Billing is an important component for any service, and managed IT services are no different.
You don’t want surprises when it comes to cost and billing.
More importantly, you don’t want hiccups or miscommunication with the billing process to hinder your view of an IT solution you know will empower your business.
Transparency is important to us at The KR Group. When you clearly understand what is going on, it will only enhance your experience and our relationship.
To pull back the curtain on the billing process, we need to talk about four factors:
- The managed IT services billing process
- Understanding different types of invoices
- Updating billing to reflect user changes
- Missed payments for managed IT services
We’ve put together all of this information to prepare you for that first invoice you’ll receive after signing up for our managed IT services.
The managed IT services billing process
You’ll receive an invoice for your managed IT services agreement each month.
At The KR Group, we send out these invoices on the 15th of each month for the next month, and the bill is due on the 30th for the next month
This monthly, per-user fee covers our antivirus, anti-spam, DNS filtration, firewall, and remote monitoring solutions.
In addition to those services, many of our managed IT services customers choose to have us manage their back-up solution and Office 365 subscriptions. Each of these appears on a separate invoice.
You’ll receive these invoices before the monthly subscription invoice, generally between the 5th and 15th of each month.
How to determine what the invoice is for
As we mentioned above, your invoices will be for different services or products.
1. Managed service invoices
Your monthly managed services invoices will be labeled as “Agreement Hybrid IT,” “Agreement Remote Only IT,”, or “Agreement Inclusive IT.” Your label will represent the level of coverage (co-managed, remote, or traditional) that your contract is for.
They’ll also list your full-time and part-time users. This allows you to quickly review that you don’t need to make any changes to user counts.
2. Recurring charges invoices
If you have The KR Group managing your back-up solution, Office 365, or any other subscription, you’ll receive an invoice for this as well.
These invoices are separate from service invoices, and they detail what subscriptions they’re for and the quantity.
3. Service invoices
As a managed IT services customer, your contract covers most services, and you generally won’t receive a service invoice.
The most common exception is to add new users to your company. In this scenario, you’ll receive an invoice that shows what work was performed, the number of hours it took, the billable rate, and the total cost for the service performed.
We’ll also attach additional information that details how the engineer utilized the time they performed the service.
Updating billing to reflect user count changes
You’ll have staff changes at some point, and your managed IT services contract will need to reflect that.
Most customers promptly let the managed IT services department know about user changes.
To have billing reflect changes, you should also include billing (accounting@krgroup.com) on any communications about adjusting your user count.
However, if you forget to let accounting know about the changes, the managed services team will pass along the information.
Missed payments for managed IT services
As of right now, our billing process requires you to submit payment to us each month or sign up for ACH or wire payments.
If you miss the payment, you’ll receive communication about collections follow-up and the process of being placed on credit hold.
If your account is placed on credit hold, you can’t make any future purchases, but your services (anti-spam, antivirus, DNS filtration, etc.) aren’t impacted.
However, if you’ve been on credit hold for 30 days and still haven’t submitted payment, you are placed on service hold. You are no longer able to make purchases or request IT support, and your applications (antivirus, anti-spam, DNS filtration, etc.) are shut off.
You’ll need to pay any outstanding fees and work with the engineer and billing team to be taken off of credit or service hold.
What to remember about managed IT services billing
Understanding the billing side of managed IT services is as important as the service aspect.
You’ve researched what to expect from a managed IT service provider in terms of service. When it comes to billing, you should expect just as much transparency.
As The KR Group’s managed IT services customer, you’ll receive a monthly invoice for services as well as an additional invoice for any subscriptions we manage for you.
There are multiple types of invoices you may receive as a managed IT services customer. However, each one will detail what it is for and how the engineer spent their time working on your request.
When it comes to paying for managed services, your recurring service fee is due by the 30th of each month.
Are you ready to talk about designing a managed IT services contract for your business? When you are, schedule a free appointment with one of our team members.
