How MSPs bill, price, and get paid

Twelve guides on the money side of running a managed service provider. Written for owners and service managers, not for search engines, which is why every one of them contains the specific query, field or calculation rather than the general advice.

Why this exists

Published billing research puts the revenue a typical MSP delivers and never invoices at 5 to 15%. We built Kyslan to find it automatically and write the change order that bills it, and along the way we had to learn exactly where it hides in each PSA. These guides are that work, written down.

Every guide

Start here Where MSP revenue leaks, ranked by size

The eleven places managed service providers lose money, largest first, with the query that finds each one in your PSA.

Billing MSP billing models, and what each one loses

Per user, per device, tiered, flat fee, prepaid blocks and time and materials. What each is good at, and the specific revenue each one leaks.

Metrics The MSP financial metrics that matter

Gross margin, effective hourly rate, revenue per seat, utilisation and eight more. How to calculate each, and which ones lie.

Pricing How to price a managed services contract

A cost-up method with a full worked example: true cost to serve, margin target, exceptions, and a floor under the whole book.

Margin MSP gross margin, and how to fix a thin one

What belongs in an MSP cost of goods sold, why blended margin hides everything, and the seven fixes ranked by how fast they work.

Checklist The 14 point billing audit checklist

Fourteen checks that find work you delivered and never invoiced, in the order to run them, with what each finding needs to contain.

Process Ticket to invoice reconciliation, step by step

The four gates that prove every delivered hour either reached an invoice or was written off on purpose, and who owns each one.

Price rises Raising prices without losing clients

When to raise, how much, how to sequence the conversations, the letter structure that works, and what to do about pushback.

ConnectWise ConnectWise agreements: where billing leaks

How agreements, additions and time entries fit together, the six leaks, and the fields that mislead. Written from the live API.

HaloPSA HaloPSA contracts: where the money actually lives

The recurring money is not on the contract record. Where it really sits, the disabled invoice trap, and the five leaks to check.

Autotask Autotask contracts: where billing leaks

Contract services, blocks and exclusion sets, the six places money escapes, and how to check each one read-only.

Reference MSP billing and finance glossary

Forty one terms defined plainly: agreements, additions, blocks, gross margin, effective hourly rate, seat drift and the rest.

Reading order

If you are working through this properly rather than looking something up:

Start with where the money goes to know what you are looking for.
Run the fourteen checks against your own PSA, using the ConnectWise, HaloPSA or Autotask notes for the platform you run.
Turn the one-off audit into a monthly process.
Only then look at pricing and price rises, because asking for more while giving work away is the wrong order.

See your own number, then send the invoice for it

Kyslan reads 90 days of your tickets, time entries and contracts, finds the work you delivered and never billed, then writes the change order that puts it back on the invoice. Read only, nothing installed, first report free.

Claim it back

Free · read-only key · no card · HaloPSA, ConnectWise Manage, Autotask PSA or a CSV export