MSP Finances Ledger or PSA?

Welcome along to MSP Navigator, folks. We are recording now. Great to have you here. I've got two experts in the room. I feel extremely outnumbered today, um especially on the topic that we're that we're speaking about.

It's all about finance in your MSP. Um looking at your PSA with Chris, and looking at your finances with Adam on the ledger. I'm like I'm scratching my head right now. We're talking before this. I don't even know what a ledger is.

So, um I have I have something myself as a a system called Freshservice. But, you know, all of these terminologies, I will be the one asking the dumb questions. So, Adam, Chris, welcome to the show. Um great to have you here. Um where do we start with this topic?

Well, um what well, what's a good start? And I I suppose the um the challenge I had as a as a as an owner of an MSP was seeing the wood for the trees. Uh and, you know, uh I I I my my sort of personality or part of my personality is definitely uh around liking to understand data and make decisions based on data rather than just guessing. And so, and maybe if anything, I'm a bit too much like that. Um can you give me an example like in a in a you mentioned before we start recording, there's like day-to-day situations, being able to make decisions on your business day-to-day based on the financial data?

Yeah, yeah. Well, look, so so the basic fundamental ones in any business are how do you drive gross margin? How efficient and productive is your workforce at building revenue, which ultimately translates into profit, right? So, so your questions there are got to be, am I charging enough my service? How efficient is my my workforce?

Uh how efficient is are my processes? Uh you know, and then you're getting into all sorts of other questions, which is you know, how much should I pay my engineers? Um you know, how do I structure my service team? How do I you know, structure my charging rates? There's so many then you know, variables and decisions you've got to make about it.

But you can't start to make these decisions unless you've got that information in front of you. I think that's the key thing. But but you know, what what is difficult here is is knowing where to look, knowing how to structure structure this stuff. Uh and then you know, over time working out building a a picture of what actually is what is happening and then you can start to make some changes on that. Are there like some really big elements to this?

Like things that you must have. Um that you can that can help you make start making these decisions. I mean, I I can I think I can think of one example from a sales perspective and that's what I used to do in my MSP most of the time. And the MSPs I worked with was how did I price what I'm quoting? Um that was like the biggest thing for me.

And to tell you the truth in the sales roles, I wasn't really thinking of it from a a profitability point of view. I was more looking at what I could make from that client particularly, you know, compared to what potential my competitor or the incumbent MSPs making. And I can um you know, just talking around that is got you were asking about um uh you know, where to start and and getting that information in. Well, you know, Adam alluded to this this earlier on is making sure that you have that information in front of you. Okay.

And a lot of the time um well, that information needs to be entered into some kind of system somewhere. Right? Either into an accounting tool or PSA or or whatever the case might be. So, um you know, and and also understanding how much your engineers cost because you need to know when the work is done, how much those engineers cost and as Adam said, how profitable are they and how efficient are they? Ultimately, then you can look to see from a contract perspective, you know, how profitable are the contracts um with within your customer.

So, you've got to have that information somewhere and and a good place to put that, I'm just going to kind of start this conversation off is is a good place to put that is going to be into a a a PSA tool. I knew I knew you were going to say that, Chris. Oh, well, you know, I I could I could have said accounting tool. I could have said something else, but you know, You could have said ledger. Okay.

Yeah, ledger or you know, these words that that you and I don't understand, but um but yeah, it's got to go into some kind of tool and 90% of MSPs on on the planet are using a PSA tool of some sort or another and all of them are going to be able to capture this information. So, things like burden rates, you know, how much do your engineers cost? Um you know, putting that information in, the cost of your products and services. So, things like you're buying Microsoft 365 from wherever it is that you're buying it from, those costs need to be in the system as well so that when you're then looking at the profitability of those contracts, you're going to be able to, you know, very easily look at at at the revenue minus all of those costs and that's going to give you give you the profitability. And and I think I absolutely agree with that and and uh I I I think the PSA tool really comes to life if if you can accurately populate it with with your costs, you know, your licensing costs, your your labor costs, um and and and you know, keep that updated and as accurate as possible.

