A Cleaner Bill of Health By Victor Lopez Ask an MSP owner how much time they spend on billing each month, and the first answer may be, “A few hours.” But then start adding it up: creating and sending invoices, checking who’s paid, following up with those who haven’t and handling the administrative back-and-forth. A few hours can quickly become 10 or 20. Most owners treat that time as part of running the business. But if a technician spent 20 hours a month on billing, the MSP would know exactly what those hours cost. When the owner does the same work, it somehow gets treated as free. It’s not free. At $150 to $200 an hour, 20 hours represent $3,000 to $4,000 in capacity every month. That value won’t show up on an invoice, but it’s still being absorbed by the business. The bigger question is what the owner could be doing instead. The simplest question is often the most useful: What do you charge a client per hour for work outside the scope of an agreement? For many MSPs, the answer is somewhere between $150 and $200. Once an owner applies that same rate to billing work, the math becomes much harder to ignore. Start by tracking all the time spent each month on billing, invoicing, payment follow-up and related backoffice work. Don’t count only the time it takes to create an invoice. Include the repeated steps that happen afterward, such as checking payment status, sending reminders and responding to questions. Then multiply those hours by the out-of-scope client rate. Ten hours at $200 an hour is $2,000. Twenty hours is $4,000. Whether that amount feels significant will depend on the size of the MSP, but putting a number on the work gives owners a clearer view of what “just admin” is really costing them. Beyond the Dollar Amount And the calculation is only the starting point. The real cost isn’t just the value of those hours; it’s what those hours keep the owner from doing. If an MSP owner had 10 or 20 hours back each month, what could that time make possible? Those hours could go toward prospect conversations, local networking, operational improvements or the strategic project that keeps getting pushed aside. A few hours spent on marketing or at a local chamber of commerce event could help bring Your billing process is costing you more than you think 36 CHANNELVISION | FALL 2026
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