Understanding why you received a TL Invoice

What is the purpose of this information?

Accounts have the ability to run applications based on their contract type - 

• Open Access accounts will have access to hundreds of different licenses (and possibly multiple configurations of the same application).
• By default usage is not restricted, and license alerts (available only with Subscription Entitlement Service licensing) are not enabled

Although Open Access can be effectively used to "Pay as you go", not taking the time to properly understand licensing can result in unexpected invoicing.

Background

Accounts are allowed a peak usage (the highest number of unique users in any given usage interval) equal to what is covered under contract. Any usage in excess of what is covered under contract may result in a term license (typically listed as "TL") Invoice. Note that the TL invoice covers the entire period regardless of whether the peak usage (in excess of owned quantity) happed for a single 10 minute interval, or consistently over the entire period. 

• If you have committed to using a term license, it makes much more sense to do so early in your billing period rather than later, as the cost is the same, but your will be getting more usage out of the license.

The period for the TL invoice is based on the contract type. - 

• Open Access users are billed per calendar quarter of use (referred to as a QTL or Quarterly Termed License)
• Open Access Users with a Cloud Service Subscription are billed for calendar month

Usage interval (the period of time that is looked at in regards to determining peak usage) varies by contract type - 

• For Select or Open Access users using Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices (Bentley hosted licensing) daily usage is recorded based on 10 Minute intervals [based on calendar hour, I.E. 1:00-1:09, 1:10-1:19, 1:20-1:29 etc.]. 
• For Select or Open Access users using a deployed license server, daily usage is recorded on 1 Hour intervals [by calendar hour, I.E. 1:00-1:59, 2:00-2:59, 3:00-3:59 etc.].

Usage is recorded as follows -

• Each unique machine accessing a product within the interval counts as 1 usage for that machine during that interval. Multiple open sessions on the same machine would be recorded as a single usage for that machine (except for MicroStation J, which is pooled separately from other versions of MicroStation).
• The total number of unique machines accessing a Bentley product within the interval are recorded
• The interval with the most usage (per application) becomes the daily peak usage for that application

Researching what caused the TL

Users will need at least one of the following roles are able to access the necessary reports:

• Admin
• Co-Admin

To determine why you are being billed for you can look at the Product Usage Report. Refer to the following WIKI on how to use this report -

How do I use the Product Usage Report?

https://communities.bentley.com/communities/other_communities/licensing_cloud_and_web_services/w/wiki/31433/how-do-i-use-the-product-usage-report\

You may wish to note whether the term license usage was the result of a checked out license or not.

.If you need further details , after you have determined the date of the term license usage from the product usage report, you can get further details from Subscription Analytics.

• The times that are reflected in reporting are based on UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), and are not localized for your time zone or for Daylight Savings time.
• If your account uses a deployed (on site)SELECTserver license server, all further research on details would have to be obtained from the license server itself, as deployed license servers do not report as many details to Bentley as Bentley's own hosted licensing.

Under Subscription Analytics you can research further to see what happened. The general WIKI on Subscription Analytics is here-

Subscription Analytics

https://communities.bentley.com/communities/other_communities/licensing_cloud_and_web_services/w/wiki/42091/subscription-analytics

• Each report will provide slightly different data. Once you know the date of the term license usage, you can filter by date range to determining what happened on that particular day, as well as filter by product.

If still more detail is needed, the "raw" data can be exported

Analytics Data Export

https://communities.bentley.com/communities/other_communities/licensing_cloud_and_web_services/w/wiki/43282/analytics-data-export

Preventing Future TL Invoices

If the term license usage was the result of a checked out license (and the license is still checked out), the license can simply be checked back in This can be done either from the client itself via the License Management Tool or Bentley License Tool [depends on which license model the application uses] or thru an Administrative Interface by an administrator.

If you are using SELECTserver based licensing, there is not much in the way of Bentley provided controls to help you limit usage (this is why SELECTserver based licensing is depreciated, and Bentley Switched to Subscription Entitlement Service licensing).

If you are using Subscription Entitlement Service licensing, you can set up "License Alerting" (this doesn't prevent termed license usage, but a warning message will pop up stating you are about to overuse, and the user would have to acknowledge to proceed). For step-by-step instructions see the following wiki - 

How to enable and configure license alerting for Subscription Entitlement Services products
https://communities.bentley.com/products/licensing/w/licensing__wiki/42192/how-to-enable-and-configure-license-alerting-for-products

Setting license alerts does not guarantee protection from a Term License. Refer to the following WIKI -

Limitations of Threshold Alerting
https://communities.bentley.com/communities/other_communities/licensing_cloud_and_web_services/w/wiki/52435/limitations-of-threshold-alerting