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Shirley Guo

Covers Marketplace billing and revenue operations

Shirley Guo

Shirley Guo covers the money side of cloud marketplaces — usage metering, invoicing and disbursement, what a marketplace transaction actually costs, and the work of getting marketplace revenue to reconcile.

  • usage metering
  • invoicing and disbursement
  • marketplace fees
  • refunds
  • revenue reconciliation

39 articles

AWS Credits for Marketplace Purchases: What Counts
AWS

AWS Credits for Marketplace Purchases: What Counts

A buyer with AWS credits wants to spend them on your Marketplace deal, but AWS's terms exclude AWS Marketplace unless AWS authorizes it. Here's what each kind of AWS credit can pay for, where committed spend fits, and what to tell the buyer.

Shirley Guo
Google Cloud Marketplace Disbursement Report
GCP

Google Cloud Marketplace Disbursement Report

Google typically pays you on the 21st, and its reports explain the gap between a customer's charge and your payout in fields most finance teams never open. Here is which report and field answers each month-end question, and the one question none of them answers.

Shirley Guo
AWS Marketplace Agreement Status and Renewal Chains
AWS

AWS Marketplace Agreement Status and Renewal Chains

When AWS renews an agreement, it doesn't move the end date. It creates a new agreement with a new ID and marks the old one RENEWED. Here is what every status means, and how to keep billing and the CRM on one customer across the chain.

Shirley Guo
AWS Marketplace Metering Agent Skill: What It Builds
AWS

AWS Marketplace Metering Agent Skill: What It Builds

AWS's metering agent skill lets a coding assistant generate, deploy and test a pay-as-you-go metering pipeline in your seller account. Here's what it builds, what AWS says stays yours, and three questions that decide whether to build with it.

Shirley Guo
AWS Marketplace Vendor-Metered Tagging, Explained
AWS

AWS Marketplace Vendor-Metered Tagging, Explained

An enterprise buyer wants your AWS Marketplace charges split by business unit. Vendor-metered tagging does that without touching the price: you split each usage record across tags, and the buyer activates them in their own Billing console.

Shirley Guo
AWS Marketplace in Japan and Korea: Who Collects Tax
AWS

AWS Marketplace in Japan and Korea: Who Collects Tax

Where AWS Japan is the marketplace operator, it collects the 10% Japanese consumption tax and issues the tax invoice, so a seller outside Japan should stop doing either. Who collects, invoices and remits on each leg of a direct sale or a CPPO, in Japan and in Korea.

Shirley Guo
Cloud Marketplace Invoices: A Buyer Handoff Guide
Billing & Metering

Cloud Marketplace Invoices: A Buyer Handoff Guide

Your customer's AP team wants your invoice, but on a marketplace deal the cloud provider sends it. Which document arrives, from whom and when, and what to tell AP before the deal closes.

Shirley Guo
Prepaid Commit With Monthly Overage, Cloud by Cloud
Billing & Metering

Prepaid Commit With Monthly Overage, Cloud by Cloud

A year paid up front, a usage allowance that resets every month, overage billed monthly. Here's what AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud bill natively, where each one stops, and how to sell the rest.

Shirley Guo
AWS Brazil 2P Distribution Program for SaaS Sellers
AWS

AWS Brazil 2P Distribution Program for SaaS Sellers

AWS Brazil can now be the seller of record on a SaaS deal with a Brazilian buyer: a BRL invoice with Brazilian taxes for them, no listing fee and income tax withheld for you. Here is that deal set against the private offer you would send anyway.

Shirley Guo
Microsoft Marketplace Refunds and Cancellations
Azure

Microsoft Marketplace Refunds and Cancellations

Inside the refund window, a Microsoft Marketplace buyer can cancel and be refunded without you. After it, a refund needs your approval and a support request, and a subscription with payments pending can't be canceled until its term is over.

Shirley Guo
Marketplace Usage Report Failed After Acceptance
Billing & Metering

Marketplace Usage Report Failed After Acceptance

The buyer accepted, your usage passed validation, and the marketplace still refused it. Here's what AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud mean when they say a customer isn't billable, and what you can still bill.

