True-Up Calculations

Enterprise Agreement (EA) discounts are based on the number of “qualifying desktops” covered by an agreement. (For a description of qualifying desktops, see the sidebar “Counting Client Devices to Reduce EA Costs“.)

Customers, often assisted by their resellers, count the number of qualifying desktops each year, and if any have been added since the last check, the organization sends Microsoft a “true-up” payment for each new device. True-up payments are also applied to any additional products that were added during the year, except for the first time an additional product is run, when it is invoiced and paid for immediately. For example, if a customer decides to purchase a license for Office for Mac during its EA, it will immediately pay the full license price for the product and pay for Software Assurance (SA) for the remaining years of the agreement, but subsequent licenses for Office for Mac will be counted and paid as true-ups.

When calculating true-up payments, the customer pays the same for product licenses regardless of when the software is purchased during the term of the EA, but the cost of SA, which is built into EAs, varies with the number of years remaining in the EA.