Whether you’re a new student, a thriving startup, or the largest enterprise, you have financial constraints. You need to know what you’re spending, where your money is being spent, and how to plan for the future. Nobody wants a surprise bill—and that’s where Microsoft Cost Management comes in. We’re always looking for ways to learn more about your challenges and help you do more with less.
Here are a few of the latest improvements and updates (July 2025):
- Service Principal support for Partner Admin Reader role (EA indirect partners)
- Azure Pricing Calculator: Tip of the Month
- New ways to save money with Microsoft Cloud
- New videos and learning opportunities
- Documentation updates
Let’s dig into the details.
Service Principal support for Partner Admin Reader role (EA indirect partners)
We’re excited to announce that Azure now supports assigning the Partner Admin Reader role to Service Principals. This enhancement empowers Enterprise Agreement indirect partners (CSPs who manage customer Azure costs) to programmatically access cost data across their customers’ enrollments under their Partner Customer Number (PCN) via Azure Active Directory applications—without relying on interactive user accounts.
Why this matters:
Managing cloud costs across multiple customers is complex and might be error-prone when relying on manual exports or shared credentials. Partners need secure, scalable, and automated access to cost data to integrate insights into their tools and optimize spend in real time.
With these enhancements, partners can now:
- Automate cost data retrieval securely using Azure Active Directory service principals (no shared user credentials).
- Integrate Cost Management data into partner billing tools, dashboards, or workflows using APIs.
- Maintain strong governance and control access to billing scopes with Azure Role-Based Access Control.
- Enable near real-time monitoring, invoice reconciliation, and proactive cost optimization across multiple customers.
To get started, learn more about how to assign Enterprise Agreement roles to service principals.
Azure Pricing Calculator: Tip of the Month
When working with estimates in the Azure Pricing Calculator—that include multiple services—scrolling through all the details can become overwhelming. To simplify your view, click the collapse button on your estimate. This instantly minimizes the detailed configuration for all services in your estimate, leaving just the summary line visible. 
Why this helps:
- Reduces unnecessary scrolling when managing large estimates.
- Makes it easier to focus on the services you want to review or adjust.
- Keeps your workspace clean and organized, especially when sharing estimates with others.
Try collapsing services the next time you build a complex estimate. It’s a small trick that makes a big difference in navigating your pricing scenarios!
New ways to save money with Microsoft Cloud
Here are new and updated offers you might be interested in for cost savings and optimization from July and August 2025:
- Generally available: Azure Firewall ingestion-time transformation for cost-efficient logging. Now you can filter or transform Azure Firewall logs before they’re ingested into Log Analytics, reducing the amount of data stored and lowering your logging costs without losing critical security insights.
- Public preview: Azure Storage Mover–free Amazon Web Services S3-to-Azure Blob migration. Now you can move data from Amazon Web Services S3 to Azure Blob Storage securely and at no additional cost using Azure Storage Mover. This fully managed service simplifies multi-cloud or full migration scenarios without third-party tools, reducing complexity and expenses.
New videos and learning opportunities
We added several new videos for your viewing and learning. Whether you are new to Cost Management or require a refresher, these videos will prove to be highly beneficial:
- Managing Access to Cost Management Data
- How to use the Azure Copilot to understand your costs
- Configuring Cost Allocation Rules and Tags
Documentation updates
The Cost Management and Billing documentation continues to evolve. Here are some our new and updated documents from July and August:
- Pay your Microsoft Customer Agreement or Microsoft Online Subscription Program bill: Updated on July 2 to add partial payment options and India-specific payment methods.
- Manage Azure Reservations: Updated on July 8 to clarify reservation scope changes, splitting reservations, and limitations on billing subscription changes.
- Charge back Azure saving plan costs: Published on July 9 to explain chargeback/showback for savings plans using amortized cost and API queries.
- Calculate Enterprise Agreement (EA) savings plan cost savings: Published on July 9 to guide EA customers in calculating savings plan benefits using amortized usage data.
- Manage Azure costs with automation: Updated on July 10 to add best practices for Cost Details API, automation workflows, and handling large datasets.
- Understand and work with Cost Management scopes: Updated on July 25 to clarify Role-Based Access Control vs. billing scopes and role requirements for cost visibility.
- Manage a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment resource: Published on August 14 to describe MACC resources, movement between subscriptions, and deletion rules.
- Set up your billing account for a Microsoft Customer Agreement: Updated on August 14 to detail EA-to-MCA transition steps, prerequisites, and common migration issues.
- Manage a Microsoft Azure credit resource under a subscription: Published on August 19 to introduce Azure Credit resources for MCA accounts and explain moving or deleting them.
- Permissions to view and manage Azure reservations: Updated on August 21 to expand guidance on Role-Based Access Control roles, billing roles, and delegation for reservation access.
Want to keep an eye on all documentation updates? Check out the change history of the Cost Management and Billing documentation in the Azure Docs repository on GitHub. If you see something missing, select Edit at the top of the document and submit a quick pull request. You can also submit a GitHub issue. We welcome and appreciate all contributions!
What’s next for Cost Management
These are just a few of the updates from the last two months. Don’t forget to check out previous Microsoft Cost Management updates for more tips and features. We’re always listening and making continuous improvements based on your feedback—please keep it coming!
Follow the team, share your ideas, and get involved:
- Submit ideas and vote on requests in the Cost Management feedback forum.
- Watch and subscribe to the Microsoft Cost Management YouTube channel.
Stay tuned for more in next month’s update.