An Enterprise Agreement is a trust-based contract, and the true-up is where the trust gets tested. What has to be counted, what Microsoft expects you to inventory, and why the work starts 120 days before the anniversary rather than 30.
If you are a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement customer, you already appreciate the flexibility it gives you when you deploy new hardware and software. Deploy first, count later. But an EA is a trust-based contract, and trust-based contracts carry obligations. It requires commitment and due diligence at your end to make sure volume changes in your organisation are communicated to Microsoft and reflected in your licensing.
That process is the true-up.
Specifically, you have to discover and inventory the new hardware and software deployed since the last anniversary of the agreement. You then send Microsoft one of the following:
You need to account for any increase in qualified desktops, qualified users, Enterprise Online Services User SLs, and any additional products or additional online services running since the last anniversary. For:
Enterprise Products for desktops and users must have equal quantities across all components. If the initial order was for Office, Windows and CAL, and 200 users are now being added via true-up, the true-up order must carry equal quantities: 200 Office, 200 Windows, 200 CAL.
This inventory has to be carried out even if the headcount has fallen. A reduction in desktops or users does not remove the obligation, and it does not tell you anything about products like SQL Server, which are not licensed per desktop. Growth there still has to be captured.
For Online Services, enterprise-wide licensing is not required. If the initial order was 750 Microsoft 365 E3 User SLs, a true-up can be for 200 additional Office 365 E3 User SLs. Additional licences can be added at any time — generally through a licence reservation in Microsoft’s volume licensing portal, which in 2019 was the VLSC — and reconciled at the anniversary.
According to Microsoft, all devices included in the Enterprise Agreement must be inventoried as part of the annual true-up: every server, computer (desktops, laptops and terminals) and mobile device running licensed software from the Microsoft product list.
In addition, the following must be inventoried:
Read that list again and notice what it is really asking for. Not a count. A count with a date attached to every line. That is the difference between an inventory snapshot and a true-up submission, and it is the reason a spreadsheet assembled in the final fortnight rarely survives contact with a reseller’s review.
Start investigating what has changed at least 120 days before the anniversary of your enrolment. Microsoft asks you to submit the true-up order 30 days before the anniversary date, so 120 days gives you the window to find the changes, work out what they cost, and do something about them before you are committed.
Bear in mind Microsoft’s 90-day rule: product licences can be reassigned to another device every 90 days, not more frequently. That single constraint is why the timeline has to be 120 days rather than 60. Any reassignment you want to make in order to reduce the order has to happen far enough ahead to be legitimate by the time you submit.
The mechanics above describe the Enterprise Agreement as it stood in 2019 and the process has been stable, but Microsoft has since changed EA eligibility and renewal terms, and has moved customers below certain thresholds towards other purchasing routes. Confirm the terms of your own enrolment and the current Microsoft Product Terms before you plan against any of this. Your reseller or Licensing Solution Partner should be able to tell you which route you will be on at your next renewal.
Every bullet on Microsoft’s inventory list is a question about something you own, asked with a date attached. That is an ITAM problem before it is a licensing one.
CerteroX ITAM discovers across ten methods — agent, command-line, agentless, standalone, network scan, Active Directory, third-party import, cloud connectors, browser monitoring and file metering — into one schema. Virtualisation connectors for VMware, Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, Nutanix and Oracle VM are what let you answer the OSE question honestly, including the virtual machines nobody registered. Active Directory import supplies users, groups, computers, sites and subnets for the qualified-user count.
CerteroX SAM carries the entitlement side: device CALs, user CALs, named user and external connectors, alongside SQL Server and Windows Server core and processor licensing with cluster and virtualisation awareness. Microsoft Licence Statement import brings your position from Microsoft into the same place as your deployments, and the Effective Licence Position reports purchased, used, available, required, variance and exposure continuously rather than at the anniversary.
Two capabilities matter specifically for reducing the order rather than merely calculating it. AppsMonitor tracks file-based usage with first-used and last-used dates and a rolling 90-day utilisation metric, so you can see which of those new desktops is actually running the software you are about to true up. And the Exclude From Licensing workflow handles MSDN, development, training and second-use devices — the population that inflates a naive count more than any other.
The objective is not to make the true-up easier to submit. It is to make it smaller, and to know what it will say four months before you have to say it. Talk to us if your next anniversary is inside that window.
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