Azure credits and adjustments

CloudZero brings your Azure credits and adjustments into your cost data alongside your usage. What Azure makes available differs by agreement type, and this page covers what to expect from each one.

Credit availability by agreement type

Enterprise Agreement

Azure reports billing balances for each EA billing period, including an itemized list of adjustments such as a billing correction credit. CloudZero reads those adjustments and applies them to your cost data as credit lines, so your CloudZero total reflects the adjusted Azure total.

Tax isn't a credit. CloudZero adds the tax from your invoice as a separate Tax line, as described in the Enterprise Agreement (EA) setup guide.

Microsoft Customer Agreement

The cost and usage data Azure exports for MCA accounts is gross: it covers your usage, purchases, and fees, and it does not carry invoice-level usage credits such as re-rating corrections. Microsoft applies those to the invoice instead.

Once a billing period closes and Microsoft issues the invoices covering it, CloudZero compares your cost data for each invoice against the amount Microsoft billed, after credits. When Microsoft billed less than your cost data shows, CloudZero adds the difference as a credit line for that invoice, under the product family Invoice Reconciliation. Two things follow from this:

• During an open billing period, CloudZero shows your gross spend, which matches what the Azure portal shows month to date. The credit lines appear after the period closes.
• Each credit line applies to its invoice as a whole. It is not attributed to an individual service, subscription, or resource.

Payments from a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) are not credits. If you pay for Azure from a MACC, CloudZero shows your full usage cost, and the amount drawn from your commitment does not reduce your CloudZero totals.

Invoice-level credits require CloudZero to read your MCA invoices, which needs the Billing Account Reader or Billing Profile Reader role. The MCA guide assigns these roles for the billing account and billing profile scopes. The roles it assigns for the invoice section and subscription scopes can't read invoices, so those connections show gross cost without invoice-level credits. For details, see Choose your billing scope on the MCA connection page.

Partner-resold agreements

For CSP and MPA connections, the reseller or partner issues your invoice, and Azure does not expose it to CloudZero. If you connected a CSP subscription with Auto-detect, CloudZero lists it as MPA, and the same applies. Cost data for these connections reflects your usage as Azure reports it, without invoice-level credits or adjustments. To include credits from your reseller or partner, add them as a custom data source, using the Credit line item type described in the Common Bill Format reference.

Refunds that appear with your usage

Purchase, reservation, and license refunds work differently from the invoice-level credits above. Azure reports these directly in your cost and usage data as negative charge lines, and CloudZero ingests them for every agreement type. They appear across the platform with the rest of your Azure spend.

A reservation refund shows up as its own line in your cost data, while an invoice-level credit on an MCA account arrives as a credit line for its invoice after the period closes.