Vantage Launches Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts

Today, Vantage is launching Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts, allowing Managed Service Provider (MSP) customers to dictate which Reserved Instance and Savings Plan benefits their end customers receive. Vantage for MSPs customers can now choose whether a Vantage Managed Account receives discounts from commitments purchased in an AWS Payer account, or if such commitment covered usage should be reset back to list price.

Create a Discount Toggling Billing Rule to remove Reserved Instance and Savings Plans discounts from a Managed Account

MSPs often buy additional commitments on top of what their customers purchase to increase their margins while managing customer environments. To bill customers correctly, MSPs must manually adjust Cost and Usage Report line items to exclude their own commitments while reflecting customer-purchased discounts. Given the volume of cloud provider billing data, this process can be cumbersome to perform in spreadsheets and involves many manual reconciliation processes that can also be error-prone.

Now, with the launch of Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts, Vantage for MSPs customers can choose whether the accounts they manage will receive the benefit of commitments purchased in AWS Payer accounts. By creating a Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts billing rule, any usage that is covered by a commitment that’s purchased outside the Managed Account will be reset to list price when viewing usage in said managed account. Users viewing the parent Vantage Management Account will still see the cost that is billed by AWS to enable margin comparisons for end customers.

Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts is now enabled for all MSP Vantage accounts. To learn more, see the product documentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is being launched today?

Vantage is launching Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts, which allows MSPs to choose if end customers benefit from commitment-based discounts purchased at the management account level, or if commitment-covered usage should be charged to customers at list price.

2. Who is the customer?

Vantage for MSPs customers that need to administer commitments re-rating on behalf of their customer base.

3. How much does this cost?

There is no additional cost for using Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts.

4. How do I set up custom Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts?

To set up Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts, navigate to the “Billing Rules” section of Partner Settings within the Settings page. Select “New Billing Rule” and then “Adjustment” to initiate creating a new Billing Rule. After giving the rule a name, select “Remove RI/SP Discounts”, and save the Billing Rule.

To apply this rule to Managed Accounts, under the “Managed Accounts” section of Partner Settings, select each account you would like to apply your billing rule to, and select “Assign a Billing Rule”, and then chose the billing rule you just created. Billing rules can also be assigned to Managed Accounts programmatically using the /managed_accounts/{managed_account_token} API.

5. What does the end customer see for usage that has been re-rated?

When in a Managed Account that has a Discount Toggling Billing Rule applied, whether through direct authentication or masquerading, usage that was previously covered by a commitment will now be presented at list price, with no indication that any price change was made on that usage.

6. What do users see in the parent Management Account?

When viewing the parent Management Account, users will still see the price billed by AWS reflected, and the bill rules will not be applied. This enables margin analysis and understanding of where these commitments are applied.

7. How does Vantage determine which commitment discounts to remove?

Vantage will look up the account that purchased the Committed Spend Discount in, and if that account does not match the Managed Account, Vantage will remove the discount on any Cost and Usage line item when viewing the usage in a Managed Vantage Account that has Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts turned on.

8. Which cloud providers are supported?

At this time, only AWS is supported for Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts.

9. Which AWS cost types are affected?

This billing rule applies to any SavingsPlanCoveredUsage and DiscountedUsage usage types.

10. How are billing rules evaluated?

Billing rules are evaluated in priority order based on the order they are listed on a Managed Account’s billing rules page. If you want to apply further billing rules after removing commitment based discounts, additional billing rules must be listed after and Discount Toggling for MSP Managed Accounts billing rules.