Um I don't think it's very easy to do that and actually, Chris, I'll be interested to hear more from you on uh smart ways of automating that uh so so that um there's less work to do in terms of uh having accurate COGS or cost of goods sold in in your PSA. Um uh and and cuz for me, you know, that you're you're you're zero, your QuickBooks, they're they're they're they're great tools for giving you the truth around your true P&L and your balance sheet. Uh, and they help you with a whole load of things, but actually they they fall short when you're starting to look at the the details of you know, pricing methodologies, efficiencies with your your workforce, profitability of clients, because they don't have all the the hours. They don't have all the hours details in there and and and all the all the labor and everything in there. So, um, so I think it's very much a case of getting the best out of both of these tools.

But in many ways, I would lead with the PSA. Um, and and I'd I'd really want to work hard at at getting, you know, the costs in there. Um, one one one thing we're working on and and we don't have it today, but one thing we're working on is is having some kind of reconciliation report between the data in a PSA and and in your ledger, so you can actually see um, where your PSA may be out from a COGS perspective. So, that's something that hopefully um, could could help with this. But what what are your thoughts on that, Chris?

Yeah, great great question. And actually it is fairly easy to get the costs into the PSA tool. Um, uh, you know, most PSA tools and and um, you certainly the bigger ones, you know, they they have the ability for you to enter in the um, the internal costs of the engineer. So, there's there's an area you go into in in under the resources. You know, and and and you work out what that engineer's rate is by the hour.

And you simply put that rate in. So, then every time, you know, that rate changes, if you, you know, give them a pay rise, whatever the case might be, then it's just going in and and and manually updating those and changing those. So, so from a a cost of the engineer's point of view, that's very easy to to enter into, um, you know, all of the PSA tools. Um, and and and a lot of the um, you know, the costs of of things like, um, you know, license costs as as you talked about. You know, 365 those kind of things.

There's a lot of integration with with companies out there. So, you know, you know, I'm not going to mention all the names out here cuz there there are a bunch of them, but they'll integrate into into all the PSA tools and bring that information in. So, they'll bring in not only the cost price, but the selling price and keep those updated. So, every time there's a change of of a cost or a selling price within that vendor, then I mean it automatically updates the the cost of those those that feature in one of the lesser known PSAs and it pulls in all of the Microsoft CSP licenses for all of your Yeah, exactly. And I mean it's you know, and and that's brilliant because then every time those prices change the MSP doesn't have to then go in manually update all of that stuff.

The only thing really that would would manually have to change is is going to be the cost of of the engineer which in most companies isn't going to change that frequently anyway. So, even if it's once a year or you know, even you know, once every 6 months, it's not hugely onerous to just go in and and update that figure. So, I'm going to ask I'm almost thinking to myself right now. I'm like, why do we need two bits of software? Like why is this just not all handled by the PSA?

This is maybe a question for Adam, but Do you know what? That's a left field question. Well, this I don't know, but maybe maybe this is just you know, purely historical. And maybe maybe the fresh air is whatever it is. Well, but But the all the data is already there in your PSA as Chris is saying.

It's like, well, why do I need this other tool? I I I suppose it's I I suppose it's historical, isn't it? The the traditionally you know, the accounting systems were you know, presumably one of the first pieces of software Yeah. This is I think is a billion dollar idea coming up right here, I think. And And this is You know what, Scott?

This is the same question as we are why there bicycles and cars. They kind of they they do the same thing, right? I mean, a bicycle and a car will both get you from A to B. Maybe one slightly slower than the other, but you know, um yeah, accounting tools are designed to do accounting stuff. Like Adam said, you know, your your P&L and um your balance sheet and your tax returns and all those kinds of things.

Um and you know, although a PSA tool is a business management platform and allows you to kind of do all of that, um it it stops at the billing cuz really what it does is it says, "I'm you know, it's going to generate the invoice." And then it's going to just take that invoice and push it into the accounting tool. And then from that at that point it's then from the accounting tool that kind of takes over and and does all of that thing. Um you know, when you think about it, I mean, a PSA tool has has everything, you know, right from the beginning from sales stage all the way through. But none of them in any PSA tool is you know, they're not they're not the best of breed on on each individual thing, you know? There's millions of CRMs out there that are better than a CRM that you get within the PSA tool.

