The MSP billing
specialist
MSP billing is unlike any other billing problem. The data comes from multiple tiers and systems, every customer has its own pricing structure, and the margin between cost and revenue is easy to lose. CloudBilling has spent years inside MSP billing operations. We know exactly where it goes wrong, and how to fix it.
You’re growing, the pipeline is healthy, and the pressure is constant
New customers are coming in, existing customers are expanding their cloud footprint, and the portfolio of services you offer keeps growing. Your team is delivering, your relationships are strong, and the business is moving in the right direction. But running an MSP means managing a mix of projects, resell, and recurring services, each with their own margin pressure and their own operational demands.
MSP margins are thin, and organic growth is slow. The business model works when everything runs efficiently, but the back-office has historically been the part that gets the least attention. MSPs focus on customers and technology, and the processes supporting billing, invoicing, and revenue tracking get built around whatever is available, not around what actually works. The commercial side of the business grows. The processes behind it don’t always keep up. And somewhere in that gap, grip starts to slip.
Billing is where that grip slips first
You source from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and a growing list of distributors, each with its own file format, pricing logic and discounts. Every customer adds a contract, a managed service fee and exceptions of their own. Every month, all of it has to land on one accurate invoice.
- A line item slips through, and revenue leaks.
- Recurring services start after the project is delivered, and the months in between go unbilled.
- Licences follow joiners and leavers, while the invoice follows last month’s list.
- Invoices go out late, and margins get thinner as you grow.
The invoice is a mirror
What goes wrong on an invoice starts long before billing. The invoice reflects everything that happens ahead of it: who sold what, how it was ordered and delivered, and which system holds which part of the story.
- People. Sales, sales admin, operations, service management, tech teams and finance each own a piece of the data.
- Processes. Ordering, purchasing, delivering, billing and reconciling hand work to each other, often by hand.
- Systems. CRM, PSA, CMDB, monitoring, supplier portals and the ledger each keep their own version.
It all comes together in the triangle of truth. What the customer uses, what the contract says and what the invoice charges have to match at 100%, on every line, every month.
From billing chaos to full control
Most MSPs don’t come to CloudBilling looking for software. They come because invoicing takes days every month, because a customer called with a question no one could answer, or because there’s a nagging suspicion that revenue is leaking somewhere. We know that situation well. CloudBilling has worked with MSPs long enough to understand not just where billing breaks down, but what it costs: in time, in margin, in the confidence that what goes out the door is actually correct.
Our job is to turn that around. So that billing becomes a process you can rely on, margins become visible and recoverable, and growth stops being something your back-office has to catch up with.
The impact on an MSP billing operation
What our customers say
“To be able to see all of the different various public cloud consumption figures, third party services and then be able to apply a flexible managed service fee on top, completely automated, is worlds apart from where we were.”
Jamie SinclairTransformation Director, ANS Group
80% of manual invoicing efforts eliminated.
Frequently asked questions
Can we see which user has which service, and what happens when someone joins or leaves?
Yes. CloudBilling holds usage and entitlement data per customer, per product and per user, so questions like which licences sit with which user, and which of those are actually being billed, are answered from the system instead of from a spreadsheet. When someone joins or leaves, the change arrives with the next data run and is priced according to the contract, so the next invoice reflects it without anyone tracking it by hand.
Our PSA already handles contracts and invoicing. Do we have to replace it?
No. CloudBilling sits alongside your PSA as the billing calculation and reconciliation layer, and pushes invoice lines back into your PSA or financial system. Most MSPs keep their PSA for service delivery and for what they sell, and hand pricing, consolidation and reconciliation to CloudBilling, because PSA contract functionality is rarely built for the billing complexity an MSP ends up with.
We sell projects with recurring services attached. How do we make sure the recurring part gets billed?
This is one of the most common places revenue disappears. The upfront project and the hardware are invoiced straight away, while the recurring service only starts once delivery is complete, and in between it lives on somebody’s list. CloudBilling works from the provisioning and commercial data, so it can show what was sold, what was provisioned and what is being billed. The gap between those three is where the recurring revenue turns up.
We grew through acquisition and run several brands and ledgers. Can that run on one platform?
Yes. Customers are grouped by legal entity, brand, geography, customer type or any classification you use yourself. Each group carries its own pricing, its own invoice template and its own destination in your financial systems, so four acquired brands with four separate accounting ledgers bill from one platform while each keeps the format its customers expect.
How much product mapping do we have to do by hand?
For supported vendors, very little. CloudBilling maintains product catalogues, synchronises new products and keeps products from different distributors apart, so new SKUs do not land on your desk every month. What still needs your input is mapping tenants to customers, because tenant names rarely match customer names exactly. That is a one-off per customer rather than a monthly spreadsheet exercise.
Where do most MSPs start?
With the data they already have. A Revenue Leakage Scan takes one billing period, compares what you purchased against what you charged on, and shows where the gaps are and what is causing them. You get a number for your own environment and a clear picture of how complete your data is, which is usually the point where the route onto the platform becomes obvious.
Ready to get your billing
under control?
Talk to one of our billing experts. We’ll show you exactly how CloudBilling handles your specific setup, no generic demos.
