You can set up automatic reporting for Rental and Term contracts by registering your Usage Meter instances with a contract.

Registered Usage Meter instances prepopulate collected usage data in your monthly billing order (MBO) reports. If there is an error in reporting, you can amend the reported data before submitting the report.

If you have defined sites for your contracts, you register Usage Meter instances on a site level. If you do not have sites for your contracts, you register Usage Meter instances on a contract level.

You can set Usage Meter instances to Test or Production mode. When set to Production mode, the usage reported by the instance counts towards your monthly billing order. Once you set a Usage Meter instance to Production mode, you can no longer change it to Test mode.
Note: If you are registering a Usage Meter instance with a Term contract for automatic reporting of VMware Tanzu, you need to make sure the Usage Meter instance is also registered with a Rental contract. Automatic reporting of VMware Tanzu can only be established when a Usage Meter instance is registered with both a Rental contract and a Term contract.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that you are logged in with an account that has the Auto Report Operations role assigned.
  • Enable Auto Reporting for Rental in the Profile settings. If deactivated, a user with the Auto Report Operations role must enable it first. See How do I opt in for automatic reporting.
  • If registering a Usage Meter 4.x instance, verify that you have opted into the Flex Pricing Model from your Profile settings. See How do I opt in for Flex Pricing Model.

Procedure

  1. On the Commerce Portal toolbar, click Contracts.
  2. Click the contract number for which you want to enable automatic reporting.
    You are redirected to the details page of that contract.
  3. On the toolbar, select Usage Meter Instances.
  4. Click Register New.
    Registering a new Usage Meter instance with a Rental Contract.
  5. Enter the name and instance ID of the Usage Meter instance.
  6. Select the version and mode.
  7. If you have defined sites for the contract, select a site from the Site drop-down menu to associate the Usage Meter instance with a site.
    The Usage Meter instance collects only the usage data of the selected site.
  8. To register the instance, click Ok.

Results

The Usage Meter instance appears in the list of instances.

Viewing registered Usage Meter instances of a Rental Contract.

If set to Production, the data collected by the instance is automatically populated in following MBO reports and made ready for submission.

What to do next

  • Click the link above the table to check the status of your Usage Meter instances in vCloud Usage Insight.

  • To move instances across sites, click the options button and select Edit. Use the Site drop-down menu to select a new site and click Ok.

    Editing or deleting a Usage Meter instance.

  • To delete an instance, click the options button and select Delete.