Reading an Avaya licence true-up
The PDF arrived on a Tuesday. Twenty-nine pages. The CFO of a mid-size Noida BPO put it on the table and asked one question. “What am I looking at, Anjali?”
Two hours before her call with the reseller. This is what I told her, and what I would tell any Indian buyer opening an Avaya licence true-up for the first time.
## What a true-up actually is
A true-up is a reconciliation. Once a year, or before renewal, Avaya (or your channel partner) compares what you are entitled to use against what your system is running. Inside the entitlement, nothing happens. Past it, you pay for the extra, either as a one-time top-up or as a permanent increase to your subscription base.
Most Indian buyers think a true-up is a single sheet with a number at the bottom. It is not. A real true-up is stitched together from three sources. Resellers usually show you the third.
The first source is the PLDS entitlement extract. PLDS is Avaya’s Product Licensing and Delivery System. It holds every licence file your organisation was ever sold, keyed to your Sold-To ID. Pull the Entitlement List Report by company, LAC, status, or date range. That report is the ground truth of what you own.
The second source is the WebLM usage snapshot. WebLM runs on your side. It reads the XML licence file from PLDS and watches consumption. Open WebLM and look at Usage (current) and Peak Usage (last 7 days). Peak is what triggers a true-up finding, not average.
The third source is the reseller’s letter. That is the summary. It will say something like “Entitled to 1,800 Contact Center Elite CU licences. Peak usage was 1,972. Overage cap of 5% was exceeded. Additional 82 licences required, prorated to renewal date.” That letter is the invoice-in-waiting. If you want a Sirius Star reader to open the three sources with you before your next reseller call, we can.
## The 5% line, and why some bundles get 20%
Avaya Subscription Licensing bundles ship with 5% overage above contracted units. You can grow to 105% of base without paying more, for the whole term. Some bundles ship with 20% overage. Avaya Verint Workforce Engagement is the obvious one. Some ship with no overage, marked with a single asterisk on the pricing schedule. Some ship with limited overage, marked with two asterisks. CTI licences like TSAPI BASIC and DMCC often fall in the limited category.
Point being: a 4% growth quarter should never produce a true-up bill. If the reseller’s letter asks you to pay for 4% overage, something is wrong. Either they are quoting from the wrong bundle, your peak reading is off, or they are treating a limited-overage bundle as no-overage.
On the Noida BPO’s document, peak was 9.6% over base on the main Contact Center Elite bundle. Genuine true-up. Also small. Negotiation: add 96 seats permanently (locked in for the renewal term) or take a one-time expansion for the last four months and re-scope at renewal. Answer depends on how confident you are the peak was a one-off. She knew the peak week. SBI general insurance renewal push. Not repeating.
## What buyers get wrong on WebLM peaks
The Peak Usage column looks simple. Two things trip Indian teams up.
First, WebLM reports peak for the last seven days at the local server level. If you run enterprise WebLM (one master, multiple local), the master’s roll-up view is the one that matters. Local peaks double-count sessions that failed over. I saw a bank get billed for 340 phantom licences because someone read the local view.
Second, the AMS media line. WebLM shows 0% usage for VALUE_CM_AMS_VOIP_CHLS in some releases. By design. AMS B-channel usage is tracked inside Communication Manager, not WebLM. If your true-up letter cites AMS channels off a WebLM zero, ask for the CM `display capacity` output.
## The feature code that changed its suffix
One I hit twice this quarter, and it will hit anyone on a mixed R11 / R12 estate.
On an R12 upgrade, the IP Office Power User feature moves from VALUE_IPO_USR_POWER to VALUE_IPO_USR_POWER_M (or back). The `_M` suffix indicates ADI Migration provenance. If PLDS regenerated the licence but dropped the suffix while WebLM is still keyed to the old code, the licence file installs cleanly but the counter reads zero. A Tek-Tips thread from June 2026 walks through the failure. Workaround: rip the old feature entry and re-add against the new code, or re-host the licence file against the correct Host ID (the IP Office SE Host ID, not the WebLM Host ID, catches out partners).
Why this matters for the true-up: if Peak Usage looks suspiciously low on an R12 site that used to run R11, you may be reading a zero that is not a zero. Verify the feature code stack before you accept the number.
For the audit-day narrative side of a licence review, see our field write-up on the Avaya licence audit at a Pune BPO. For a broader migration angle, when to migrate off old Avaya Aura walks the trigger points that follow a true-up. And if you are debating platforms alongside the reconciliation, our Avaya vs Cisco boardroom argument lays out the sides.
## The four findings every first true-up produces
Any organisation running its first proper Avaya reconciliation will produce four kinds of finding. Naming them helps you scope the argument.
