Seats and exclusions

What a seat is

A seat is a Microsoft account with at least one effectively licensed service among Exchange, SharePoint or Teams.

That is the only condition. Whether the account is enabled or a guest account makes no difference; all that matters is whether an effective licence for one of those three services is present. Accounts without such a licence cost nothing — a room mailbox, a service account or a pure guest account does not count.

One account, one seat

A person's mailbox, online archive and OneDrive are one seat, not three. The account is counted, not the number of its data sources. So backing up both mailbox and OneDrive for a person is paid for once.

Group mailboxes, teams, SharePoint lists and Planner plans belong to no single account and consume no seat.

Two Microsoft organisations

If an account holds two Microsoft organisations, each is counted separately and the results are added. A person with a licensed account in both organisations counts twice — they are two accounts.

Above the seat count

If more billable accounts are found than seats ordered, the surplus units are not backed up. They appear in the breakdown of unprotected units with the reason Above the seat count, unlicensed.

Which units this affects depends on the order of discovery and is therefore not predictable. Check the number before you add new people.

Exclusions

An exclusion removes an account from the backup. It then no longer counts as a seat and appears with the reason Excluded by the customer, costs no seat.

It may be set by whoever manages the backup. The already backed-up content of that account is retained and remains restorable; the exclusion only ends future runs.

An exclusion can be withdrawn at any time. The next run then picks up where the last one left off.

For managing the booked quantity see Licences.