Understand LaaS charges

Flex credits are charged for each user who uses each product for each Day or Month, according to your credits agreement. LaaS sends usage details to CONNECT for each user on each day (lease) which is then charged and visible to Account Administrators as Transactions under the Flex Credits option of the CONNECT main menu. Transactions that are not charged are not listed here. For more information on credits agreement and Flex credits, see Understand Flex credits.

Additional charges for the same product

For each LaaS product used, each LaaS user incurs a separate charge. However, there are some cases where a CONNECT user may be charged twice, or more, for the same product on the same day. This may occur in the following situations:

• If different Windows users login as the same CONNECT user, they are treated as separate users for CONNECT charging and each Windows user gets charged separately.

• If one user runs several parallel sessions of the same product there is a limit on the number of parallel sessions before further charges are made. This limit is called Sessions per Seat and can be seen against Product Features under the Licenses pages of License Administration. For example:

  • Feature AVEVA201 (in product AVEVA E3D Design) allows 5 Sessions per Seat, so the sixth parallel session incurs a further charge.

  • Feature SIM500 (in product AVEVA PRO/II Simulation) allows just 1 Session per Seat, so every parallel session is charged independently.

Usually, the usage ID for CONNECT charging is the CONNECT user name. However, in these cases of LaaS charging one CONNECT user more than once for the same product a number is added to the end of the usage ID to force separate charging.

The CONNECT transaction log does not display the usage ID on screen or in a transaction export. Instead, you can find the parallel charges as parallel records for the same day on the License Administration Users screen, then you can find the parallel sessions that provoked the Users record from the Sessions screen. For example, with E3D, the second parallel User record starts at the same time as the sixth parallel Session.

Time zones

Time zones are important for charging. The CONNECT credits agreement has an Account users' time zone which it uses for daily charges. LaaS has its own Timezone shown in License Administration under Settings. Ensure that these time zones are at most four hours apart to avoid potential charging issues.

Shared features

Multiple products available in CONNECT can share license features. If both products appear on the same credits agreement, these are known as shared features.

For example, E3D on premises (FLEX-UENG-002) and Unified Engineering on CONNECT - 3D (FLEX-UENG-068) both contain the E3D (AVEVA201) license feature.

If a license request is made for a shared feature, LaaS checks for the cheapest option available. The license check identifies the cost for each potential product that includes the shared feature for the relevant CONNECT user on the relevant day, and:

• If the cheapest cost is positive, LaaS sends usage for whichever product has the cheapest cost.

• If the cheapest cost is zero, LaaS sends no usage charge. However, there are instances where separate charges can be made. See Additional charges for the same product above.

• In the rare event that multiple products share the same cheapest cost, LaaS selects the highest numbered product code.

  Note: In most cases if a user has already used a product containing the license feature on the same day a request is made, the cost returns as zero and no additional usage charge is sent. However, there are instances where separate charges can be made. See Additional charges for the same product above.