Overview

This article explains how resellers can discuss billing differences between the native AWS console and the billing data reported in the StreamOne Ion platform with their customers. We will cover the main concepts of AWS billing, including blended rates, volume pricing, and how billing is calculated when using consolidated accounts. The goal is to help you better understand these variances and communicate them effectively to your customers.


Granting Customer Portal Access

We strongly encourage AWS resellers to give their customers access to the StreamOne Ion Customer Portal. This will help customers directly track and manage their billing. For more details, please refer to the articles: Customer Portal and Storefront options and How to Setup and Manage End User Access and Password Resets. 


 

AWS billing supports different types of account configurations for resellers. These configurations allow resellers to manage multiple customers under one or more Master Payer Accounts (MPAs). Here are the common setups:

  • Shared Master Payers: Multiple resellers and their customers operate under a single AWS organization.
  • Dedicated Master Payers (Reseller Level): One reseller manages multiple end-customer accounts under a dedicated MPA.
  • Dedicated Master Payers (End-Customer Level): A reseller requests a dedicated payer for one end customer, especially when advanced features like SSO or Control Tower are needed.

 

Blended Rates Explained

AWS uses blended rates to simplify billing when multiple pricing models are applied. This is particularly helpful for services like EC2, RDS, ElastiCache, and Redshift. AWS blends the cost of multiple services and shows a single effective rate per hour in the Cost and Usage Report or AWS Cost Explorer.

Important:
The blended rate is for informational purposes only. StreamOne Ion uses actual account consumption to calculate the final price for each customer, ensuring accurate billing.


AWS Volume Pricing

AWS Volume Pricing allows TD SYNNEX to receive discounts when purchasing large quantities of AWS services. These discounts are passed on to resellers who manage high-volume accounts. The exact discounts vary depending on the service being used, and resellers should be aware of these volume-based savings to explain cost differences to customers. 


AWS Free Tier:

The Free Tier (12 month's free*) benefits under Consolidated Billing across multiple accounts will only have access to one Free Tier per Organization.  TD SYNNEX does not allocate free tier benefits between multiple accounts in shared payers. 

  • 12-Months Free: Only available to new AWS customers for 12 months after signup. It does not apply to every account in a shared master payer setup—just once per organization.
  • Always Free: These offers remain available indefinitely and are valid for both new and existing AWS customers.
  • Trials: These are limited-time offers, and once they expire, the customer is charged at standard rates.

Note: Free Tier offers are not available in certain AWS regions, like AWS GovCloud (US) or the China (Beijing) region.


TD SYNNEX and Consolidated Billing and Blended Rates

TD SYNNEX manages AWS billing for resellers using the AWS Organizations' Consolidated Billing feature. This allows all customer accounts to be grouped under a single "family" of accounts, making it easier to reach lower pricing tiers. Here's how it works:

  • All usage from the accounts is combined into a single consolidated bill.
  • Volume discounts are applied based on the combined usage of the organization.
  • StreamOne Ion calculates the actual costs for each member account, ensuring accurate charges based on real consumption.

When Reserved Instances (RIs) are purchased, the usage is first applied to the purchasing account. If there’s remaining capacity, it’s distributed to other accounts in the same Availability Zone.

 

Understanding Billing Variances with Blended Rates:

Customers using On-Demand instances (without RIs or Savings Plans) may notice lower charges on their AWS console. This happens because AWS applies a blended rate when there are matching RIs across linked accounts. However, the correct number of instance hours will still be displayed in the Account Activity page.


How consolidated bills are calculated:

A Reserved Instance is a long-term commitment (1 or 3 years) to specific AWS resources, offering a lower hourly rate. When an instance is launched, AWS checks the account’s Reserved Instance purchases before billing at the standard On-Demand rate.


All account activity rolls up to the master payer account, also known as the "account family." Usage is aggregated at the payer level, and charges are then allocated to individual accounts based on their actual usage. This allocation process is why blended rates appear on linked accounts.Blended rates appear only on linked account line items. (Blended rates do not equal customer pricing or MSRP.)

 

Rounding in the Billing Reports:

Billing reports from AWS use very precise data (up to 9 decimal points). However, rounding occurs at several stages:

  • The Detailed Billing Report (DBR) from StreamOne Ion displays rounded values, but you can download the report to see unrounded values for deeper analysis.
  • The billing statement you receive is rounded to the nearest penny, while usage reports can change dynamically.

For accurate reconciliation, use the detailed DBR file for precise numbers.


Summary

AWS billing is complex, and customers may see differences between the StreamOne Ion platform and the native AWS billing console. These differences stem from factors like blended rates, volume discounts, RIs, and custom pricing agreements. To avoid confusion, it’s important to clarify these billing variances early in your discussions with customers.


The blended rates displayed in the AWS console are for reference only. StreamOne Ion calculates actual costs based on each account's consumption, ensuring the final billing is accurate.


It’s important for AWS partners to be familiar with the AWS Pricing Calculator for estimating costs. This tool is part of the AWS Well-Architected Labs (Level 100 Cost Estimation) and is available for free.


Highly recommended TDS training class: Setting Up and Managing your AWS Business on StreamOne Ion. This training will assist you in understanding how StreamOne Ion handles AWS business complexities, setting up your AWS business, understanding reports, and reconciling billing data. (This is partner-facing training.)


Key Takeaways

  • Understand how consolidated billing works to explain pricing differences.
  • Use the StreamOne Ion platform for the most accurate billing data.
  • Address customer concerns proactively by explaining blended rates and volume pricing.

Sample Communication for Resellers to End-Customers

 

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When there are multiple accounts under a shared consolidated payer (Org), your charges in the AWS console are reflective of the combination of the other accounts and AWS services in the same payer. When you’re looking at the AWS native billing console, you may see different pricing based on other cumulative customer purchases, which may include volume discounts and reserved instances in the same availability zones and regions you have setup in your AWS accounts.

 

For all the strengths that the AWS platform offers, there's a bit of complexity around Reserved Instances (RI) and Consolidated Billing. We often hear questions about how to effectively ensure that costs are properly tracked and allocated. Rather than looking for all matching resources with an individual account, AWS automatically applies RI benefits to matching resources across all linked accounts. Therefore, you may see a different price in the AWS console than on your statement from the platform. Our platform keeps track of all services, volume discounts, and RI purchases and applies the correct pricing to the individual accounts. This means the platform is keeping the benefits for the accounts that made the investment in the RI purchase. Per the AWS documentation, accounts that participate in a consolidated billing scenario (which is the case working with us) can take advantage of the platform and other partner services. For all linked AWS accounts, the native AWS console cannot be used to view accurate billing information. The usage information will be 100% aligned, but the billing data is impacted due to consolidation and blended rates, as explained in the above paragraph.


Here is a LINK from AWS that provides billing examples for specific services. Additionally, here is a LINK to AWS that describes Blended Rates, which is the core issue regarding billing differences in the AWS console versus the true billing information in the Customer Portal [add your customer portal URL here].

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To submit a support request, in StreamOne Ion, click the "?" icon in the upper right menu bar or click the Support button in the menu. Alternatively, you can click Submit a ticket in the Knowledge Base. Fill out all mandatory fields, or read How to Use StreamOne Freshdesk to Submit and View Support Tickets for more information.