Usage, Billing, and Invoicing
Usage, Billing, and Invoicing
Overview
CMS collects or imports platform usage, turns it into billing rows, displays billing reports, creates invoices, and calculates commissions.
Usage Collection
Usage collection depends on platform.
| Platform | Collection model |
|---|---|
| Azure Stack | Collects platform usage and prices it through CMS meter and SKU pricing. |
| Azure Local | Discovers VM and disk allocation, then prices usage through CMS. |
| Public Azure | Imports Azure cost data, maps it to CMS subscriptions, and applies configured uplift. |
| CloudStack | Collects CloudStack usage and prices it through CMS offer and template pricing. |
Usage can run from scheduled jobs or from manual platform actions where available.
Billing Generation
Billing generation creates billing rows for the selected period. Billing can be reviewed by date range or as monthly resource aggregation in the Billing grid.
Platform administrators and service automation can generate billing. Other users can review billing information when invoice and billing visibility settings allow it.
Billing Page
The Billing grid supports:
- Daily date range view.
- Monthly resource aggregation view.
- Region, tenant, and subscription filters.
- CSV export of the filtered rows.
- Billing details for selected rows.
- Summary cards for the selected range and the comparable previous range.
The Billing setting for default aggregation controls whether the grid opens in daily or monthly mode. Users can still switch modes for the current page session.
Billing Selection Mode
The Billing usage selection setting controls how boundary-spanning usage is included in billing periods.
| Mode | What users should expect |
|---|---|
| Start-time selection | Usage is billed in the period where its start time falls. |
| Overlap selection | Usage that overlaps the billing period can be included in that period. |
Changing this setting can change totals for periods that include usage crossing a date boundary. Review closed-period totals after changing it.
Invoices
CMS supports monthly and quarterly invoice cadences.
| Invoice type | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Monthly | Uses actual consumption for the selected coverage month. |
| Quarterly | Uses a projected future quarter based on recent completed months, with true-up information where available. |
Invoice generation is available to platform administrators and service automation. Invoice visibility settings control whether tenants, partners, and distributors can see invoice tabs and widgets.
Billing Status
The Billing Status tab groups status by tenant and subscription. It shows overdue, issued, uninvoiced, and paid totals for recent monthly and quarterly periods.
Preview and generated invoices are treated as uninvoiced for status reporting until they move into an issued, overdue, or paid workflow state.
Commissions
Commission summaries and charts are available to users with partner, distributor, or platform access. Users only see commission information in 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 relevant tenant.
- Usage collection has run for the period.
- Pricing exists for the relevant platform, region, tenant, and catalogue items.
- Billing generation has run for the period.
- Invoice visibility settings allow the user's role family to see invoices.
Known Gaps
Manual Review Required: Historical Public Azure backfill is an operator process. Confirm the intended period and region before regenerating historical Azure billing data.