Meet customer business needs with flexible billing schedules in the marketplace

Co-authored by
Trevor_Yeats

Today, we’re announcing that Microsoft now offers flexible billing schedules through private offers to better align with customer needs. Flexible billing schedules are available globally to all marketplace-supported currencies.

Watch these demo videos to learn more about flexible billing schedules.

The value for your customers and for you

With flexible billing schedules, customers can buy with confidence knowing that private offers can be customized for virtually any contract value and billing timeline to align with their requirements. Partners can tailor customer private offers and multiparty private offers to meet those requirements. This streamlines sales and accelerates deal velocity.

With over 100 partners in our private preview, we’re excited to make this capability publicly available. Many of these partners have achieved remarkable success, closing deals worth millions of dollars.

“Flexible billing in Microsoft marketplace has significantly improved how our sales teams engage with customers. It allows them to meet each organization's and customer's procurement needs, whether it's aligning with fiscal year budgets or accelerating project timelines from evaluations to implementations. Additionally, it helps with managing cloud commitment benefits. This flexibility has made it easier for our customers to purchase and deploy solutions faster, without waiting for specific budgets to become available. We can now set up flexible billing schedules to accommodate their needs.”

Brett Ferancy,

Global Alliance Leader, Abnormal AI

Example use cases

See below for some real-world examples of how partners and customers are leveraging flexible billing.

Variable pricing with specific dates. In this example, the customer pays a setup fee at the start of billing, followed by variable pricing throughout the contract to match consumption patterns and budget cycles.

Variable quarterly billing. In this example, the customer pays a setup fee at the start of billing, followed by variable pricing each quarter.

Delayed start for billing. In this example, the customer gets the first two months free, followed by varied payments throughout the contract to match budget cycles

How it works

To start using flexible billing for private offers: 

1. The software partner creates a private offer in the marketplace. Currently flexible billing supports SaaS flat rate offers, VM software reservations, and professional services. 
2. Partner must choose “Customize SaaS plans and Professional Services” or “Customize VM software reservations” when creating a new private offer. 
3. On the configure pricing page, under “billing frequency,” the partner will select “flexible schedule when the contract duration is 1-year or greater.” 
4. The software partner creates the billing schedule with up to 70 installments up to $100,000,000 USD, or any of the currencies supported by marketplace, over the length of the deal. There is also an option to book an immediate charge when billing starts or delay the first charge to a date in the future.Click to enlarge image
5. Private offers can have up to ten included product plans. Each plan has its own billing frequency and may include a unique flexible schedule. A flexible schedule does not apply to all plans included in the private offer and must be set up independently.
6. The software partner can also create a schedule in their customer’s local billing currency using the market pricing template. 
7. The customer accepts and purchases the private offer with the flexible billing schedule. 

For a multiparty private offer, the process is the same except:

1. The software partner sends the private offer to the channel partner.
2. The channel partner adds their price adjustment percentage aligned to the flexible billing schedule and passes it to the customer.

Eligibility

Any company who is part of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program can sell on the marketplace through private offers with flexible billing. Details are provided in our documentation, but at a high-level:

1. Be a member of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program (it’s free to join)
2. Sign the marketplace publisher agreement
3. Publish your offer
4. Sell private offers with flexible billing

In addition, we have many support resources for partners depending on where they are on their marketplace journey. For example, software development companies can join ISV Success for tools and resources that help them publish their solution and maximize its reach on the marketplace.

Get started with flexible billing on marketplace

We invite you to start leveraging these new improvements to flexible billing today. Learn more by visiting aka.ms/flexbill-docs.