PRISM New Billing Experience

What is PRISM's New Billing Experience?

At Crayon, we are committed to delivering the best billing experience; therefore, we have decided to roll out a “PRISM New Billing Experience” project.

PRISM is our self-service tool that was introduced as a solution to the introduction of Microsoft CSP and its legacy billing model. As we all know, since this time, the New Commerce Experience has been introduced, which comes with a new and changed billing model, so we need to introduce change into PRISM to match this new billing scenario.

This project has been triggered by several factors: your feedback, alignment with Crayon and Microsoft, plus modernising our billing experience. We have begun introducing this change as of the 15th of July, 2023.

What do I need to do to gain access to the PRISM New Billing Experience? 

As of the 15th of July 2023, the PRISM New Billing Experience becomes the default billing experience for NCE Annual Subscriptions, and we have automatically enabled this for you.

If you are using NCE subscriptions under the Microsoft CSP program and would like to opt into the PRISM New Billing Experience for Monthly NCE subscriptions, please complete this form, and we will enable everything for you and let you know once it is completed.

What changes under PRISM's New Billing Experience? 

Source Data

Your source data is no longer PRISM records; rather, it will now be Microsoft Reconciliation files, providing you with more detailed billing records, and your invoicing data replicates what Microsoft provide to Crayon, therefore allowing you to reconcile easier and quicker.

Annual Invoice Grouping

Annual Invoices will be grouped at a 24-hour account level. If you submit five (5) orders under five (5) different tenants in one day, they will be grouped into one invoice when charged to you. Please note that  invoices will group together orders with the same Subscription End Date, orders within the same provisioned within a 24-hour period but using different Subscription End Dates will still be split to separate invoices.

Data Details

Increased details of billing charges. Complete summary of charges as provided by Microsoft. We have created a new file called a "Billing statement", which will provide the full set of charges from MS for those customers.

Data Cleansing

The data from Microsoft's recon file is cleaned to add additional data insights. For example, very important data such as the Billing Cycle and the Term is not provided by Microsoft. PRISM is cleaning this data so that every charge record has this data populated and also provides the data as specific data points.

Sub Program Level Invoicing

Each sub-program will send a separate invoice per billing period. For example, one partner may receive one (1) legacy invoice and one (1) NCE invoice. (Legacy, Add-Ons and support will remain on the legacy invoice). 

What data will I receive with my invoice? 

With each invoice you receive from PRISM, you will receive the following documents: 

• Invoice PDF - Invoice PDFs are now streamlined to show line item data without too much clutter to serve your Finance team’s needs. We have removed the quantity data on the invoice PDF, which is now presented in a Billing Statement. This means that your invoice is a high-level view of your account, and your Billing Statement is a detailed view of your invoice data.
• Billing Statement - Billing Statements are an Excel file, including pivot tables and raw data on separate tabs. The billing statement provides graphical insights into the spend contained on the invoice.
• Invoice CSV File - The Invoice CSV File is an existing file that was available under the Microsoft CSP Legacy Billing Model. 

Please see this PNBE Invoice Data Sample file for an example of a monthly CSP Seat-Based Subscription invoice under the PRISM New Billing Experience.

What things should I be aware of before I move to the PRISM New Billing Experience?

1. On the Invoice PDF, you will no longer see line items, quantity and usage periods for charges, all of this data is now visible on the Billing Statement instead.
2. On the Billing Statement, the billable ratio is now sourced from Microsoft's data and therefore displays differently, more information can be found in this article about this change: https://operations-apac-knowledgebase.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10125676513692-PRISM-New-Billing-Experience-Billable-Ratio
3. We are introducing a change to the pricelist display in late September 2023, please see this article for more information: https://operations-apac-knowledgebase.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10332329908252-Microsoft-NCE-Change-to-Price-List-Display

Reminders

Invoice Dates:

• 1st of the Month UTC = Legacy + NCE Invoicing
• 5th of the Month UTC = Azure Plan Invoicing

Please note that these improvements and changes are only related to New Commerce Experience (NCE) purchases; legacy subscriptions will continue via the current billing process and will create a separate invoice for NCE charges.

Related PRISM New Billing Experience Articles

• Billable Ratio: https://operations-apac-knowledgebase.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10125676513692-PRISM-New-Billing-Experience-Billable-Ratio
• Price List Display Change: https://operations-apac-knowledgebase.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10332329908252-Microsoft-NCE-Change-to-Price-List-Display