Usage, Billing, and Invoicing
Overview
CMS collects or imports platform usage, converts it into billing rows, displays billing reports, creates invoices, and calculates commissions.
Purpose
Use Billing to review charges, compare periods, inspect billing details, export billing rows, generate invoices, review billing status, and check commission information.
User Roles
| Role family | Typical billing access |
|---|---|
| Platform administrator | Generate billing, generate invoices, review all billing, and manage billing settings. |
| Platform reader | Review platform billing where permitted. |
| Distributor and partner roles | Review scoped billing, invoices, and commissions where visibility settings allow it. |
| Tenant roles | Review tenant billing and invoices where visibility settings allow it. |
Usage Collection
| Platform | What happens |
|---|---|
| Azure Stack | CMS collects platform usage and prices it through CMS pricing. |
| Azure Local | CMS collects VM and disk allocation usage and prices it through CMS pricing. |
| Public Azure | CMS imports Azure cost data, maps it to subscriptions, and applies configured uplift. |
| CloudStack | CMS collects CloudStack usage and prices it through CMS pricing. |
Usage can be collected by scheduled jobs or by manual region actions where available.
Key Workflows
Review Billing
- Open Billing.
- Choose daily or monthly view.
- Select the date range or month.
- Filter by region, tenant, or subscription.
- Open a row to inspect billing details.
- Export CSV when needed.
Generate Invoices
- Confirm usage collection has run.
- Confirm pricing exists for the period.
- Confirm billing generation has run.
- Open the invoice generation action.
- Select monthly or quarterly invoice mode where available.
- Review generated invoices.
Review Billing Status
Use Billing Status to compare overdue, issued, uninvoiced, and paid totals by tenant and subscription.
Invoice Cadence
| Invoice type | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Monthly | Uses actual consumption for the selected coverage month. |
| Quarterly | Uses a projected future quarter based on recent completed months and true-up information where available. |
Invoice visibility settings control whether tenant, partner, and distributor users can see invoice tabs and widgets.
Commissions
Commission summaries and charts are available to users with partner, distributor, or platform access. Users only see commission information inside their permitted organisation scope.
What To Check
If expected billing or invoice data is missing, check:
- A region exists and is enabled.
- Subscriptions exist for the tenant.
- Usage collection has run for the period.
- Pricing exists for the platform, region, tenant, and catalogue item.
- Billing generation has run for the period.
- Invoice visibility settings allow the user's role family to see invoices.
Known Limitations
Historical Public Azure billing regeneration should be planned carefully by period and region before running operational backfill or recollection work.