How to add a new customer record in Partner Center

  • Article

Appropriate roles: Global admin | User management admin | Admin agent | Sales agent

This article describes how to add a new customer record in Partner Center.

A record of a new customer must be added to Partner Center before you can sell subscriptions, manage billing, or provide support to them.

Note

Indirect resellers can only request a relationship with an existing customer; they aren't able to add new customers. New customers must be added by an Indirect Provider using the steps in the section Add a new customer in Partner Center, in this article.

Considerations

When adding a new customer record in Partner Center:

  • Enter detailed, accurate customer information: To ease customer verification, ensure that you:

    • Enter the exact legal, official name as it appears in official documents.
    • Avoid using acronyms or short forms.
    • Don't use test names.
    • Provide complete, exact address info (for example, location details, city, state, country/region, and postal or ZIP code).

  • Use the correct registration ID: When entering your company and customer registration ID, be sure to use your business tax ID and not the customer's personal ID.

  • Confirm Microsoft Customer Agreement: Before you can place an order on a customer's behalf, you must confirm that the customer previously accepted the Microsoft Customer Agreement.

  • Use different steps for existing customers: For existing customers, including customers who already have customer records in Partner Center through a multichannel or multipartner scenario, request a relationship with them, instead of following the steps here.

  • If your customer is an educational institution, see How to create an education customer.

  • Enter additional information for some countries/regions: Company registration ID and phone number are required for some countries/regions if you're a direct bill partner or an indirect provider

Add a new customer in Partner Center

  1. Sign in to Partner Center and select Customers.
  2. Select Add customer.
  3. On the Account info page, enter the customer's details and primary contact information.
  4. Uncheck Opt-in checkbox if Default GDAP isn't required.

Note

Partners must explicitly grant granular permissions to security groups in the Default GDAP to manage customer.

Validate names and addresses

Your company name, customer name, and email addresses must adhere to many validation rules. See Validate company names and email addresses for a complete list of these rules.

Note

Customer accounts must be verified, and verification typically takes three business days or fewer. New customers are verified, and existing customers are reverified whenever changes are made to the Billing information of their customer account. When customer verification is underway (account status does not equal “Approved”), new subscription purchases are blocked. Management of existing subscriptions and cancellations are also not possible. Renewals of existing customer subscriptions, however, are unaffected.

Enable Microsoft Cost Management for customer tenant Azure subscriptions

After you add a new customer, you can enable Microsoft Cost Management for customer tenant Azure subscriptions. Providing access allows customers to view their costs for Azure consumed services at pay-as-you-go retail rates.

Costs are shown in the customer's billing currency for their consumed usage at Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) subscription and resource groups scopes.

For more information about how partners can grant access to customers, see Enable cost management for customer tenant subscriptions.

Company registration IDs and phone numbers required for some countries/regions

Direct-bill partners and indirect providers adding records for customers in the following countries/regions must also enter the company phone number and registration ID (also known as the organization INN):

  • Armenia
  • Azerbaijan
  • Belarus
  • Brazil
  • Hungary
  • India
  • Iraq
  • Kazakhstan
  • Kyrgyzstan
  • Moldova
  • Myanmar
  • Poland
  • Russia
  • Saudi Arabia
  • South Africa
  • South Sudan
  • Tajikistan
  • Thailand
  • Türkiye
  • Ukraine
  • United Arab Emirates
  • Uzbekistan
  • Venezuela
  • Vietnam

Next steps