Shelfware. Between 15 and 30 percent of what you own is unused. On the Noida document, 240 Elite CU licences sat idle because a floor was decommissioned in 2024 and the entitlement was never trimmed. Straight rupees at renewal. Drop, do not renew.
Metric misalignment. The wrong metric is on roughly one in ten products. A common Indian BPO pattern is Concurrent User pricing on a workload that should have been Named User. Or Transaction pricing on a callback flow that got re-architected to a routing rule. Switching metric at renewal is often free. Not switching is a slow tax.
Indirect access exposure. Your CRM connector, carrier integration, WhatsApp bot, workforce management tool: each opens sessions the true-up letter may not have counted. TSAPI Basic and DMCC are the first places to check. If integration architecture changed and licence count did not, you are carrying hidden exposure.
Stranded entitlements. Every acquisition brings licences never merged into the master PLDS record. If your company acquired a call centre in 2022 or 2023, some seats may be sitting in a separate Sold-To ID. Pull that record. Some is usable against the current shortfall.
## What I told her to circle before the call
Three things.
One, the 5% line. Confirm the bundle metric on the reconciliation matches the original order form, not a re-classified version.
Two, the peak reading. Ask for the master WebLM roll-up plus the CM capacity display. If the reseller only produces the local-server view, that is a red flag.
Three, the shelfware. Any Elite CU line where average usage is below 40% for 90 days is a candidate to drop at renewal. Do not pay to renew unused licences because the reseller quoted “at least prior year quantity” as the starting point.
She went in with those three markers. The reseller agreed to drop the 240 shelfware seats. The 96-seat overage was settled as a one-time expansion for the remaining term, not a permanent base increase. Net effect: the renewal came in about ₹28 lakh below the original letter.
## The Infinity question that will land next year
One line for buyers looking past this year’s true-up. Avaya has been reshaping its subscription and platform offer under the Infinity brand and the migration path from Aura R10 into subscription still carries the 20% expansion allowance if you convert cleanly. If your reseller dangles an Infinity migration alongside the true-up conversation, treat them as two separate negotiations. True-up is about last year. Migration is about the next three. Muddling them together gives away the room to negotiate you earned by cleaning the entitlement first.
## Key takeaways
- Read the 5% overage line first. Confirm the bundle metric.
- Use the master WebLM roll-up, not local server peaks. For AMS channels, use the CM capacity command.
- Watch feature-code suffixes on cross-release estates. `_M` is not decorative.
- Every first reconciliation surfaces four findings: shelfware, metric misalignment, indirect access, stranded entitlements.
- Separate the true-up conversation from the platform migration conversation. Different room to negotiate.
Sirius Star has walked more than thirty Indian contact centres through Avaya licence audits and renewals across BPO, banking, insurance and utilities. We work directly with the Avaya India product line so the same team that scopes your Aura estate reads your true-up. If you have a letter on your desk this quarter and you are not sure which of the three numbers is the one you should actually pay, we can read it with you before the reseller call.
P.S. Anjali here. Every second true-up we open in India has at least one shelfware line worth more than the overage the reseller is chasing you for. It is worth an hour before you sign.
FAQ
What is a true-up in Avaya licensing?
A true-up is an annual reconciliation between what your organisation is entitled to run (from the PLDS entitlement record) and what your Avaya deployment is actually consuming (from the WebLM usage report). If you are inside your bundle’s overage allowance, no payment is due. If peak usage crossed the overage cap, the reseller will bill either a one-time expansion for the remainder of the term or a permanent increase to your subscription base at renewal.
What overage percentage do Avaya subscription bundles include?
Standard Avaya Subscription bundles include 5% overage above the contracted unit count. Avaya Verint Workforce Engagement bundles include 20%. Some bundles marked with a single asterisk on the pricing supplement include no overage; bundles marked with two asterisks (typically TSAPI Basic and DMCC CTI licences) include limited overage. Read the metric and the asterisk before you accept a true-up finding.
How do I check Avaya licence usage myself?
Log in to WebLM at your master server. The View License Capacity page shows entitled quantity per feature; the Usage page shows current usage as qty/percent and Peak Usage over the last seven days. For AMS media server channels (VALUE_CM_AMS_VOIP_CHLS), WebLM shows zero; use the Communication Manager `display capacity` SAT command for the real number. For IP Office, verify the licence feature code against your release; R12 estates that migrated from R11 sometimes see suffix changes like `_M` that break the counter.
Should I convert perpetual Avaya Aura to subscription during a true-up?
Not as part of the same negotiation. Perpetual Aura R6.3.118 Load 141, R7, R8 and R10 licences can be converted to subscription and carry a 20% expansion allowance on conversion, which is generous. But the conversion decision is a three-year platform decision. The true-up is a one-year reconciliation. Handle them as two conversations. The order matters: clean up the entitlement first, then decide on the platform.