Understand terms on your Microsoft Azure invoice

The invoice provides a summary of your charges and provides instructions for payment. It’s available for download in the Portable Document Format (.pdf) from the Azure portal or can be sent via email. For more information, see How to get your Azure billing invoice and daily usage data.

A few things to note:

• If you're using a free trial subscription, you can get your detailed usage information from the Azure portal but you don't have an invoice.

• Up to 24 hours of usage at the end of the previous billing period may show up in your current invoice.

• Charges listed on billing statements for international customers are for estimation purposes only. Banks may have different costs for the conversion rates.

Detailed terms and descriptions of your invoice

The following sections list the important terms that you see on your invoice and descriptions for each term.

Account information

The account information section of the invoice is on the top of the first page and shows information about your profile and subscription.

Term	Description
Customer PO No.	An optional purchase order number, assigned by you for tracking
Invoice No.	A unique, Microsoft generated invoice number used for tracking purposes
Billing cycle	Date range that this invoice covers
Invoice date	Date that the invoice was generated, typically on the same day of the month that the Azure account was created. However, they sometimes get generated a day or two later than day of the month that the Azure account was created.
Payment method	Type of payment used on the account (invoice or credit card)
Bill to	Billing address that is listed for the account
Subscription offer (“Pay-As-You-Go”)	Type of subscription offer that was purchased, such as Pay-As-You-Go and Azure Pass. For more information, see Azure offer types.
Account owner email	The account email address that the Microsoft Azure account is registered under. To change the email address, see How to change profile information of your Azure account such as contact email, address, and phone number.

Understand the invoice summary

The Invoice Summary section of the invoice lists the total transaction amounts since your last billing period, and your current usage charges.

The Subscription name (“Production Storage”) is the name of the subscription for this invoice.

Understand the previous charges

The previous balance, payments, and outstanding balance section of the invoice summarizes transactions since your last billing period.

Term	Description
Previous balance	The total amount due from your last billing period
Payments	Total payments and credits applied to your last billing period
Outstanding balance (from previous billing cycle)	Any credits or remaining balance in your account since your last billing period

Understand the current charges

The Current Charges section of the invoice shows details about your monthly charges for the current billing period.

Term	Description
Usage charges	Usage charges are the total monthly charges on a subscription for the current billing period
Discounts	Service discounts applied to your current billing period
Adjustments	Miscellaneous credits (Free Usage, Credits, etc.) or outstanding charges applied to your current billing period. For example, if you have the Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN offer, you see a monthly credit. If you cancel your subscription, you see any monthly usage charges that exceed the monthly credit that you get with your subscription offer. The charges incur at the start of your current billing period until the subscription cancellation date.

Sold to and payment instructions

The following table describes the sold to and payment instructions shown on the second page of your Invoice.

Term	Description
Sold to	Profile address that's on the account. If you need to change the address, see How to change profile information of your Azure account such as contact email, address, and phone number.
Payment instructions	Instructions on how to pay depending on payment method (such as by credit card or by invoice).

Usage Charges

The Usage charges section of the invoice displays meter level information on your charges.

The following table describes the usage charges column headers shown on your Invoice.

Term	Description
Name	Identifies the top-level service for the usage
Type	Defines the Azure service type that can affect the rate
Resource	Identifies the unit of measure for the meter being consumed
Region	Identifies the location of the datacenter for certain services that are priced based on datacenter location
Consumed	The amount of the meter used during the billing period
Included	The amount of the meter that is included at no charge in your current billing period
Billable	Shows the difference between the Consumed Quantity and the Included Quantity. You're billed for this amount. For Pay-As-You-Go offers with no amount included with the offer, this total is the same as the Consumed Quantity
Rate	The rate you're charged per billable unit
Value	Shows the result of multiplying the Overage Quantity column by the Rate column. If the Consumed Quantity doesn't exceed the Included Quantity, there is no charge in this column.
Sub-Total	The sum of all your charges pre-tax for this billing period
Grand Total	The sum of all your charges after tax for this billing period

How do I make sure that the charges in my invoice are correct?

If there is a charge on your invoice that you would like more details on, see Understand your bill for Microsoft Azure.

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