New MSP setup

[mattd2]

First off, I have no experience using this type of software, so forgive me for my ignorance. I just need to setup up recurring charges for companies. We don't bill anything by hour and time tracking is not required. I just need to bill by unit (or per unit maintained). I would like to look at a Customer, and see how many units they have and add units as they grow. The units are all the same price for every customer. What is the best way to set this up?

[Support Team]

Hi mattd2,

Basically, you can create charges in RangerMSP without using contracts at all by using the "System Global Contract". What you can do is create a special Item in RangerMSP, which will be unit-based (it can be a Product/Parts item), and set it with its fixed price (btw, you can set custom-pricing for items per customer if you do need this occasionally). Then you should create a charge for each customer, select the item and set the amount (number of units). This will create the charge with the relevant total price.

At the end of the month, you should bill your customer for this charge, and copy each charge to the next "date range". In the charges window, you can filter the charges to display only the relevant ones (by item, dates, customers, etc.), right-click each charge and copy it. At this point you can also update the amount of units if needed. This way you will make sure you create the recurring charges for all of the charges.

Notes:

1. In case the units represent equipment, you may consider managing the units as Assets in RangerMSP. You can then easily see how many units each customer has by viewing the account's assets tab.

2. If you wish to track the profitability of your service agreements, the best way to do this is using block contracts. Although you are not managing a real contract at the moment, this tool may be quite helpful. You can create a block-of-money contract, and set the block as the total amount you charge. When you perform actual work for this customer, you can add charges on this contract. These charges will be automatically set as "not billable", so they will be be actually billed to the customer, they will just help you see whether the amount of work actually performed is profitable for you when working with this type of service agreement. Just something to consider.

You can also find some more information on working with Charge and Contracts in RangerMSP in the Introduction to Billing in RangerMSP.

HTH

Doron