There's, you know, a million project management tools that are better than what you get in the PSA tool. But what they do give you is the ability to kind of say, "Well, you know, if if you don't have any of those tools, you can absolutely use them in in the PSA tool um to get to a certain point and then start to to do everything else in your finance tool." The other reason why and and actually I think it's a good thing to actually still have an accounting tool because most PSA tools are going to charge you per user, right? Which means you if if you then had an accounting tool built into that, you would then have to pay for your accountant if you were using an accountant or a company like like Adam, you know, you'd then have to pay for for them to go and log in and actually and actually do that kind of stuff. So, what I always suggest to people to do is do the invoicing, push it into your accounting tool, and then go, "Okay, um it's now over to my accountant and they can do whatever they do. And and and Scott, actually, you know, there are tools out there that do try and do everything, you know, all the big tools like the PeopleSofts and the Barnes and all those huge ERP systems.

Um, which yeah, which don't which don't actually translate down to the SME IT business. Yeah, okay. Too too expensive, too big, too costly. that was definitely a left field question and I Yeah, well, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because because that question is is really, you know, do you you try and do you try and get one system to to rule them all or do you have best of breed and have lots of different systems? The the reason I'm I'm bringing it up is because I have seen a move to that in other areas from an MSP perspective.

So, you're getting a lot of these CRMs that are now including like the quoting element and it's pulling the data in from the vendor right directly into the quote. And so, it's just like a natural progression. Um, that was why the question was there. Now, before we before we hit record, we were kind of discussing what we were going to be talking about and that was when you should be using the PSA and when you should be using the ledger. Um, we've covered I guess we've covered like, you know, the reasons from a PSA perspective on, you know, tracking the cost of your engineers and things like that and that's probably not something you'd be doing in your ledger, is that right?

Well, you're getting that information uh, at a top level. Yeah, okay. So, you your PAYE information is coming in and depending on how you structure your nominals on your chart of accounts, you can subdivide those according to projects, profe- you know, professional services, time-based services, sales, marketing, you know, overheads, etc. Uh, so so, you know, at a bare minimum, you should be structuring your your labor uh, into revenue um, earning people uh, and and um, overhead people so you can start to measure gross margins properly. Um, but if you want to start looking at efficiencies of of of projects and things like that, then you can sub sub, you know, the project team, you can subdivide again.

Um, but but but maybe at that point, you know, maybe the question is actually is the PSA the better tool to start looking at uh those margins and efficiencies. Um, and and so, you know, absolutely I'm I'm just a firm believer of simplicity, you know, not overcomplicating, you know, for the sake of it. Uh and actually, you know, if it's easier to use your PSA tool to to pull this information out, um, you know, that then do that. Um, so uh for me it's definitely a combination of two. Um, and and using um some some uh benchmarking software appropriately uh or some benchmarking tools and using some um some some trending tools and analysis tools uh to to start to pull some of this data out.

Um, and I think there is uh opportunity to improve that and again it's something we're working on. Um, but um but you can get plenty of information if you structure your chart of accounts and your normals correctly, um you can get plenty of information out of your your your um your QuickBooks or your Xero. Um, that's going to tell you some of the story. You can pull that into into a uh a dashboard tool, um and then you can go to work on um on on a lot of the variables that are that are in your PSA. Uh and then I think where it really comes to life is is where you can start to pull both those sets of data of data together.

So, you know, um uh well, there's there's there's there's various things you can look at, but once you can start pulling in, you know, the number of seats that you might have into your PSA, you know, you can you you're looking at revenue per seat, you're looking at um billable hours uh utilization, um all sorts of things like that, which I'm sure Chris can talk more about. Mhm. Yeah, and I mean all that information, like you say, is is going to be in in the PSA tool. And I would I I would agree with you, Adam, is I would kind of stop that. Um, you know, the cost of engineers, um, you know, billable resources, all that kind of stuff.

I would be putting that into the PSA tool because you're you're also going to be able to then see, you know, how much time has been done against tickets, how much time has been done against the contract, and look at that profitability information directly from from the PSA tool. So, the way I do it and the way a lot of a lot of the MSPs do it is is kind of get that profitability information about, um, uh, you know, how much engineers have have cost, how much the the contract is costing, how much their labor against the contract is costing, all that kind of stuff. That information is reported on from, you know, from the PSA tool itself, and it has all of those reports built in. Um, you know, and and on most of them or well, most of them have a really good reporting capability. Some of them have, you know, really good kind of business intelligence reporting dashboards and graphs and and all these kind of things that you can easily pull out a you know, a profitability dashboard to see, you know, how much has the labor cost me, um, you know, how much have I made on on products and services, and then those can actually also then be aligned into the nominal codes.

