Enterprise Agreement (EA) frequently asked questions (FAQ)

See Assign roles to EA SPNs.

A new enterprise admin can be added by existing enterprise admins. If you're the EA administrator, sign in to the Azure portal > select Billing scope > navigate to Access control(IAM) > select + Add in the top-left corner to add a new EA administrator. Ensure that you have their email address and a preferred sign-in method, such as via work/school authentication or Microsoft Live ID, available.

If you aren't the EA administrator, reach out to your EA administrators in your company to request that they add you to the enrollment. Once they add you to the enrollment, you receive an activation email.

However, if the EA administrators aren't able to assist you, we're able to add you on their behalf if you can provide us with:

• The enrollment number.
• The email address to be added and authentication type (work/school/MS).
• The email approval from the EA administrator.

Once you have all the required information, submit a support request in the Azure portal.

An EA enrollment can have multiple EA administrators. You can reach out to another EA administrator to have new EA administrator/account owners/department admin added. However, if you aren't clear on who is the EA administrator in your company or there's no other available EA administrator on the enrollment, reach out to us with the following information:

• The enrollment number
• The email address to be added and authentication type (work/school/MS)
• Provide information showing that the current EA admin is no longer with the company

If there are other EA administrators on the enrollment, we reach out to the EA administrators to request for approval on administrative changes on the enrollment.

Enrollments are in pending status if the initial EA administrator didn't sign in to the enrollment. If you're an enterprise customer, sign in to Azure portal. On the billing scope page, select your billing account. When you're on the enrollment overview page, the status is updated from Pending to Active. Navigate to the Properties menu to view the update status.

When new Account Owners (AO) are added to the enrollment for the first time, they always show as "pending" under status. When the AO receives the activation welcome email, they can sign in to activate their account. Signing in updates the account status from "pending" to "active."

If you forgot your Microsoft Live ID password, have it reset at https://account.live.com/password/reset.

If you forgot your work password, contact your company's IT administrator.

If you have a work or school account under a different tenant, change the authorization level under enrollment details page to "Work or School Account Cross Tenant" and you're able to add the account.

If you signed in as an Azure EA account owner with the same credentials as your Visual Studio subscription, you can recover your individual Visual Studio subscription Azure benefit by performing one of the following actions:

• Remove or move associated Azure subscriptions and then remove your account ownership from your EA account in the Azure portal. Then, sign up for individual Visual Studio Azure benefits again.
• Delete the Visual Studio subscriber from the administration site in VLSC, and reassign the subscription to an account with different credentials this time. Then, sign up for individual Visual Studio Azure benefits anew.

Azure Enterprise customers have two types of subscription offers:

• Azure Enterprise, which is ideal for:
• All production usage
• Best prices based on infrastructure spend

For more information, contact Azure sales.

• Enterprise Dev/Test, which is ideal for:
• All team dev/test workloads
• Medium-to-heavy individual dev/test workloads
• Access to special MSDN images and preferential service rates

For more information, see Enterprise Dev/Test offer.

When you create a subscription, the name defaults to the offer type you choose. We recommend that you change the subscription name to something that makes it easy for you to track the subscription.

To change the name:

1. Sign in to https://account.windowsazure.cn.
2. Select the subscription list.
3. Select the subscription you want to edit.
4. Select the Manage Subscription icon.
5. Edit subscription details.

To track cost by cost center, you need to define the cost center at one of the following levels:

• Department
• Account
• Subscription

Based on your needs, you can use the same cost center to track usage and costs associated with a particular cost center.

For example, to track costs for a special project where multiple departments are involved, you might want to define the cost center at a subscription level to track the usage and costs.

You can't define a cost center at the service level. If you want to track usage at the service level, you can use the Tag feature available at the service level.

You can create as many departments as you need under your Azure EA enrollment. In order to track the usage correctly, ensure that you're not sharing subscriptions across departments.

After you create departments and subscriptions, you can see data in the usage report. This information can help you track usage and manage cost and spend at the department level.

You can also access usage data via the reporting API.

Direct enterprise customers can view usage and spending at different department levels in the Azure portal. Navigate to the Department menu to view charges.

Spending limits are no longer supported in the Azure portal experience. Instead, we recommend using Budgets, which offer more flexibility and visibility.

You can create a budget at the department level to track your spending. Alerts can be configured to notify you when your spending reaches 50%, 75%, 90%, or 100% of the budgeted amount.

If you use resource groups and tags, this information is tracked at service level, and you can access it in the detailed usage download (CSV) file.

You can also access usage via API.

Yes, you can analyze your Azure cost data using Power BI. Our recommended approach is to first create an export in Cost Management and then uses the exported cost report to build a Power BI report tailored to your needs.

Power BI reporting is supported for Azure EA direct, partner, and indirect customers with access to billing information.

Yes. All Azure subscriptions for which you're the account owner are converted to your Enterprise Agreement. Included are subscriptions that use monthly credit such as Visual Studio, AzurePass, Microsoft Cloud Partner Program, and more. You lose monthly credit when converting such subscriptions.

Only one account owner is permitted per subscription. More roles can be added using Role-Based Access or (Access Control (IAM)) in the subscription tab in the upper left corner of the page of the Azure portal.

Yes, you can transfer subscription ownership to different account. For example, if an Account A has three subscriptions, the enterprise administrator is able to transfer one subscription to Account B, one to Account C, and one to Account D. Or they can transfer all subscriptions to Account E.

Enterprise customers can transfer their subscription ownership to another account in the Azure portal. Navigate to the Account or Subscription menu to transfer ownership.

No, an account owner can only be associated to a single department. The policy helps ensure accurate monitoring and apportioning of costs and spending associated to the department that it aligns with under the EA enrollment.

No, a subscription owner must be a unique Microsoft account (MSA) or Microsoft Entra authentication. To account for succession within your organization, you should consider creating generic accounts and using Microsoft Entra ID to manage subscription access.

An Azure account owner can create and manage an unlimited number of subscriptions.

Today, policy does it; meaning you would need to require that for every subscription created, your account is added to a subscription role using role-based access.

Before you can create an enterprise Azure (EA) offer subscription, your account must be added to the role of account owner by your EA enrollment's administrator in the Azure portal. Or, you must be an Enterprise Administrator. You need to sign in to the Azure portal to obtain your entitlement to create EA offer type subscriptions. We recommend that your first EA subscription is created from the + Add Subscription link in Azure portal. However, once your account is entitled it might be easier to create subscriptions in portal.azure.cn in the subscription tab in the upper left corner of the page, where you can both create and rename your subscription in a single step.

To create an enterprise Azure offer type subscription, you must be entitled in the role of account owner or enterprise administrator in the Azure portal.

Enterprise administrators can provide account owners and department administrators with access to cost and pricing information in the Azure portal. Navigate to the Policies menu to change settings.

For indirect enrollment customers, contact your partner to check that they enabled the pricing feature for you. Only the partner does it. After you're enabled, you can view the cost and pricing on your enrollment as an enterprise administrator.

Partners, if you want to enable the view charges feature for an account owner or a department administrator, follow the steps under direct enrollment.

The usage detail report doesn't contain SKU information. The report does, however, contain usage information so you can download the price sheet report to obtain the SKU information.

The Azure Marketplace charges report shows only the usage-based charges. One-time fees aren't shown. See the usage summary page for the most up-to-date usage-based charges and one-time fees.

For issues with Power BI, log a ticket with the Power BI support team.

Resource tags are managed on the Azure portal. You can contact the Azure subscription team in the Azure portal. Follow the steps in the How to create an Azure support request article.

As of March 1, 2018, some third-party reseller services consume Azure EA Prepayment. Except for Azure reserved VM instances (RIs), services were previously billed outside Azure EA Prepayment and were invoiced separately.

We expanded the use of Azure Prepayment to include some of the third-party published Azure Marketplace services that are purchased most frequently. Azure EA Prepayment for these services in Azure Marketplace helps simplify your purchase and payment management.

The change was made because customers wanted other ways to use the upfront Azure Prepayment. Customers frequently requested this change, and it impacted a large portion of Azure Marketplace customers.

You get a simpler billing experience and are better able to spend your Azure EA Prepayment. Because the services are included in your Azure Prepayment, your Azure EA Prepayment becomes more valuable.

If you consume all your Azure Prepayment and go into overage, charges related to these services appear on your next overage invoice along with any other consumption services. Before the March 1, 2018 change, these charges were invoiced with other Azure Marketplace services.

We frequently work to deliver the best customer experience related to Azure EA Prepayment. The latest changes to Azure EA prepayment addressed a large number of customers and a significant portion of the total spend in Azure Marketplace. Other services might be added in the future.

There's no effect to our indirect enrollment customers or partners. These services are subject to the same partner markup capabilities as other consumption services. The only change is that the charges appear on a different invoice, and the payment of the charges comes out of the customer's Azure EA Prepayment.