The Microsoft Dynamics 365 base-and-attach construct prices the first qualifying application at the full per-user rate and every subsequent application at a discounted attach rate. The Admodum read on the base selection, the attach economics and the renewal-time disposition.
Dynamics 365 is the Microsoft enterprise-application portfolio that covers CRM (Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Marketing) and ERP (Finance, Supply Chain, Commerce, HR, Project Operations, Business Central). The licensing construct is per-user per-application: each user is named to one or more applications and the user-to-application assignment is the basis of the entitlement.
The base-and-attach mechanism solves the multi-application user. Without it, a user running Sales Enterprise (the CRM seller view) and Customer Service Enterprise (the agent view) would pay full price on both. With it, the user pays full price on the highest-value application as the base and a discounted attach price on each subsequent application.
The wider editorial sits in the Microsoft pillar; the wider EA renewal-cycle context sits at Microsoft EA renewal cycle; the M365 plan-tier context sits at Microsoft 365 plans.
The qualifying applications for the base-and-attach construct are: Sales Enterprise, Sales Premium, Customer Service Enterprise, Customer Service Premium, Field Service, Project Operations, Marketing (where applicable in the new Customer Insights bundle), Finance, Supply Chain Management, Commerce, Human Resources, Business Central Essentials and Business Central Premium. Each is a discrete application with its own data plane, its own user surface and its own per-user list price.
The base SKU is typically the most expensive of the user's applications; the attach SKU sits at twenty US dollars per user per month (or, on the Business Central side, a similarly-proportioned discount). Customer Insights, Customer Voice and Power Apps Premium sit alongside Dynamics 365 with their own SKUs and are not strictly in the base-and-attach surface (they are separate per-user add-ons).
The wider per-user per-device construct sits at per-user versus per-device; the Dynamics 365 team-member subset sits at Dynamics 365 team member; the Power Platform context sits at Power Platform licensing.
The economics run user by user. A user assigned Sales Enterprise base ($95/user/month list) plus a Customer Service Enterprise attach ($20/user/month) pays $115/user/month, versus $190/user/month if both were at full base price. The attach saves $75/user/month, or roughly forty percent on the second application.
The breakeven question is: does the user actually exercise the attach application? A user assigned a Field Service attach who never logs an on-site work order is paying the attach price for no workflow value. The buyer-side discipline is to read the workload exercise rate per user per application against the assigned-base-and-attach map.
Sitting on top of the Dynamics 365 base-and-attach is the Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service overlay (see Copilot for Sales and Service). The overlay is priced at roughly $50/user/month (which includes M365 Copilot) and is assignable on top of any qualifying Dynamics 365 application.
The compound economics on a Sales Enterprise seller: $95 base + $50 Copilot for Sales overlay = $145 per user per month. On a seller-plus-agent user (Sales Enterprise base + Customer Service attach + Copilot for Sales + Copilot for Service): $95 + $20 + $50 + $50 = $215 per user per month, which is approximately seven thousand dollars more per user per year than the Sales-Enterprise-only baseline.
The wider Copilot economics context sits at Copilot seat economics; the wider Copilot adoption methodology sits at Copilot pilot methodology; the wider M365 plan-tier context sits at Microsoft 365 plans.
The renewal-time disposition reads against the per-user per-application exercise rate. The buyer-side discipline is: read every active Dynamics 365 user against the assigned applications, read the application-level usage telemetry (records created, records updated, records read, days-active per month, workload signal), classify each application as exercised or unexercised, right-tier each unexercised attach and step down or remove.
Typical patterns: a Sales-Enterprise-plus-Field-Service-attach population where only thirty percent of the population logs Field Service work orders; a Customer-Service-Enterprise-plus-Project-Operations-attach population where only twenty-five percent of the agents touch Project Operations; a Finance-plus-Supply-Chain user population where the exercise rate is closer to ninety percent on both because the workflows are tightly integrated.
The wider SAM and renewal-time disposition reading sits at SAM audit anatomy; the renewal-time scope-control discipline sits at SAM scope control; the settlement posture sits at SAM settlement position.
At renewal the buyer holds six artefacts on the Dynamics 365 estate: the per-user per-application assignment map (the base-plus-attach combination assigned to every active user), the per-application exercise rate (the trailing-twelve-month workload signal per user per application), the Copilot overlay map (the Copilot for Sales and Service population on top of the base-and-attach), the right-tiering arithmetic (the unexercised-attach population to step down), the team-member-vs-named-user reconciliation (see Dynamics 365 team member) and the renewal-quantum forecast.
The wider engagement sits at the Microsoft practice; the aggregated reading list sits at the Microsoft knowledge hub; the engagement-models read sits at Fixed Fee, Contingency and Annual Retainer; the renewal moment routes to the Renewal Programme; engagement opens at contact.
The AI overlay that sits on top of the Dynamics 365 base.
The lightweight user subset that complements the full base-and-attach.
The application platform that extends Dynamics 365 workloads.
A senior Admodum Microsoft advisor will read your per-user per-application assignment map, the application-level exercise rate and the Copilot overlay against the base-and-attach economics on a private call. Renewal moments route to the Renewal Programme.