Transition from Cloud Solution Provider direct-bill partner to indirect reseller

Appropriate roles: Global admin

Direct-bill partners have a revenue requirement of at least USD one million in Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) annual revenue during the preceding 12 months as an indirect reseller.

This article is intended for direct-bill partners who are transitioning to indirect reseller status.

You can enroll in the indirect reseller program using your existing direct-bill tenant after the direct-bill enrollment is in the Restricted status. In this case, your indirect reseller business can use the same Microsoft Entra tenant you use for your direct business. Contact Support team and ask for the status of your Direct Bill account to be moved from Active to Restricted.

Else, you can create a new tenant to enroll in indirect reseller program.

Get started

To transition from being a direct-bill partner to an indirect reseller, use the following steps, after your direct bill account status shows up as Restricted:

1. Make sure that your partner profiles in Partner Center and your PartnerID are current.

2. Sign in to Partner Center as a Global admin for the direct-bill tenant you're transitioning to being an indirect reseller.

3. Select Account settings and then select Programs. Select Get started for the indirect reseller program.

4. Review your partner details on the enrollment form:

   

5. Select Enroll now.

6. When your enrollment is approved, sign in to Partner Center again.

7. On your Agreements page, the indirect reseller agreement appears. Select Accept link for the corresponding Microsoft Partner Agreement. Doing so enables indirect reseller capabilities.

When you accept the indirect reseller agreement, notice that your Partner profile identifies you as both a direct-bill and indirect reseller with applicable enrollment status for each program.

While you transition from direct to indirect reseller

During the transition from direct-bill partner to indirect reseller, you continue to manage your direct customers' subscription needs, including the billing process.

You can also begin accepting customers from your indirect provider and operating as an indirect reseller.

Find an indirect provider

You can search the official list of Microsoft indirect providers to find an indirect provider.

After your enroll as an indirect reseller, a link to indirect providers appears in the left navigation bar at Partner Center. As an indirect reseller, you establish a relationship with an indirect provider who can handle your billing, purchase products for your customers, and provide support infrastructure.

Different indirect providers offer different support and services, so you should evaluate the providers in your area to determine which ones best meet your needs. Generally, most providers will:

• Provide you with technical training and assistance.
• Help you market your products and services.
• Manage your financing and credit terms.

To learn more working with indirect providers, read Learn how to partner with indirect providers in the Cloud Solution Provider program.

Accept a partnership invitation from your indirect provider

When you find an indirect provider to partner with, establish a partnership with that indirect provider in Partner Center. The indirect provider that you select sends you a partnership invitation link in email that takes you to their invitation in Partner Center.

To accept a partnership invitation:

• Have someone with Global admin permissions sign in to Partner Center and follow the link in the invitation.

After you accept the invitation, the provider's name appears in your indirect provider list.

Acquire new customers as an indirect reseller

Both you and your indirect provider must have reseller relationships with customers. These reseller relationships enable you to manage a customer's subscriptions and services on their behalf.

To acquire a new customer who has an existing Microsoft Entra tenant, invite the customer to establish a reseller relationship with both you and your provider at the same time.

To create an indirect reseller invitation, use the following steps:

1. Select Indirect providers from the Partner Center left navigation bar.

2. Select Invite new customers to invite a customer to establish a reseller relationship with both you and the indirect provider at the same time.

   Your provider must have a reseller relationship with your customer. That relationship enables them to submit orders on your customer's behalf when the customer wants to buy new subscriptions or add new licenses to existing subscriptions.

3. On the next page, review the draft email message.

   You can open the draft message in email, or you can copy the message to your clipboard and paste it into an email message.

   You can edit the text in the email to say what you need, but be sure to include the link. (The link is personalized to connect the customer directly to both your account and your provider's account.)

4. Select Done.

5. Now, to have administrative permissions to manage your customers subscriptions, licenses, and users on their behalf, you'll want to request granular delegated admin permissions (GDAP). Keep in mind your indirect provider continues to submit orders on the customer's behalf.

Unlike direct-bill partners, indirect resellers can't create Microsoft Entra tenants for their new customers in Partner Center. Your provider creates the tenant and specifies you as the indirect reseller for this customer. Doing so ensures that the customer appears in your customer list in Partner Center.

Manage your direct-bill customers and your indirect reseller customers

You manage direct-bill customers and indirect reseller customers differently.

Tasks as a direct-bill

• Purchase or create orders for products.
• View customer subscriptions.
• Manage customer order history.
• Bill customers directly.
• View or download CSP price lists from Partner center.
• Use the sandbox and Partner Center API functionality for storefront integration.
• Add a new customer record in Partner Center.

Tasks as an indirect reseller

• Request that your indirect provider order products for your customers.
• Manage customers' licenses and users.
• Create service requests on behalf of your customers.
• View customer analytics.

Identify customers that you acquired as a direct-bill partner

1. In Partner Center, select Customers.
2. Select a customer to view their details.
   • If the customer is one you acquired as a direct-bill partner, you can see their subscriptions and options to add or view products.
   • If the customer has an indirect reseller relationship with you, those options aren't available.

Move your direct-bill customers to your indirect provider

Your indirect provider can't submit orders or existing subscription transfers for your existing direct-bill customers until they have a reseller relationship with them.

To establish the reseller relationship between your indirect provider and your existing direct-bill customer, you can:

• Use the reseller relationship extension
• Send an indirect reseller invitation to a direct-bill customer

Using the reseller relationship extension

You can use the reseller relationship extension to establish a reseller relationship between your existing direct-bill customers and your indirect provider.

Before using the reseller relationship extension, consider that:

• The reseller relationship extension is only available to direct-bill partners who are transitioning to become indirect resellers and completed the indirect reseller enrollment.

