Sometimes you need to add an external contact to Office 365 billing. This might be an external bookkeeper or accountant, or in my case an umbrella company that manages billing for the sub-companies.
I’m writing this out because I had trouble finding and figuring out how to get this to work.
It’s actually quite easy once you know, and only requires two steps in two distincts areas of Office 365.
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Add The External User
The first step is to add the external contact as a user of the Office 365 domain. Go to Active users and add a new user.
Don’t assign them a license, just give them an email address that isn’t already in use. It doesn’t really matter what this email address is, as they will never receive email to it, but it makes sense to make it something obvious like “billing” or “bookkeeper” or the like.
When you get to Roles, click to give them Admin Center Access.
Expand the Show All By Category section, and scroll down to assign them as a Billing Admin
Save this new user.
Add A Secondary Email Address
Now go to the Billing Notifications section. Your new user should be listed. Click on the new user you created, then scroll down to the bottom and you’ll find a place to add an alternative email address.
Click Edit and add the external contact’s email address here, and save.
This unlicensed user will now receive billing notifications for this domain to that external email address.