Shirley Guo
Marketplace Bookings vs Billings: Four Numbers
Billing & Metering

Marketplace Bookings vs Billings: Four Numbers

Bookings, billings, collected, disbursed: four marketplace revenue numbers, the date that places each in a period, and why billings can exceed bookings.

Shirley Guo
AWS EMEA SARL and KYC: Who Invoices Your EMEA Marketplace Buyers
AWS

AWS EMEA SARL and KYC: Who Invoices Your EMEA Marketplace Buyers

AWS EMEA SARL invoices your buyers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa only after your KYC clears, and on a CPPO only after your channel partner's clears too. Until then, AWS Inc. does.

Shirley Guo
Marketplace Usage Correction: What Each Cloud Allows
Billing & Metering

Marketplace Usage Correction: What Each Cloud Allows

Once AWS, Microsoft or Google Cloud accepts a usage record, there is no self-service way to take it back. What you can do depends on the cloud, and on whether the bill has gone out.

Shirley Guo
Cloud Marketplace Purchase Orders: Who Sets the PO
Marketplaces

Cloud Marketplace Purchase Orders: Who Sets the PO

Your buyer's AP won't pay without a PO on the invoice. On AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud only the buyer can add one. Here is where, and what to send.

Shirley Guo
Instrumenting Your Marketplace Motion for 2027
Cloud GTM

Instrumenting Your Marketplace Motion for 2027

Every marketplace target eventually meets the question nobody prepared for: where does that number come from? Instrument the answer before January.

Shirley Guo
Your Year-End Marketplace Reporting Checklist
Billing & Metering

Your Year-End Marketplace Reporting Checklist

Year-end close is where a year of marketplace shortcuts comes due. The reconciliations a finance team should run before closing the books, in order.

Shirley Guo
Migrate Marketplace Metering Without Downtime
Billing & Metering

Migrate Marketplace Metering Without Downtime

Moving billing platforms is where usage-based sellers get scared, because metering is the one thing that feeds a real buyer invoice. Here is the cutover plan that drops no records and double-bills no one.

Shirley Guo
AWS Marketplace Net Payment Terms for Private Offers
Billing & Metering

AWS Marketplace Net Payment Terms for Private Offers

AWS now lets sellers set Net 30, 45, 60, or 90 payment terms on a private offer. Here's what each term does, what the buyer sees, and how the CPPO ceiling works.

Shirley Guo
The Monthly Marketplace Close Checklist
Billing & Metering

The Monthly Marketplace Close Checklist

The monthly marketplace close is the same five moves every cycle. Here they are in dependency order, so each step has the data the next one needs.

Shirley Guo
The AWS Marketplace Professional Services Listing Fee Cut
Billing & Metering

The AWS Marketplace Professional Services Listing Fee Cut

AWS cut the professional services listing fee from 2.5% to 0.5% in June 2026. Here's the exact before/after and the new margin math on a services attach.

Shirley Guo
The Marketplace Credit Request, at Scale
Billing & Metering

The Marketplace Credit Request, at Scale

A marketplace credit request needs different evidence on every cloud. Here is what AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud each require to issue one.

Shirley Guo
When Usage Records Fail: Batching and Retries
Billing & Metering

When Usage Records Fail: Batching and Retries

A rejected usage record is unbilled revenue with a deadline on it. The response codes tell you which failures to retry and which to fix — and they are not the same failures.

Shirley Guo
Designing Metering Dimensions You Won't Regret
Billing & Metering

Designing Metering Dimensions You Won't Regret

Metering dimensions are the hardest thing to change after launch and the easiest to rush before it. Five questions to answer before you publish.

Shirley Guo
Tax and Withholding on Marketplace Revenue
Billing & Metering

Tax and Withholding on Marketplace Revenue

Who remits tax on a marketplace sale depends on the country, and the marketplace decides. The structure finance needs before the first payout.

Shirley Guo
Seller of Record: Why It Changes Your Books
Billing & Metering

Seller of Record: Why It Changes Your Books

On a marketplace, somebody else invoices your customer and collects the cash. That one fact reshapes your AR, your tax exposure and the conversation with your auditor.

