IT Support: $$ fee's charged
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Client has the following:
10x pc's
1x server
3x network printers
1x fax machineTask:
Provide general IT support.Time:
Must be available to take calls 5am - 4pm: M-F and 6am - 2pm: 2x Saturdays per month.Question: what would you charge per month?
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@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
Client has the following:
10x pc's
1x server
3x network printers
1x fax machineTask:
Provide general IT support.Time:
Must be available to take calls 5am - 4pm: M-F and 6am - 2pm: 2x Saturdays per month.Question: what would you charge per month?
I don't charge per month. It is an adversarial relationship, always.
MSP style billing would be ~ $125 for the server and ~ $45 per computer with an added charge or increased fee due to Saturday and early AM requirements.
So $575 at a minimum for that model.
Now break that back into hourly based on your billable rate. For @Bundy-Associates that is less than 4 hours per month when we are being generous.
And I can guarantee that updating and rebooting the server will eat an hour per month.
That only leaves 3.5 hours for user issues.
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@jaredbusch
Thanks for the breakdown.
What would your bill look like if you had to put in an hour of work on Monday from 5 - 6 am? -
@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@jaredbusch
Thanks for the breakdown.
What would your bill look like if you had to put in an hour of work on Monday from 5 - 6 am?Double. That is outside my desired daily schedule.
@Bundy-Associates never charges extra for off hours or weekend work that is routine and pre planned, but not an every day schedule.
I have no problem taking an emergency support call at 5am from a long term client that is billed 10+ hours a week anyway.
Part of our service. But on the flip side, not a single client gets to dictate a schedule to us. We work when we are available. Clients can negotiate things, and meetings and such are always scheduled.
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Is there a minimum time increment that is billed?
Is there a minimum that is billed per month? Or are there some months when there is zero billing (I realize this is highly unlikely)
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@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
Is there a minimum time increment that is billed?
15 minutes.
Is there a minimum that is billed per month?
No
Or are there some months when there is zero billing (I realize this is highly unlikely)
More like impossible because every single client is billed weekly for us to review automated status emails and all of them have at least one server which is always updated and rebooted monthly.
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@jaredbusch said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
More like impossible because every single client is billed weekly for us to review automated status emails
What is generating these status emails, what are the contents & how many hours billed?
and all of them have at least one server which is always updated and rebooted monthly.
This server operation would generate a billable hour, approx 575/4 = ~$150?
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@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@jaredbusch said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
More like impossible because every single client is billed weekly for us to review automated status emails
What is generating these status emails, what are the contents & how many hours billed?
Pretty much anything. Backups, NAS reports, minor outage notice, etc. Pretty much anything that should be sending alerts does. Said alerts are filtered into various sub folder by rules. Rarely do i see one hit my inbox (well not my inbox, but one I watch) to be checked immediately. But I review the subfolders weekly.
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@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
and all of them have at least one server which is always updated and rebooted monthly.
This server operation would generate a billable hour, approx 575/4 = ~$150?
More or less. It is pretty rare for a client to have only a single hypervisor running a single VM. So patching and rebooting everything is pretty much always an hour or more depending on numbers.
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@jaredbusch
For a smaller size client, what is the average monthly that is billed?
At a minimum, you review status emails, patch & reboot servers & desktops.What is your preferred MSP software?
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@JaredBusch What is your preferred MSP software?
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@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@JaredBusch What is your preferred MSP software?
We are not an MSP. We don't have software that we prefer.
We use various tools for various tasks.
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@jaredbusch said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@JaredBusch What is your preferred MSP software?
We are not an MSP. We don't have software that we prefer.
We use various tools for various tasks.
Sorry, poor wording on my part.
I meant to ask what you use for billing & tracking time spent on billable action. -
@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@jaredbusch said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@JaredBusch What is your preferred MSP software?
We are not an MSP. We don't have software that we prefer.
We use various tools for various tasks.
Sorry, poor wording on my part.
I meant to ask what you use for billing & tracking time spent on billable action.Knowing JB, he wrote it himself
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@dashrender said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@jaredbusch said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@fateknollogee said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
@JaredBusch What is your preferred MSP software?
We are not an MSP. We don't have software that we prefer.
We use various tools for various tasks.
Sorry, poor wording on my part.
I meant to ask what you use for billing & tracking time spent on billable action.Knowing JB, he wrote it himself
Half right.
We use ManageEngine ServiceDesk for ticketing and then I use a report out of there to dump to CSV that goes to the accountants.
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If you do the per device or per user pricing model, you get creamed on the small shops. There are a bunch of variables that affect the cost. For instance, do the users run all the tickets through the office manager, or can anyone contact you?
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For my managed service customers, I have a flat monthly fee. It works for me because I have predictable income and can staff properly. It works for them because they have predictable IT costs.
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It also encourages me to be proactive, which is good for them. If you bill hourly, it would be easy to argue that it's in your interest to do things manually, etc.
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@mike-davis said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
If you do the per device or per user pricing model, you get creamed on the small shops. There are a bunch of variables that affect the cost. For instance, do the users run all the tickets through the office manager, or can anyone contact you?
Yeah, tiny shops are the worst for set pricing. There is a base cost that nearly all companies incur that doesn't grow, or barely grows, as companies get bigger.
For example, the amount of time per person to support a one person office and a one hundred person office are normally totally different.
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@mike-davis said in IT Support: $ fee's charged:
It also encourages me to be proactive, which is good for them. If you bill hourly, it would be easy to argue that it's in your interest to do things manually, etc.
But on the other hand, encourages them not to invest because the cost of fixing things that breaks falls to you, not to them.