So, when you bring that stuff through into, um, you know, into QuickBooks or Xero or whatever accounting tool you're using, you can bring all of that stuff in and align it into the correct place within the nominals in your accounting tool. and I would say, you know, my own experience on this was it wasn't actually that easy. Um, these are complex tools. There's a lot of data. There's a lot of moving parts. It took us years, I would say, actually ultimately to to start getting accurate, meaningful data out of our system and we could have done it a lot quicker than that, but but I think it's um I think there actually is quite a lot to it, you know, um making sure you have got your you know, your um service catalog set up correctly, you've got your agreement set up correctly, you've got your engineer costs in there properly, you've got your your vendor um pricing um integration set up properly for your agreements, you know, that there's probably other stuff as well.

Um you've got to have your you've got to have your your chart of accounts set up correctly and then that aligned properly with your PSA. Um so there's a quite a few moving parts you've got to get right uh and and and then you can start to uh actually pull out a lot of that information. Yeah, you know, Adam, it would actually be really nice if there was any consultants out there that could actually help with that. Um Guess what, do you know anybody, Chris? I have no idea if there's any PSA consultants that can actually help you get it um set up properly quicker than a year, right?

Because that's that's exactly what it is is is a lot of people don't do this because it's just too hard or they don't know where to go or or what have you. So you know, kind of finding the resources to be able to help you to get that stuff set up as quick as possible and and align that into your um your your PSA tool. So Is that is it something that comes with maturity of the MSP? Is it Do you find that's you know, you you mentioned Adam that it's something that it took years to get to and Chris you know because you're setting this up for people you know, I well, I mean, you hear you hear stories out there of um well, there's not you know, you maturity there's there's uh you only know what you know, right? So so when you are low maturity, you you don't really know you're low maturity.

Um and I suppose that's the challenge, isn't it? So so so uh over time you you you you you build that maturity and then over time you start to learn what good looks like and you start to learn that you need to have a handle on your numbers Um um and then you start to make better decisions um and sorry go. I was going to say if I can interject there's actually um I think there's a a big reason why it takes so long for a lot of MSPs to get that information in and that is is you know what I always bang the drum about in in the industry is I think a lot of people get PSA tool for the wrong reasons. And so they buy it as a service desk tool and don't realize that actually you can do all this finance stuff in it and and never get it set up because they just get to a point where it's like well, you know, we need a ticketing system so we're going to we're going to do tickets, we're going to do all these cool things and then realize actually you know, a few years in the business that actually now they need to start looking at profitability information um but they're so um uh you know, they've used it specifically as a as a service delivery tool Great. um and and that's fundamentally the reason why a lot of MSPs take so long to actually get that stuff in there purely because they don't look at it with a mindset right in the beginning of okay, I need a PSA tool that's going to help me with with everything in my business and right from the off I want to start getting all of this information in so I can start reporting on profitability from day one. And and so I think that's that's fundamentally a reason why it takes so long.

Yeah, I I 100% agree with that. Um and and most MSP owners are engineers so you know, that that that that naturally drawn to the service delivery elements of this. That's that's their sort of comfort zone you know, they're focused on pushing this work out. Um and you know, they're making some profit at the end of the year. Their accountant you know, 18 months later or 10 months later tells them they've made some profit.

Uh and then and so they're like okay, I'm fine, you know, and and I think that's that's where there's a big gulf here. You know, there's so much there's so much more that can be done to to then raise the the overall performance of that business and and of course the profits as well just by starting to really drill down and and and start to look at some of these numbers. Mhm. And and actually, you know, in in saying that earlier on about using it as a service delivery tool, um you know, I think I I think we should probably for those MSPs that they probably don't know what a PSA tool is, I should probably explain kind of what it is, right? And and and it's it's more than just a service delivery tool, right?

It does everything in your business. I actually don't like the word PSA. I normally call it a business management platform cuz pretty much that's what it is. It's a It's a platform that's going to manage your entire business. So, it's going to do, you know, all of your sales, um you know, your opportunity management, all of that kind of stuff, your contract management, billing, um you know, invoicing, all that kind of stuff, as well as service delivery.

And and when I work with customers to help them get the product set up, I actually normally leave service delivery right until the end because the most important thing getting in into your PSA tool is exactly what you talked about, the costs of um you know, of the licenses, the cost of the engineers. Think about the money first. Think about why you're in the Exactly. The Think about the money first. Exactly.

