Enterprise agreements and private pricing

An enterprise agreement with private pricing is a contract in which a customer commits spend to the provider over a term and receives rates below the public list price in return. It changes the rate and sometimes the credits, never the metering: the same usage produces the same line items, only at a different price. For cost this means two things: the discount lives in the price fields of the billing data, not on an invoice line, and the commitment is an obligation whose shortfall terms the contract sets; for a MACC, Microsoft charges a remainder as a shortfall.

How it works

A spend commitment, the subject here, promises an amount of money across many services over a term. A usage commitment binds to particular resources or an hourly amount, such as Reserved Instances and Savings Plans; those belong to the pricing chapter, with pages on AWS Savings Plans and AWS Reserved Instances. The two can coexist, and FOCUS shows their discounts on the same row: the negotiated discount between ListCost and ContractedCost, the commitment discount between ContractedCost and EffectiveCost.

AWS

AWS publishes no terms for private pricing: its enterprise page points to sales, and some service pricing pages name the AWS Private Pricing Agreement (PPA) and the Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) as commitments purchases count towards. The effect shows in CUR 2.0. The discount column holds, per line item, key-value pairs for the discount types applied, and discount_total_discount their sum; with "Manual discount compatibility" enabled, discounts arrive instead as line items of their own with line_item_line_item_type = Discount, whose description names the discount. line_item_net_unblended_rate and line_item_net_unblended_cost give rate and cost after discounts and are present only when the account had a discount in the billing period. The public rate is in pricing_public_on_demand_rate and pricing_public_on_demand_cost, for tiered prices that of the highest tier.

Azure

An Enterprise Agreement is signed with Microsoft directly or through a partner. Azure Prepayment is an annual monetary amount at a discounted rate that usage draws down; usage beyond it is billed as overage, and Marketplace charges are billed separately. Microsoft's price protection keeps rates at or below the Customer Price Sheet for the Prepayment term of one or three years, except for increases when a service moves from preview to general availability and for regions added to a service later. Direct customers view and download the price sheet on the enrollment's page in the Azure portal; indirect customers get their prices from the partner. Billing is in the agreed currency, with no exchange rate applied.

A MACC is a spend commitment over a period under a Microsoft Customer Agreement or an Enterprise Agreement; direct customers see it in the portal under Benefits (MCA) or Credits + Commitments (EA), with the remaining commitment, amount, dates, status and an event for every invoice that decremented it. Consumption covered by Azure credits does not count, nor does consumption covered by Prepayment, although the Prepayment purchase itself does. A remainder at the end, or at a milestone, is charged as a shortfall in the form of an Azure prepayment credit. Purchases marked Azure benefit eligible count in full; the Azure portal shows which services and Microsoft Marketplace offers are eligible for MACC decrement.

In the cost details, PayGPrice is the market price, also called the list price, UnitPrice the price including negotiated discounts, and EffectivePrice the rate actually paid per unit. Exports also deliver the price sheet as a dataset of its own for EA and MCA. Prices under a Cloud Solution Provider reseller come from the partner and are not covered here.

Google Cloud

Google Cloud attaches negotiated prices to the Cloud Billing account as contract pricing. The pricing export to BigQuery, generated once a day, carries list_price for every customer and billing_account_price with the custom SKU price from the contract; without contract pricing that field is null, and price_info gives the origin of the price through price_reason and discount_percent. In the cost export, cost includes negotiated discounts and sits beside cost_at_list, together with price.effective_price. Discounts earned once a contractual spending threshold is reached appear as credits with credits.type = DISCOUNT.

FOCUS

The FinOps Foundation's FOCUS specification separates the layers: ListCost is the list unit price times the quantity, ContractedCost the contracted unit price times the quantity, equal to ListCost where no negotiated discount exists. Since version 1.3 the Contract Commitment dataset describes the terms of contracts between provider and customer, with columns such as Contract Commitment ID and Contract Commitment Cost; cost rows refer to it through the Contract Applied column. Microsoft's FOCUS export in Cost Management is at version 1.2-preview according to its schema index.

What it means for your cost

A report on a contract customer has three price layers: list, contracted, and effective cost after usage commitments. The gap between the first two is the negotiated discount, between the last two the effect of reservations and Savings Plans; list, billed, effective and amortized cost sets out the measures and FOCUS columns the providers' columns. Which layer teams see is a decision: contracted prices show what the company pays, list prices keep figures comparable across accounts and providers.

The commitment is a forecasting question: only the balance set against expected consumption to the end of the term shows whether a remainder is coming. Because a MACC is decremented per invoice, its balance trails usage by one billing period. Which accounts fall under the contract follows from the account structure.

Where it goes wrong

• The discount counted twice. Symptom: reported savings exceed the gap between list price and invoice. Cause: the negotiated discount and the commitment effect were each measured against list price, then added.
• Discount columns missing. Symptom: in some months the net rate columns are absent from CUR 2.0. Cause: they appear only when the account had a discount in the billing period, and with "Manual discount compatibility" discounts are line items rather than entries in the discount column.
• A commitment that does not go down. Symptom: the remaining MACC stays flat although Azure usage ran. Cause: consumption covered by credits or Prepayment does not count, and the decrement happens only with the invoice.
• A shortfall at the end of the term. Symptom: an unexpected charge on the end date of the MACC or of a milestone. Cause: the remainder not reached is charged as a shortfall.
• A rate above the price sheet. Symptom: an EA rate rises despite price protection. Cause: price protection does not cover increases when a service moves from preview to general availability, nor new regions of a service.

Sources

Read on 2026-10-16. AWS AWS Product and Service Pricing, AWS Security Hub Pricing, Discount columns, Line item columns, Pricing columns; Microsoft EA Billing administration on the Azure portal, Azure EA pricing, Review your Azure Enterprise Agreement bill, Track your Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC), Private offers overview, Understand usage details fields, Cost Management dataset schema index; Google Cloud Structure of pricing data export, Structure of Standard data export; FinOps Foundation FOCUS Column Library, List Cost, Contracted Cost, Effective Cost, Contract Commitment.