Microsoft Partner Incentive Programs: The Complete FY27 Guide

FY27 runs July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027, and Microsoft's published Incentives Policy Guide covers 69 programs across 9 program groups — Frontier Accelerate for Azure (Partner Nominated), Frontier Accelerate for Security, Frontier Accelerate for AI-Ready Productivity, CSP Transaction-Based, Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace, Frontier Accelerate for Business Processes, Frontier Accelerate for Copilot, Business Applications CSP, and Hosting & SPLA. This guide maps what each group actually pays, what it requires, and how to claim it — built from the FY27 guide itself, not carried forward from an earlier edition.

The biggest gap we found rewriting this page: several programs that used to anchor a partner's incentive math simply are not in the FY27 catalog — including the flat Azure-consumption attribution credit many partners still budget around. Others changed shape entirely, like the Sentinel Accelerator's move from a consumption-ingestion model to a two-stage nomination model. This guide reflects only what's published now, and says so plainly where the source is silent or contradicts itself.

The Three Attribution Methods: PAL, DPOR, and CPOR

Before FY27, partners tracked three methods for claiming credit on customer outcomes — PAL, DPOR, and CPOR. Here's what the FY27 Incentives Policy Guide actually says about each one.

What FY27 does publish on attribution is narrower than what this page used to describe: CPOR association is required within 120 days of the transactional date on the BizApps Presales/OSA program. That's a claim deadline, not a rate or a points multiplier — we could not find an "OSU/OSA" definition or a designation-points claim anywhere else in the FY27 collateral.

For a deeper walkthrough of how PAL, DPOR, and CPOR work in practice, see our PAL vs. DPOR vs. CPOR guide.

What FY27 Actually Publishes

The FY27 Incentives Policy Guide (edition dated 2026-08-28) publishes 69 programs across 9 program groups. Here is the whole set, with the program count each group carries — the nine counts add to 69:

The ninth group is easy to miss, and it is the third largest: Frontier Accelerate for AI-Ready Productivity, 7 programs. It covers the Modern Work engagements that are not Copilot engagements — deployment accelerators for M365 E3/E5, for Windows 365 and for Business Premium via CSP, Envisioning & PoC for ME3 and for Cloud Endpoints, and two conversion bonuses. If you deliver Modern Work work and could not find yourself under "Copilot", this is the group you belong to. We name it here rather than publish its payouts, because this guide's money detail covers four groups.

Partner Earned Credit (PEC) is not one of them. We checked all 69 program files plus the program index and program map — 71 authority files, zero hits for PEC, for "Partner Earned Credit", or for a percentage-of-consumption attribution credit under any name. Earlier editions of this page carried a percentage-of-consumption figure; we have removed it, because nothing in this year's guide supports it. If you budget against PEC, confirm the current terms with your Microsoft account team rather than any published rate table — including ours.

The rest of this guide walks through what the four groups marked "Yes" above actually pay — Azure, CSP, Copilot and Security. The other five are named so the set of nine stays whole; we are not publishing figures for them here.

Frontier Accelerate for Azure (Partner Nominated) — 28 Programs

Azure's incentive family is published in FY27 as Frontier Accelerate for Azure (Partner Nominated), 28 programs covering pre-sales assessments and post-sales migration/modernization delivery. Payouts scale by engagement size, with separate rates for Market A (US, UK, Germany, etc.), Market B, and Market C.

CSP Incentives — The Published FY27 Rate Tables

CSP rates are published per partner type, and the two partner types are separate program rows in the catalog. The table below is the direct-bill rate table, lever by lever: all six published M365 direct-bill levers and all five published Azure direct-bill levers. Each row carries the partner type it was published under — do not read a direct-bill rate as an indirect-reseller rate, because three of them differ.

Earning type: the M365 and Azure CSP rows above pay 60% rebate / 40% co-op on the direct-bill rows and 60% indirect rebate / 40% co-op on the indirect-reseller rows. Dragon Copilot CSP is a real exception sitting in the same "CSP Transaction-Based" group: it pays 100% rebate (direct bill) or 100% indirect rebate (indirect reseller), not 60/40. Dynamics 365 CSP is not in this group and not in this table — it sits in the separate Business Applications CSP group, so don't read these rates onto a D365 deal.

Direct-bill threshold: a trailing 12-month revenue threshold applies. Published to enrolled partners.

The Oct–Nov 2025 transition months were paid under the prior year's eligibility and rates for at least one program (BizApps Presales/OSA). We found no FY27 program file stating a blanket retroactive rule across CSP as a whole, so we don't repeat that claim here.

Copilot Incentives

The Frontier Accelerate for Copilot group holds three programs. Two of them publish full Market A tier ladders, and the two ladders do not share the same seat thresholds — so each is printed here against its own published eligibility text, tier by tier. Read the ladder for the engagement you are actually nominating; the seat count that qualifies you for one does not qualify you for the other.

Envisioning & PoC (MW-02) — 4 published tiers

M365 Copilot Deployment Accelerator (MW-01) — 5 published tiers

Security Incentives

Envisioning Workshops (SEC-01) — a seat-tier ladder, not a flat fee. Its criterion is its own: ME3/ME5 seats, not total seats and not Copilot seats.

