A true up looks routine until you see the bill. The work is in the year before submission, not the week of it. We treat the true up as a position to be defended, not a form to be filled, and we right size it on evidence.
What an EA true up is
Under an Enterprise Agreement you license a baseline and then report increases once a year through the true up. You count the users and devices you have added, the products you have deployed beyond the baseline, and the cloud services you have grown into, and you pay for them. The mechanics sound simple. The risk is that the count is built from assumptions that run in Microsoft's favor and that nobody on your side has tested.
How a true up differs from an audit
A true up is a contractual self report you submit each year. An audit is an external verification, run as a SAM engagement, a self verification, or a formal audit through a third party accounting firm under the MBSA audit clause, that ends in an Effective License Position. The true up is your own number. That is the opportunity and the trap. Because you build it, you can build it carefully. Because you build it, an unexamined true up can lock in an overcount that an audit would never have reached. Read more on how an audit differs from a true up.
Where true ups inflate
- Counting every account in a directory as an active paid user when many are dormant, shared, or service accounts
- Reporting a higher edition across the board when only some users need it
- Carrying deployments that were retired during the year as if still live
- Treating Microsoft 365 and Azure growth as fully chargeable without checking what existing entitlements already cover
- Accepting a vendor prepared count without reconciling it to your own deployment data
How we defend it
We rebuild the count from your deployment data before you submit, so the number you report is the number you can defend. The goal is not to under report, it is to report accurately and to remove the padding that no one would owe.
- Reconcile directory accounts to real, active, licensable users
- Match edition and product to actual need rather than a blanket assumption
- Remove retired deployments and double counted workloads from the base
- Check Microsoft 365 and Azure growth against existing entitlements first
- Document the count so it holds up if a later audit revisits it
Indicative true up reconciliation
| Line | Vendor prepared draft | Defended count |
|---|---|---|
| Directory accounts treated as users | All counted | Active licensable users only |
| Edition reported | Top edition for all | Matched to need |
| Retired deployments | Still counted | Removed |
| Reported true up | Overstated | Right sized |
Figures are indicative and depend on your agreement and estate.
How you engage us
Two models, no downside. A Fixed Fee from $18,000, or Gainshare, a share of verified savings with zero retainer and no risk to you. Both are backed by our guarantee: we reduce your exposure, or we reimburse our service fee. See the detail on the pricing page.