That is the reason you you're in business, right? Is to is to make money. Sure, you've obviously got to keep your customers happy and there is a service delivery element of that, but but that's not the the the key focus of of a PSA tool in my opinion. So, I always start right at the beginning and kind of go, "Okay, let's look at putting in the costs and and all of these kind of things." And then we focus on sales and opportunities and we leave service delivery right until the end. Um so, yeah, so I think that's what a Well, that's what a PSA tool is.

It's It's that platform that manages your whole business um right the way through from kind of, you know, when you very first talk to that first prospect, you meet them at a show or whatever, right up until um you know, for you to manage their entire kind of life cycle of that client until they are no longer a client if that ever happens. That makes a lot of sense. And then we've got the other side of this, which is from an acquisition perspective, making your business more sellable. Um, do you find that you're Uh, this maybe a more of a question for Adam, I'm not sure, but you obviously have to have things in order and there's a whole lot of due diligence and perspective. But there's almost like another level there is that it's in your PSA as well.

It's almost like another little layer of transparency in the business for someone that's potentially looking to, you know, buy it. So, so, so I can talk first hand having having sold my business not too long ago. Mhm. Uh, so so a really interesting experience. Only went through it once.

Um, learned so many lessons and know how to do it better the second time. Um, but the due diligence piece is a huge piece. Everyone I spoken to who also has recently sold their business, you know, agrees with that and and uh Um, and and fascinating experience. And and you know, we were bombarded with requests for all sorts of data and we were frankly pulling it out wherever we could. So obviously a lot of it was was was out of um, out of zero.

Um, you know, putting together all of the P&L and balance sheets reports from out of that. But then back to the PSA absolutely same thing going into the reporting capacity of that, pulling out gross margin reports on a client by client basis. Um, and what was interesting actually uh, is we um, uh, I can't quite remember, but I think we changed our configuration of our PSA um, about 18 months before we sold. Uh, and hence a lot of the data was only 18 months old, actually. And so that was a situation where uh we could we couldn't do any better.

You know, that was the only data we had and effectively the buyer just had to put up with that. So so there is a learning point here that absolutely if you can you know, if you're gearing your business up to sale, you know, uh start thinking about how how um you know, getting your ducks in a row with regard to your reporting and your your profitability on a client by client basis, your gross margins, you know, understanding how you can get hold of that data because that will augur well in terms of that sales process and being able to present to a potential buyer that you have all this information, you know, that you've got you've got that high level of maturity thinking. Um you know, that that would certainly uh and and they'll they'll ask for some initial reports. So if you're able to to get those initial reports out to them, you know, really quickly um and uh they're they're high-quality, then that will certainly help in your your negotiations as opposed to oh, I've no idea to get that, you know, and you're fishing around and you're trying to you know, you're coming back with all sorts of rubbish. Um you know, I think that we it's it's all about presenting your business in the right light, yeah.

Mhm. Excellent. I agree. I I Yeah, nothing to add to that. I fully agree with what with what Owen said.

Okay. So I guess the next question is what questions have I missed here in this conversation? I don't want to keep it going on too long because I know everyone's you know, got their lunch to have and things. I I have a question. I have a question.

I have a question for you, Chris, and I probably know the answer, but I'm going to ask it. Should you be invoicing directly from your PSA or or from your ledger? Oh, I love that question. That's one of my favorite questions of all. Um my answer to that is it depends.

Um So It depends which one gets paid sooner, yeah? Yeah, no, well, um, no, I I I say that you should really bill directly from your accounting tool. Okay. Um, but when I say bill directly from your accounting tool, I I mean generate the invoice in the PSA and then push that through into your accounting tool and send that invoice. The reason for that being is you you've got to get it into your accounting tool at some point anyway, right?

So, yeah, at some point it's got to get into QuickBooks, it's got to get into Xero, so you might as well get it in there right in the beginning and then send it to your customer. Um, your customers are also used to getting invoices from that accounting tool anyway. The, you know, the format and the look and feel of the invoice out of the PSA tool is going to be completely different to what you have, um, in in your accounting tool. So, I always say generate it out of, um, uh, you know, out of the accounting, uh, sorry, yeah, out of the PSA tool and then push that into the accounting tool. The only time I would really send it directly from, um, you know, from the PSA tool is is if for whatever reason you don't have some kind of accounting tool, maybe you've just you're just generating invoices and, you know, you're using, which I hope isn't happening in in the MSP industry, but maybe you're using Excel or you're using some other kind of mechanism to to, um, you know, work out your P&L and all that kind of stuff, then you might want to send it from your your PSA tool at that point.