• You can only use the reseller relationship extension with existing direct-bill customers. It can't be used with indirect reseller customers.

• You can only select an indirect provider from whom you accepted a partner invitation.

• A copy of the bill-to information that you have for a customer is available to the indirect provider.

  Note

  By using the reseller relationship extension, you consent to sharing the bill-to information that you have for a customer with your indirect provider.

  You can access bill-to information by accessing the Account page for the customer in Partner Center.

• Your indirect provider won't have admin privileges to the customer tenant. If your indirect provider requires granular delegated administration privileges, you must send an indirect reseller invitation to the customer instead.

• After the reseller relationship is established, the indirect provider appears as a CSP partner to the customer on the Partner Relationships page in Microsoft 365 Admin Center and Microsoft Store for Business.

Invite an existing customer to establish a reselling relationship using the following steps:

1. Sign in to Partner Center as an Admin agent and select the Customers workspace.
2. Navigate to your Customer list and select New relationship from the action menu.
3. New relationship brings up a templated email experience, which provides a unique link to share with your customer for relationship acceptance. When the customer accepts the relationship, they are authorizing you as their local reseller of record.
4. Copy the email template to your clipboard, or open it in email, then select Done.

Send an indirect reseller invitation to a direct-bill customer

Your indirect provider can't submit orders for your existing direct-bill customers until they have a reseller relationship with them. To establish the reseller relationship between your existing customers and your indirect provider, invite the customer using an indirect reseller invitation.

To send an indirect reseller invitation to a customer:

1. Sign in to Partner Center as an Admin agent and select Customers.

2. Select Invite new customers to invite a customer to establish a reseller relationship with both you and the indirect provider at the same time.

   The provider must have a reseller relationship with your customer. The relationship enables them to submit orders on your customer's behalf when the customer wants to buy new subscriptions or add new licenses to existing subscriptions.

   

3. Review the draft email message that appears on the next page.

   You can open the draft message in email, or you can copy the message to your clipboard and edit the text to say what you need. Be sure to include the link because it's personalized to connect the customer directly to both your account and your provider's account.

4. Select Done.

   After the customer authorizes you and your provider to be their resellers of record, you'll have administrator permissions to manage their subscriptions, licenses, and users on their behalf. Your indirect provider is able to submit orders on their behalf.

5. To manage the customer's account, services, users, and licenses, expand the customer's record by selecting the down arrow near their name.

Microsoft Customer Agreement

Enroll for indirect reseller incentives

After you've successfully enrolled as an indirect reseller on your existing direct-bill partner tenant, you'll receive an invitation to enroll for indirect reseller incentives within 30 days. The invitation is based on the partner Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program account that is currently associated with your CSP partner tenant. The invitation is sent to the email address associated with the partner Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program account.

You're also eligible to enroll for direct-bill incentive programs with that same partner tenant. You must manage the programs separately.

New commerce transfers

Transfer existing direct-bill subscriptions to your indirect provider

Under the CSP indirect model, indirect resellers don't have billing relationships with Microsoft. Instead, indirect resellers obtain subscriptions for their customers through their indirect providers.

While transitioning from direct-bill partner to indirect reseller, you must transfer any subscriptions that you have as a direct-bill partner to your indirect provider. You can use self-serve subscription transfer in Partner Center to do so.

Having both direct-bill and indirect reseller tenants is recommended

A partner can apply for both direct CSP and indirect reseller using a single tenant. However, if an indirect reseller enrolled as a direct CSP that overrides the indirect reseller feature, which means that partner loses indirect reseller access.

Therefore, we highly recommend having two separate tenants (one for direct-bill and another for indirect reseller). Otherwise, the features of the other program are overridden design.

Also, provide a time frame for how long a partner can take to transfer their customers and subscriptions from indirect reseller to direct-bill before they lose access as an indirect reseller.

Prerequisites for self-serve subscription transfer

The transitioning partner must ensure their customer has a relationship with their indirect provider before transferring subscriptions associated with a given customer.

• Customers must accept the Microsoft Customer Agreement through the Indirect Provider.

Transfer a new commerce license-based subscription

To transfer a new commerce experiences (NCE) license-based subscription to a new partner, you need to perform the following process. Here are the general steps you would typically follow.

1. The customer and the current partner (source partner) have conversations and agree to transfer the subscription to another different partner (target partner).
2. The source partner and target partner have conversations to understand all details about the subscriptions to transfer.
3. The target partner sends a relationship request to the customer with subscriptions to transfer.
4. The customer accepts the relationship request.
5. The target partner creates a transfer request to the current source partner. They include the customer email to receive the notifications and the source partner's Microsoft ID.
6. The source partner receives an email notification of the transfer request, or completed transfers by viewing the events in their audit log.
7. The source partner opens the transfer request and decides which subscriptions to transfer. The source partner then submits the transfer request.
8. The system creates a new subscription for the customer on the target partners billing account. The system also cancels the old subscription under the source partner's billing account.

View more information about transferring new commerce subscriptions

Traditional (legacy) Azure and license-based subscriptions

Partners can only transfer new commerce license-based and Azure types from one transacting CSP partner to another. More information about transferring items can be found at transferring new commerce subscriptions. Partners that want to transfer items to another partner should first migrate to new commerce and then transfer them.

• Migrate legacy license-based to new commerce
• Migrate Azure legacy to Azure Plan

Subscription transfers can't be tested using the sandbox environment.

Related content

• Additional information about becoming an indirect reseller
• CSP direct partner new requirements
• Restricted direct-bill capabilities
• Transfer new commerce subscriptions