Terms in the Azure usage and charges file for a Microsoft Customer Agreement

This article applies to a billing account for a Microsoft Customer Agreement. Check if you have access to a Microsoft Customer Agreement.

The Azure usage and charges CSV file contains daily and meter-level usage charges for the current billing period.

To get your Azure usage and charges file, see View and download Azure usage and charges for your Microsoft Customer Agreement. It's available in a comma-separated values (.csv) file format that you can open in a spreadsheet application.

Usage charges are the total monthly charges on a subscription. The usage charges don't take into account any credits or discounts.

Detailed terms and descriptions

If you want to see a list of all available terms in the MCA usage file, see Understand cost details data fields.

Make sure that charges are correct

If you want to make sure that the charges in your detailed usage file are correct, you can verify them. See Understand the charges on your billing profile's invoice

Changes from Azure EA usage and charges

If you're an EA customer, notice that the terms in the Azure billing profile usage CSV file differ from the terms in the Azure EA usage CSV file. Here's a mapping of EA usage terms to billing profile usage terms:

Azure EA usage CSV Microsoft Customer Agreement Azure usage and charges CSV Description
Date date Date that the resource was consumed.
Month date Month that the resource was consumed.
Day date Day that the resource was consumed.
Year date Year that the resourced was consumed.
Product product Name of the product.
MeterId meterID The unique identifier for the meter.
MeterCategory meterCategory Name of the classification category for the meter. Same as the service in the Microsoft Customer Agreement Price Sheet. Exact string values differ.
MeterSubCategory meterSubCategory Azure usage meter subclassification.
MeterRegion meterRegion Detail required for a service. Useful to find the region context of the resource.
MeterName meterName Name of the meter. Represents the Azure service deployable resource.
ConsumedQuantity quantity Measured quantity purchased or consumed. The amount of the meter used during the billing period.
ResourceRate effectivePrice The price represents the actual rate that you end up paying per unit, after discounts are taken into account. It's the price that should be used with the Quantity to do Price * Quantity calculations to reconcile charges. The price takes into account the following scenarios and the scaled unit price that's also present in the files. As a result, it might differ from the scaled unit price.
ExtendedCost cost Cost of the charge in the billing currency before credits or taxes.
ResourceLocation resourceLocation Location of the used resource's data center.
ConsumedService consumedService Name of the service.
InstanceId instanceId Identifier of the resource instance. Shown as a ResourceURI that includes complete resource properties.
ServiceInfo1 serviceInfo1 Legacy field that captures optional service-specific metadata.
ServiceInfo2 serviceInfo2 Legacy field with optional service-specific metadata.
AdditionalInfo additionalInfo Service-specific metadata. For example, an image type for a virtual machine.
Tags tags Tags assigned to the resource. Doesn't include resource group tags. Can be used to group or distribute costs for internal chargeback. For more information, see Organize your Azure resources with tags.
StoreServiceIdentifier N/A
DepartmentName invoiceSection DepartmentName is the department ID. You can see department IDs in the Azure portal on the Cost Management + Billing > Departments page. invoiceSection is the MCA invoice section name.
CostCenter costCenter Cost center associated to the subscription.
UnitOfMeasure unitofMeasure The unit of measure for billing for the service. For example, compute services are billed per hour.
ResourceGroup resourceGroup Name of the resource group associated with the resource.
ChargesBilledSeparately isAzureCreditEligible Indicates if the charge is eligible to be paid for using Azure credits.

Check access to a Microsoft Customer Agreement

Check the agreement type to determine whether you have access to a billing account for a Microsoft Customer Agreement.

  1. Go to the Azure portal to check for billing account access. Search for and select Cost Management + Billing.

    Screenshot that shows an Azure portal search for Cost Management + Billing.

  2. If you have access to just one billing scope, select Properties from the menu. You have access to a billing account for a Microsoft Customer Agreement if the billing account type is Microsoft Customer Agreement.

    Microsoft Customer Agreement, Billing Account Type, Properties, Microsoft Azure portal

  3. If you have access to multiple billing scopes, check the type in the billing account column. You have access to a billing account for a Microsoft Customer Agreement if the billing account type for any of the scopes is Microsoft Customer Agreement.

    Microsoft Customer Agreement, Billing Account Type, Billing account list, Microsoft Azure portal

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