Summary

  • AWS Marketplace gives a seller one hour to submit unreported usage after a usage-based SaaS agreement ends. The metering guide starts that hour at unsubscribe-pending; the pricing guide places License Deprovisioned - Manufacturer after it; the EventBridge guide says that license event starts it.
  • All three descriptions make late metering a money problem. AWS says records submitted after the final window are rejected. A seller needs an authoritative event sequence, while a buyer needs the final usage record and invoice rather than a cancellation screenshot.

The customer leaves. The meter keeps a stopwatch. AWS has published three different instructions for starting it.

In its SaaS metering guide, AWS says a seller using subscription pricing receives unsubscribe-pending when the buyer initiates an unsubscribe. The seller then has one hour to send all unreported usage before unsubscribe-success; records after the second notification are not honoured. For products with multiple concurrent agreements, that window belongs to the individual cancelled license, not every agreement for the product.

The pricing guide gives a different sequence. It says a purchase-agreement-ended event arrives, the seller has one hour to meter the remaining usage, and after this hour the seller receives License Deprovisioned - Manufacturer. At that point, the guide says, no more metering records can be sent. That makes the license event the closing bell.

The EventBridge integration guide makes the same named license event the opening bell. Its event table says License Deprovisioned - Manufacturer marks the start of a one-hour final reporting window. The dedicated section repeats that sellers have one hour after receiving the event to submit unreported usage through BatchMeterUsage. It says the API rejects usage after that window closes. The two guides assign the license event opposite positions around the same hour.

This is more than a documentation nicety. A seller that waits for the license event because it follows the EventBridge guide could be too late under the pricing guide. A seller that closes the ledger at the agreement-ended event could strand usage if a later window actually applies. The public pages do not establish the authoritative runtime order. They establish that AWS has given implementers incompatible event instructions.

The broader metering rules tighten the stakes. AWS allows records up to 24 hours old while the customer remains subscribed, but says an unsubscribed customer's records must be sent within one hour. A six-hour grace period exists for the end of a billing month; it is a separate calendar boundary, not a promise that a cancelled agreement can wait six hours. AWS bills from seller-submitted records, and reports in the buyer's billing console are not updated in real time. A cancellation confirmation therefore cannot settle the last bill by itself.

For sellers, the practical record is per agreement: subscription state, every received event and timestamp, the final usage hour, the BatchMeterUsage request and acceptance or rejection. For buyers, it is the cancellation timestamp, agreement identifier, reported usage and resulting invoice line. The missing fact is a dated AWS specification or observed API trace that fixes the order and cutoff for these events. Until AWS supplies one, the safest deadline is the earliest documented trigger, with successful API acceptance as the receipt.

This is a marketplace contract written partly in events. When the events disagree in the vendor's own manual, the disputed hour sits exactly where the money changes hands.

Official sources