Sentinel Accelerator (SEC-05) — FY27 replaced the prior GB/day ingestion model entirely with a two-stage, nomination-based model. Its bands are not seat counts: each band is a published project-size range in dollars. Stage 1 is guaranteed on POE approval. Stage 2 is binary — it pays only if annualized Sentinel ACR reaches the floor of the band you nominated; overshoot is capped at the nominated band and undershoot pays nothing. Active Threat Protection Specialization is required.

Stage 1 and Stage 2 are published separately; the "Both stages" column is the two published figures added together, shown because Stage 2 is not guaranteed. Budget Stage 1 and treat Stage 2 as contingent.

Defender for Cloud Accelerator (SEC-06) — the same two-stage shape as the Sentinel Accelerator, and the same published project-size band labels from XXS to L, but not the same money. Do not read the Sentinel figures above onto a Defender for Cloud nomination: SEC-06 publishes its own Market A amounts, and at S, M and L they are lower. Its published ladder is:

Same reading rule as Sentinel: Stage 1 is guaranteed on POE approval, Stage 2 is binary against the nominated band, and the "Both stages" column is the two published figures added together. Two differences from Sentinel worth pricing on: at S, M and L this program publishes half of Sentinel's Stage 1, so an L nomination pays materially less combined here than the same band under Sentinel; and at S, M and L its published Stage 2 equals its Stage 1 rather than half of it, which is unlike every other two-stage ladder in the FY27 catalog. We print the program file as published rather than smooth it.

Credential. An active Cloud Security Specialization is required — that is the sole credential published for this program, and it is required for the full term with no date gate. It is a different specialization from the Threat Protection one the Sentinel Accelerator requires, so holding one does not qualify you for the other.

ECIF — Customer Investment Funds

ECIF (End Customer Investment Funds) does not appear as a program in the FY27 Incentives Policy Guide's published catalog — it isn't in a rate table because it isn't rate-based. ECIF is agreed deal by deal with the customer's Microsoft account team, which is also why we can't publish a dollar figure for it here.

The practical chain partners describe is still the same shape: earn an Advanced Specialization, build the account-team relationship, develop co-sell pipeline, and nominate qualifying deals. Whether and how much ECIF funds is a field-driven decision, not a published rate.

For the deeper mechanics of how partners typically work this chain, see our ECIF funding guide.

The Advanced Specialization Flywheel

This is the shape most partners still describe, even without a published ECIF rate: Advanced Specializations don't just unlock one program — they build a relationship that compounds.

Here's how it works: You earn an Advanced Specialization through PIE's ISSI Evidence module. That qualification puts you on Microsoft's radar — field teams see your specialization and begin engaging you on customer opportunities. You build co-sell pipeline with net-new cloud deals. Your account team may approve customer investment funding for qualifying deals. The resulting deployment generates Azure consumption and delivery history that strengthens your account-team relationship and your case for the next nomination. The cycle compounds — more pipeline, more delivery, more consumption, more trust.

This chain is why every PIE module exists. ISSI Evidence builds audit-ready AdvSpec qualification. Incentive Claims tracks the CSP and CPOR claim deadlines that keep you compliant. SOW Analyzer identifies which deals qualify for which FY27 program. Each module maps to a link in this chain.

What Changed This Year

Built only from the collateral's own provenance notes — not a full edition-to-edition delta, just what the FY27 program files themselves say changed:

Program Stacking — What's Actually Published

The FY27 catalog does not publish a global compatibility matrix across all program pairs. What it does publish are narrow, same-family stacking links on individual program rows — for example, Core Migrate & Modernize Post-Sales (AZ-02) is documented as stacking with its own Pre-Sales counterpart (AZ-01). Before assuming two incentives stack on the same deal, check the specific program's own stacking field rather than apply a general rule.

Incentive Calculator — Estimate Your Annual Opportunity

This panel scopes four FY27 levers — M365 CSP Core, M365 CSP Growth Accelerator, Azure CSP Consumption, and Azure post-sales engagements × your chosen tier value. Each carries a rate and a cap that are published to enrolled partners, so we don't print them here and this panel doesn't apply them. Book a free consultation for a detailed analysis of your specific situation.

Visual: Program Earning Ranges

Read the label before you budget. Two of the eight are ranges across different programs, not one program's ladder. "Frontier Accelerate (Azure)" spans all 28 programs in that group — its floor is the Databases Conversion Bonus for SMB (AZ-34, XXS band) and its ceiling is Databases (AZ-25, Large band); no Azure program pays across that whole span, and Azure Virtual Desktop (AZ-08), for instance, has a narrower range of its own. "Azure CSP Levers" spans five levers whose caps differ — consumption and reservation are consolidated, while the top belongs to the Azure CSP Accelerator. Copilot Deployment (MW-01), Copilot Envisioning (MW-02) and Security Envisioning (SEC-01) each publish their own ladder. Take the top of either range only against the specific program or lever that publishes it.

Frequently Asked Questions

This guide is updated as Microsoft's Incentives Policy Guide changes. Updated September 2026, built from the Microsoft Commercial Partner Incentives Policy Guide, FY27 edition dated 2026-08-28. This is independent analysis and does not reproduce Microsoft confidential information. For official program terms, consult your Microsoft Partner Center account.