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hiddentrue

Abiquo has a flexible pricing system that is designed to enable cloud providers to supply estimates for and price cloud services.

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Introduction to pricing

With Abiquo PricingAbiquo’s pricing feature, you can create pricing models to match service level agreements and assign them to your tenants and resellers. You can also onboard price lists from public cloud providers with pricing credentials and incorporate them into pricing models.

You can add markups or discounts using price factors, which you can also use to exclude items from customers' bills.

Customers can obtain estimates for their virtual appliances from the pricing system. The platform's accounting system meters the resource usage amount of resources that each tenant uses.

The platform's billing system enables you to charge customers for all their cloud usage with one bill based on pricing and accounting. The platform also enables reseller pricing within a tenant hierarchy. 

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Privileges: Access Pricing view, Manage pricing

For each datacenter, you can set separate prices, and use different currencies, and you can add extra charges for resources, such as VM image templates. 

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To display pricing models, click the pricing button in the main menu. The pricing model of your enterprise has the text "(assigned pricing model)" after the Name.

The platform will list the pricing models that you can display based on your user scope.

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  • Default currencies are euros, US dollars, and Japanese yen

  • You cannot delete a currency that is in use

  • You must always have at least one currency

  • Each pricing model uses only one currency

    • Abiquo will apply the currency of the reseller to the reseller’s customers

To add a new currency

  1. Go to PricingCurrencies

  2. Click the + add button

  3. Complete the dialog

    1. The currency Code will display in pricing. Download code information from the ISO website or refer to Wikipedia

    2. The Name of the currency must be unique and it can include the currency symbol

    3. For Digits, enter the number of digits after the decimal point. If you change the pricing model from a currency with more digits to one with fewer digits, then the platform will round prices up to the nearest digit.

  4. Click Save

    Create a new currencyImage RemovedCreate a new currencyImage Added

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Create extra charges with cost codes

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  1. Go to Pricing → Extra charges with cost codes

  2. Click the + add button

  3. For General information:

    1. Enter a Name to identify the cost code for extra charges.
      You can use the Name and Description to identify the cost item to make it easier for your users to understand their cloud bill

    2. Select the Type that is the resource type the extra charge will apply to.

      1. To bill an enterprise directly for a service or subscription or product, select Enterprise product.
        You can assign this cost code directly to an enterprise, see Manage enterprise products

      2. The Custom service option is implemented in customer integrations only in this version.

    3. Select the Unit for the extra charge:

      1. Usage CPUs will record the usage and multiply by the number of CPUs in a VM with the extra charge

      2. Usage user licenses for a template will record the usage and multiply by the number of licenses you enter when you add the extra charge to a VM

      3. The Subscription option is available for Enterprise products and custom services in customer integrations

        Create a new extra chargeImage Added
  4. For Initial prices

    The initial prices for a resource are set now

    : set them in all of the currencies in your platform. You can later assign different prices in each pricing model

For full details of working with cost codes for extra charges, see Manage extra charges with cost codes.

You can assign cost codes for extra charges to VM templates (see Modify a VM template ) and hardware profiles (see Hardware profiles).
Then set prices for the cost codes for extra charges in your pricing models.
You can also assign cost codes for extra charges to VMs, see VM cost codes and Administer and troubleshoot VMs.

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Display a pricing estimate message

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Display a pricing estimate messageTo display pricing estimates, assign a pricing model to the enterprise. The platform will display the estimates as follows:

  •  At any time users can click the Estimate button in the virtual appliance view to display a current pricing estimate for a VM. 

Screenshot: Pricing estimate button with EUR price code

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Screenshot: A sample pricing message

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  • Virtual machines in virtual datacenter virtual appliance viewImage Added

    The platform displays the pricing estimate in a separate popup

    Deploy chargesImage Added
  • Users with access to the Abiquo API can also request a pricing estimate via the API.

  • To automatically display a pricing estimate popup when the user deploys a virtual appliance or VM, when creating a pricing model, select the checkbox to "Show charges before deployment".

Configure the pricing estimate message

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nameConfigure the pricing estimate message

The default text of the pricing estimate message is as follows.

