Contract setup

[brills]

Hello,

We have a tiered MSP offering.

We have a new client signing up on a tier that includes:

24x7 server monitoring
antivirus software
spyware software
patch management
firewall monitoring
backup monitoring
daily temp file removal
SMART error detection

Plus 2-hours or remote support included each month.

What's the best way to set this Contract up inCommitCRM?

Do I setup a Global Contract for the included services, then setup a Block of Time Contract for tracking the 2-hours each month?

If I have an issue that takes 2.5 hours, how do I get the .5 billed?

On another note, using CommitCRM what's the best way to ensure the client gets billed each month?

Thank you in advance,
Brian Williams

[Support Team]

Re: Contract setup

Hi Brian,

if you charge the services in advance, you can use a block of money contract for the MSP services contract. This way you can track the charges entered against this contract (they will be automatically set as "not billable" for this contract), and see if this contract is profitable for you (see how much time and money you actually spend on this contract).

As for the additional 2 hours, I believe using a block of time is the best way to go about it. Once they reach the two hours limit, you can add a regular charge for this contract up to the limit, which will create a "not billable" charge for this pre-paid time, and then add additional charges for the extra time. You can then set eh extra time as billable and bill the customer for this time separately at the end of the month. This way you can also use a special rate for the extra time if you wish.

Billing the contracts is done separately, and can be done directly via QuickBooks. You can track this with Contract reports, by generating a Contract Reports by Expiration, and listing all the contracts that should be renewed.

Another option is adding a charge for each contract directly on the account, using the account's system global contract (to avoid the charge affecting the contract you shouldn't add it on the contract). This can help you track all open charges for new contracts via the QuickBooks Invoice Creation Wizard, which lists all open balances, so you will not miss any unbilled charges.

I hope this helps.

Ethan

[FunctionOne]

Re: Contract setup

The problem I noticed with using the contracts based on hours is that when I went to bill for that contract all of the work that had been done as part of the included hours - nonbillable work - wasn't itemized on the invoice - it simply came up as the contract item and cost.

Is there a way to make all charges (non-billable included) for a Block of Hours Contract appear itemized on the invoice?

[Support Team]

Re: Contract setup

The assumption is that you already billed your customer for the Block of Time and that the need to send the customer another invoice is only for the extra hours (i.e. not covered by the block). This is why only the Billable Charges are transferred to the invoice.

In order to provide your customers with detailed usage report of their Block of Time (or any other Contract) you may use one of the many reports available in RangerMSP that display Contracts usage by employees, by service ticket or chronological by date. In these reports you can tell the report to include or not to include the not-billable charges in the report totals.

That said, we already have a feature request logged to include non-billable charges with the QB invoice. We still try to figure out what would be the best way to implement this as we don't want to set these Charges totals to zero (so they will not affect the invoice total), this is because we want to keep the ability to analyze profitability of your Block contracts and zeroing the Charges will conflict with this.

HTH

Doron

[FunctionOne]

Re: Contract setup

We currently track non-billable charges on our customers invoices - set to a $0 dollar value. This is important in the world of Managed Services as a verbose invoice helps to support your perceived value. When a new CFO comes in the first thing they're going to look at are all the outstanding monthly invoices. Just having three line items with a large figure is going to make them want to dig further or look at cuts.

Having a verbose invoice helps to psychologically support the value of the total on that invoice. And clients like to see that you're working for them - and we want them to see the work we don't bill as well so they'll appreciate the value even more.

Having separate reports is nice - but it's even more powerful when the information is in the invoice itself.

[Support Team]

Re: Contract setup

Totally agree, and as said above, we are planning on providing a solution for this within the RangerMSP-QuickBooks Link invoice creation process. We definitely see how this helps in order to show the customer and accountants all of the work for this ticket/client. For the meantime, as you discussed, you should attach one of the many reports available or, as you already do, change the Charge to Billable and zero its amount.

Thanks for your additional feedback on this.

Sherry