accounts with agreementType EnterpriseAgreement or MicrosoftCustomerAgreement, the Consumption API returns MACC lots and their SettledCharges events per invoice, and the price sheet can be downloaded per billing period, on an EA since January 2023 as a ZIP with a new schema that includes reservation prices. The old Enterprise Reporting APIs are retired; budgets and alerts are on the page for Azure Advisor, budgets and cost alerts.
Levers
Configuration. The hierarchy decides what the export can allocate without tags: one department or invoice section per cost centre turns InvoiceSectionName into an allocation column before any tag applies; the patterns are in allocation by account, subscription and project. On an EA the policies "DA view charges" and "AO view charges" belong switched on, otherwise teams see quantities without prices; on an indirect EA the partner enables the markup function. Under CSP the partner's cost visibility policy is the precondition for any analysis in your own tenant.
Purchase option. On an EA the price sheet is negotiated and fixed for the term; on an MCA the USD price applies with the monthly rate from the London closing spot rates captured two business days before the last business day of the previous month, so whoever is billed in EUR carries the exchange risk described under invoice currency and exchange rates. What a framework agreement governs beyond prices is under enterprise agreements and private pricing. A MACC steers purchases: eligible Marketplace offers and the purchase of a prepayment decrement the balance, consumption drawn from credits does not.
Architecture. One billing profile per legal entity and currency, invoice sections for showback, subscriptions as access boundaries only where resource groups are not enough. When moving from EA to MCA, the EA invoices continue until the migration date and the first MCA invoice arrives on the fifth day of the following month with a partial charge from that date. Which Microsoft entity sells and invoices follows from country and model, not from a choice; the European consequences for contract and VAT are covered by buying from EU entities and VAT and reverse charge, and the tax assessment belongs to your adviser.
Where it goes wrong
- Export and invoice disagree. On an MCA the export prices in USD and the invoice bills in EUR; without
ExchangeRatePricingToBillingand the rounding row no total matches. Reconcile only after the invoice is issued. - A pay-as-you-go month is not a calendar month. The billing period starts on the sign-up day; a budget or report by calendar month shows different totals than the invoice.
- The CSP customer sees list prices. Cost Management in the customer tenant rates usage at pay-as-you-go rates and shows reservations as zero; the partner's price exists only on the partner's invoice.
- No cost in an indirect EA. Until the partner enables the markup function, portal and export show quantities without amounts.
- Department administrators see no prices. The "DA view charges" policy is off; the export then shows zero values, not the cost.
- The MACC falls slower than spend. Consumption covered by Azure credits or a prepayment does not count; the event list per invoice shows what was actually decremented.
- New billing entity, new tax line. After the switch to the local Microsoft subsidiary the tax line of the invoice changes, as the FAQ describes for Italy. Check the invoicing party and clear the treatment with your tax adviser.
- The extended EA term. After the end date pay-as-you-go rates replace the price sheet, and nothing in the export looks different.
Example
A company based in Germany signs a Microsoft Customer Agreement: the billing currency is the euro according to Microsoft's country table, the pricing currency stays USD, and the monthly rate comes from the London closing spot rates captured two business days before the last business day of the previous month. The billing account gets one billing profile, which inherits country and currency, and three invoice sections, say production, development and shared services; every subscription is assigned to exactly one section, and a Dev/Test subscription goes into the development section (Dev/Test pricing and free services). The profile's invoice appears five to twelve days after month end with net 30 payment terms and shows charges, Azure credit, tax and total per section; the export carries InvoiceSectionName with the three names, PricingCurrency USD, BillingCurrency EUR and ExchangeRatePricingToBilling. The documented limits of the account types: at most five subscriptions per new pay-as-you-go account, 5,000 per EA account, 10,000 per MCA enterprise account and per partner account; EA credit alerts at 90 and 100 percent of the prepayment, MACC warnings 90, 60 and 30 days before expiry, and an EA invoice with more than 1,000 line items is split. The example shows that the account type fixes the export's columns and the currency of its figures before a single service is booked.
Sources
Read on 2026-10-21. Microsoft Learn: View your billing accounts in Azure portal, Get started with Microsoft Customer Agreement billing account, Understand your Microsoft Customer Agreement invoice, Microsoft Customer Agreement FAQ, EA billing administration on the Azure portal, Review your Azure Enterprise Agreement bill, Get started with your Microsoft Partner Agreement billing account, Get started with Cost Management for partners, Track your Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment, Monitor usage and spending with cost alerts, Understand Cost Management data, Understand usage details fields, FOCUS cost and usage details file schema, Update reports to use FOCUS columns.