Managing your purchase orders - AWS Billing

Managing your purchase orders

You can use your Billing and Cost Management console to manage your purchase orders and configure how they reflect on your invoices. You have the option to add multiple purchase orders with multiple line items. Based on your configurations, we select the purchase order that best matches with your invoice. You can manage purchase orders if you're using a regular AWS account or an AWS Organizations management account. For more information about accessing the feature, see Overview of managing access permissions.

Each purchase order can have several line items, and every line item is used for matching with invoices. The following types of line items are available:

  • ALL – All charges on your AWS account.

  • AWS Monthly Usage – Your AWS monthly invoice charges.

  • AWS Subscription Purchase – Your subscription invoice charges; for example, upfront charges for Reserved Instances (RI) and AWS Support charges.

  • AWS Marketplace Transaction – Your purchase order line item for invoice charges from an AWS Marketplace contract subscription. This is available only for the following entities, because all AWS Marketplace invoices are generated from these seller of records: AWS Inc., AWS EMEA SARL, AWS Australia, and AWS New Zealand. Currently, this line item only supports invoices outside of your normal monthly billing cycle.

  • AWS Marketplace Blanket Usage – Your default purchase order for AWS Marketplace invoice charges. This is available only for the following entities, because all AWS Marketplace invoices are generated from these seller of records: AWS Inc., AWS EMEA SARL, AWS Australia, and AWS New Zealand. All invoices with AWS Marketplace subscriptions contain an AWS Marketplace Blanket Usage line item, unless the subscription has a transaction-specific purchase order. If the subscription has a transaction-specific purchase order, then your invoice has an AWS Marketplace Transaction line item instead.

  • AWS Professional Services and Training Purchase – Your default purchase order line item for invoice charges from AWS Professional Services and Training. This applies to all consulting, in-person, or digital training services, and is only available for the AWS Inc. entity. This line item only supports invoices outside of your normal monthly billing cycle.

Many criteria and parameters are used to determine the optimal purchase order for your invoices. You can create up to 100 active purchase orders with up to 100 line items for each regular account or AWS Organizations management account.

When an invoice is generated, all purchase orders that are added to your management account are considered for association. Then, expired or suspended purchase orders are filtered out, leaving only the active purchase orders. Your invoice’s billing entity is matched with the “Bill from” entity in your purchase order, filtering out those that don’t match. For example, if you have a purchase order added for the AWS Inc. entity (PO_1), and another one for the AWS EMEA SARL entity (PO_2). If you purchase a Reserved Instance from AWS Europe, only PO_2 will be considered for invoice association.

Next, we evaluate line item configurations to determine the best fit for your invoice. To be matched with a line item, the invoice's billing period must be within the line item's start and end month, and it must also match the line item type. If multiple line items match, we use the line item with the most specific type for invoice association. For example, if you have an RI invoice, we use the subscription line item instead of ALL if both are configured.

Lastly, the line items with enough balance to cover your invoice amount are selected above the out of balance line items. If line items that belong to multiple purchase orders match all criteria precisely, we use the purchase order that was most recently updated to match the invoice.