Billing Solutions: Managed Service Providers

If you’re a managed service provider (MSP) then there’s every chance that you offer a wide range of services. This will result in the MSP billing guidelines which you have to follow becoming more complicated than for many other types of business. You may, for example, have to include items such as software and hardware licences, technicians’ hours worked and serial numbers. Putting together an MSP invoice which includes details such as these can be an extremely tedious and time-consuming process, which is why many MSPs utilise MSP billing software. The alternative to working with an MSP billing platform is to leave the task of drawing up invoices in the hands of your employees.

The risks of not using MSP billing software

If you opt for a manual billing process, involving employees having to pull together all of the elements which each invoice needs to include, then you run a huge risk. The risk is that human error will play a part in the process and the invoices will be put together with vital aspects missing. If this is the case you’ll have to play catch up and deal with incorrect bills, duplicated bills and queries from clients. Not only will this mean your employees are busy dealing with invoices when they could be doing other work, it will also make your business look unprofessional in the eyes of your clients.

 The advantages of an MSP billing platform

Making use of a cloud-based MSP billing platform which automates the recurring payments you have to invoice for offers a range of advantages which include the following:

• Speed – the process of putting an invoice together manually can take a long time, since it involves multiple steps like pulling together a full list of services provided and calculating how much any technician time will cost. MSP billing software will provide the following features to speed the process up:

• Auto-populating fields

• Templates

• Integration with other tools, such as professional service automation (PSA) solutions

• Professional – the use of automated templates means that MSP software results in bills and invoices which look much more professional. They can include your company logo, for example, as well as clearly defined services and billable items.

• Detailed – the automated nature of an MSP platform, and the way in which it integrates across your other platforms and tools, mean that important details will never be missed out or forgotten. Details such as the number of hours worked or licence payments which are due can sometimes be missed by employees putting together manual invoices, and this means you either don’t get paid enough or have to send two invoices to the client – something which looks deeply unprofessional.   

• Morale – the people who will be happiest to hear that you’re switching to MSP software from manual billing will be those employees who used to be tasked with putting invoices together manually. From the moment that the switch takes place, they will be able to concentrate on important, high value tasks rather than having to spend hours searching through documents and records every time an invoice needs to be prepared.

 GoCardless and recurring payments

Using GoCardless for recurring payments is another way of enhancing the efficiency of your billing processes. We can take recurring payments from your customers automatically on the date that they fall due, and we also handle one-off transactions – such as set-up fees and additional service costs – via Instant Bank Pay. The service we provide can be integrated with automated invoicing providers such as Xero, Quickbooks and Sage, providing a billing solution which runs through every part of your business.

We can help

If you’re interested in finding out more about the best billing solutions for MSPs, then get in touch with our financial experts. Discover how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments.