We’ve all been frustrated when we discover the fine print of a contract isn’t what we thought it was.
Whether you were misled or didn’t read the contract as well as you wished you’d had, you’re still upset about the situation.
At The KR Group, we want to do our part to help you understand what is and isn’t included in our managed IT services contract.
We want you to understand what you’re signing up for because it makes our relationship better and saves both of us time in the long run.
However, we still get the question of what managed IT service providers (MSPs) don’t cover in a contract. Here are a few examples:
- Net new users
- Significant IT projects
- Security breaches
- Additional hardware
Remember that each agreement is unique and customized to the client’s specific needs. These are general guidelines, but it never hurts to ask your provider its stance on the following topics.
Adding Net New Users
One of the benefits of managed IT services is the contract’s price correlates with the number of users in your environment.
However, when you need to change that number, your MSP has to go through the offboarding or onboarding process. As a result, the initial cost is outside the scope of your contract for adding or removing users.
For leaving employees, they have to remove permissions, security licensing, and set up email forwarding. On the other hand, new employees need new devices, accounts, and access; this requires IT work.
Keep in mind that this refers to each user. So even if someone leaves your organization and you hire someone quickly to replace them, your MSP will bill you for offboarding and onboarding.
However, after the initial setup or removal, your monthly rate will reflect your updated user count.
Significant IT Projects
With how much IT can evolve in a short period of type, there’s a decent chance you’ll want to upgrade and solution or implement a new one during the course of your contract. Your MSP can help you with this, but the cost might not be included in your contractual rate.
For example, if you upgrade from an on-premises phone system to a cloud-hosted one, it will warrant enough work to fall outside of the normal scope of services.
But regularly scheduled updates, like a new version of an antivirus solution, would likely be included in your agreement.
There are non-monetary benefits to working with your MSP for these extra projects, and as a managed services customer, your IT services hourly rate is lower than non-MSP clients.
As a bonus, since they already know the ins and outs of your IT environment, they’ll be able to complete the job faster than if you were to engage a different resource.
Once your MSP finishes the original configuration work, you can work with your MSP to encompass the addition into your contract.
Most upgrades are incorporated into your monthly fee. This includes upgrades to your existing security solutions and other options.
However, a significant change to your IT environment could fall outside of your agreement with your MSP
Each MSP has different guidelines on what constitutes a “significant upgrade,” and you should talk through this when you work on the initial wording of your contract.
MSPs Aren’t Responsible for Security Breaches
When initiating your contract, your MSP will walk you through their security solutions package. With a next-generation firewall, antivirus, anti-spam, DNS filter, remote monitoring and maintenance (RMM) platform, multi-factor authentication, Microsoft, and other technology, you’ll have a robust defense against the latest threats.
Your MSP can’t force you to use their recommended security policies and solutions; however, they’ll emphasize how crucial they are for keeping threats out of your IT environment.
In fact, if you take all the security recommendations — the various solutions, password complexity, user awareness training, etc. – and you still get breached, your MSP’s contract will cover the incident response to get you back up and running.
However, if you don’t adopt your MSP’s security suite, you’ll pay for time it takes your MSP to address the security issue and return your IT environment for normal – and most IT companies charge a premium rate for security response.
Either way, whether you use all the security solutions or not, your MSP is not liable for lost productivity or downtime associated with a security breach.
Additional Hardware
Your managed IT services contract includes the lease of a few pieces of equipment. Most frequently these include a firewall, switch, and two wireless access points.
This fits the needs of most MSP customers, but of course, there are exceptions.
For example, if you’re a multi-site organization, you’ll need to double that device footprint.
If you need another set of networking hardware or an additional access point or switch, you’ll need to purchase or lease these devices from your MSP. This will affect the price of your contract since it’s considered deviations from the contract.
The good news is aside from the costs of the hardware, the support and maintenance of these devices is covered by your contract.
Understanding Your Managed IT Services Contract
Your contract is a vital document that lays out all of the expectations for managed IT services.
It describes what level of IT support you will receive, how much you’ll pay, and what solutions you’ll get. However, it doesn’t cover every IT services.
As discussed in this article, some of the common costs outside of your contract include net new users, significant IT projects, security breaches, and additional hardware.
Being outside the scope contract means you’ll have a separate invoice for any of these services, but your MSP is still happy to help you with the. Plus, working with your MSP for these tasks is faster and more cost-effective than finding another IT consultant to work with.
If you have questions or concerns about your future contract, let your MSP know so they can review it with you and spend extra time on questions you might have.
You can also review our free guide that goes over the most significant details of a managed IT services agreement.