The charge for this Virtual Appliance will be %CHARGE_FORMATTED% per %CHARGEPERIOD%, charged per %MINPERIOD%, subject to a minimum charge of %MINCHARGE_FORMATTED%. Backup service charge: %BACKUP_PRICE%. VMs in this Virtual Appliance will be:
%VM_PRICES%
Resources defined in the Virtual Datacenter total %VDC_TOTAL_CHARGE% per %CHARGEPERIOD%:
%VDC_PRICES%

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  • The virtual appliance and VM pricing estimates only include the costs that are directly related to VMs. 

  • The virtual datacenters resources estimate includes other costs such as the network cost, backup costs, and the cost of datastore disks without a datastore tier, such as a cloud-init ISO. 

  • The VDC resources cost also includes public IP addresses because they are billed for the time of reservation, which may be longer than the time they are attached to a VM.

To customize the pricing estimate message:

  1. Edit the message, change the text and use the standard cut and paste keys to change the location of the variables. 

  2. You can also select variables to add to this message from the pull-down list

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  1. to align the message with your accounting system.

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Table of pricing estimate variables

Variable

Description and example

%CHARGEPERIOD%

Charging period, for example "month".

%MINCHARGE_FORMATTED%

Minimum charge, for example 2.25 USD.

%MINPERIOD%

Minimum charging period, for example "week"

%BACKUP_PRICE

%CHARGE_FORMATTED%

Charge for the virtual machine, for example "22.50 USD"

%VM_PRICES%

List of charges per virtual machine. for example:
VM1 1.25 USD
VM2 1.00 USD 

%VDC_PRICES%

List of charges per virtual datacenter resource

%VDC_TOTAL_CHARGE

Total charge for virtual datacenter resources, not including VMs

Notes about the pricing estimate message:

  • The virtual appliance and VM pricing estimates only include the costs that are directly related to VMs. 

  • The virtual datacenters resources estimate includes other costs such as the network cost, backup costs, and the cost of datastore disks without a datastore tier, such as a cloud-init ISO. 

  • The VDC resources cost also includes public IP addresses because they are billed for the time of reservation, which may be longer than the time they are attached to a VM.

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Assign pricing models to enterprises

Excerpt
nameAssign pricing models to enterprises

After you save a pricing model, to assign it to one or more tenants, do these steps:

  1. Go to Pricing→ Pricing models

  2. Click At the top right, click Enterprise associations

    Pricing models in pricing viewImage RemovedPricing view with Enterprise associations buttonImage Added
  3. In the search boxes at the top of the enterprise lists, enter text from the enterprise name to filter and display the entepriseenterprise

  4. Select the pricing model

    Enterprise associationsImage RemovedEnterprise associationsImage Added

The enterprise with the pricing model will move to the enterprises With pricing model panel.

Enterprise associationsImage RemovedEnterprises with a pricing model associatedImage Added

Troubleshooting: If an expected pricing model does not display in the list, check that you are logged in with a user with the same scope as the user that created the pricing model.

You can also assign a pricing model to an enterprise when you edit the enterprise. See Set See “Set a pricing model for a tenant tenant” in Manage enterprises.

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Create reseller pricing models

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  1. Log in as the reseller administrator

  2. Go to Pricing view. The reseller pricing model will display. You can edit the pricing model to view the prices but you cannot save changes, unless you have the same scope as the user that created the pricing model

  3. Optionally create extra charges for reseller services

  4. To create customer pricing models, click the copy button to clone the reseller pricing model

  5. Change the pricing model as required

    1. For Change all resource prices, enter a percentatge percentage to increase or decrease the base prices, such as reseller markup.
      For resource prices, the platform applies the percentage change (adding the percentage of the base price the reseller entered to the base price for the platform)

      Create a new pricing model - general informationImage Removed

      .
      (tick) For more flexible markup and discounts use price factors, which you can change and reapply.

      Create a pricing model and apply a markupImage Added
    2. Go to Resource prices. Check the new prices or manually enter a new price for any resource.
      If you enter a price that is lower than the base price, Abiquo will highlight the price with red text.

      Create a new pricing model - resource pricesImage RemovedApplying a discount to a base resource priceImage Added
    3. For Hardware profiles you can onboard and synchronize the price lists of public cloud providers. See Synchronize public cloud price lists

    4. Go to Extra charges and optionally set prices for this tenant for reseller services

    5. Save the pricing model

    6. Assign the pricing model to customers. Each customer administrator should only be able to display the pricing model for their own tenant.

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