Shirley Guo
Why Your Marketplaces Report Different Numbers
Billing & Metering

Why Your Marketplaces Report Different Numbers

Three consoles, three revenue figures, none of them wrong. The differences are structural — different clocks, different payout triggers, different definitions of the same dollar.

Shirley Guo
AWS Marketplace Contract Pricing vs Usage Pricing
AWS

AWS Marketplace Contract Pricing vs Usage Pricing

The difference is not commercial, it's architectural. A contract product verifies entitlements and never meters. A subscription product meters every hour or you don't get paid.

Shirley Guo
How to Cancel an AWS Marketplace Subscription
AWS

How to Cancel an AWS Marketplace Subscription

The cancellation path depends entirely on what the buyer bought. A subscription ends from a console page; a contract goes through AWS Support inside a 48-hour window most people miss.

Shirley Guo
Cloud Marketplace Metrics Worth a Dashboard
Cloud GTM

Cloud Marketplace Metrics Worth a Dashboard

Most marketplace dashboards report what already happened. The metrics worth building are the ones that change a decision — and each one needs a named source dataset.

Shirley Guo
Refunds and Cancellations on AWS Marketplace
AWS

Refunds and Cancellations on AWS Marketplace

AWS Marketplace refunds and cancellations are now self-service for sellers. Here's the full path from request to disbursement adjustment — and what can't be undone.

Shirley Guo
What a Marketplace Dollar Actually Costs You
AWS

What a Marketplace Dollar Actually Costs You

AWS Marketplace fees are not one number. They move with product type, offer type, contract value, the channel, and the buyer's country — with worked arithmetic for each.

Shirley Guo
Finance 101: Bridging the GAAP on Marketplace Revenue
Finance

Finance 101: Bridging the GAAP on Marketplace Revenue

A Finance leader's guide to cloud marketplace accounting, covering revenue recognition, fees, AR, cash flow and reconciliation across AWS, Azure and GCP.

Shirley Guo
RevOps 101: Running Marketplace Deals Like Any Other Deal
RevOps

RevOps 101: Running Marketplace Deals Like Any Other Deal

A RevOps leader’s first guide to understanding why cloud marketplace deals create policy, workflow, and ownership failures, and what to do about it.

Shirley Guo
100% Real-Time Financial Accuracy: Automate Cloud Marketplace Transactions with Fours & NetSuite
Billing & Metering

100% Real-Time Financial Accuracy: Automate Cloud Marketplace Transactions with Fours & NetSuite

Fours + NetSuite automate cloud marketplace transactions for real-time financial accuracy — fewer manual errors and faster revenue recognition.

Shirley Guo
Breaking Down Silos: How Automated Usage Metering Drives Revenue Growth
Billing & Metering

Breaking Down Silos: How Automated Usage Metering Drives Revenue Growth

Automate cloud service metering across AWS, GCP, and Azure with Fours — streamline usage-based billing and accelerate revenue recognition.

Shirley Guo
How Fours Powers Automated Usage Metering for ISVs – Cut Reconciliation Time by 90%
Billing & Metering

How Fours Powers Automated Usage Metering for ISVs – Cut Reconciliation Time by 90%

Automate usage-based billing with Fours to eliminate manual reconciliation and cut invoice processing time by 90% for cloud marketplace ISVs.

Shirley Guo
Unlock Revenue Potential: AWS SaaS Revenue Recognition Program
AWS

Unlock Revenue Potential: AWS SaaS Revenue Recognition Program

Discover how AWS's new SaaS Revenue Recognition Program can help APN Partners boost sales, enhance co-selling, and unlock new revenue opportunities.

Shirley Guo
Simplifying Usage Metering Across Cloud Marketplaces: A Guide for SaaS Companies
Cloud GTM

Simplifying Usage Metering Across Cloud Marketplaces: A Guide for SaaS Companies

Effective usage metering strategies for SaaS on AWS, Azure, and GCP — using Fours' unified API to enhance growth and profitability.

Shirley Guo
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