Um, and also if you were using the client portal that was built into the PSA tool, that allows your users to log in and actually view their invoices as well and at that point they're going to be viewing the PSA invoice and then it is going to be different from, um, from the, um, accounting tool. But the way I do it and the way I recommend to all my clients to do it is generate it in the PSA, push it through to the accounting tool and then send it from the accounting tool. So, so we agree. Um, so that's so that's an interesting, uh, and I actually you know in an ideal ideal world it'd be great to invoice from the PSA. But but but my view is that there's always going to be errors creeping in.

There's always going to be mistakes, etc. And yes, you can issue credits and and and and and what have you in your PSA. But ultimately, your compliance, your end of year accounts is going to be driven from your ledger. That's what you're That's what you're sending to your accountant. That's the only version of truth you have.

Yeah. And so for me, that's what you have to rely on 100% from a compliance perspective. You want your PSA matching that close as you possibly can, but the likelihood is there's going to be some things that that that get missed. And and I think you know, ultimately therefore, absolutely do what Chris has just said, you know, sync it sync it through, get it get it as right as you can, but ultimately the arbiter of truth is is your your ledger and and and invoice. And actually saying what I said earlier on about, you know, an an extra license.

If you sent it from your PSA tool, even if you got it into your Well, if you send it directly from your PSA tool, what that would mean is your accountant would have to log into your PSA tool to look at the invoices to see what invoices you've sent, what credits you've sent, all those kind of things. So, getting it into your accounting tool and and sending it from there, it just like you say, it's it's all in one place. Your accountant can log into your accounting tool. It's all there. Everything's there.

No one has to look at anything inside the PSA necessarily. And you know, also when you send it straight away from a PSA tool, you need to wait for the sync to happen into the accounting tool in order for it to match invoice numbers. So, if you sent it now and then pushed it later into your accounting tool, you're going to have an invoice number in order task or in ConnectWise or any other the tools that are going to be different from the invoice number in the accounting tool until the sync happens. Normally, it's instantaneous, but but I have seen it happen before where the invoice goes out, it has a slightly different number on it, and only when the sync happens, it then updates and and writes that that that invoice number in. So, yeah, so don't do it.

As far as I'm concerned, just do the billing through the the PSA tool and then send it from whatever accounting tool you use and and send it in the normal way. Cool. Okay, last question. This is one for you both. Um I'll start with you, Chris.

What's the single biggest mistake you see in the majority of your clients coming to you when they're, you know, setting up a when you're setting up helping them with their PSA system? The single biggest mistake this is thousands. The thing that drives you up the wall the most. Yeah, well, my most of it is what I alluded to earlier on is I think when somebody buys a PSA tool as a service delivery tool because, you know, they they will buy it and say, "I need a service desk tool." And because, you you know, I'm I'm one of these people where I think our entire industry is very much based on me, too, right? It's like, "Well, everyone else is using a PSA tool, therefore I need to use one." Without actually thinking why you need to use a PSA tool and what it's going to do for your business.

So, you know, everyone's saying, "Oh, yeah, I use it to to to create tickets for my customers and the whole service delivery side is is great." And the whole industry talks about a PSA tool as a service delivery tool. So, I think the biggest mistake people make is they buy it for the wrong reasons. Um and they also um you know, buy a PSA tool that everyone else is using just because everyone buys a particular brand of PSA tool, the entire industry decides that's the same tool they're going to use rather than saying, "What is right for my business and what tool is going to work for me?" Um and you know, so those are those are I guess my big bugbears is people come to me is is those sorts of of you know mistakes I guess or or decisions that people make right right in the beginning. Good to know. Okay Adam, same question to you.

What's the the biggest thing that drives you up the wall? Well, I'm I'm not sure I'm not sure it's it's driving me up the wall and I What's the biggest mistake you see? Yeah, or or or not necessarily a mistake, but but I think it's probably it's it's probably the I mean the the sort of premise of what we're offering here is that there's so much an owner can do once they start to understand the numbers and it starts with getting the the basic accurate books in place timely month-end procedures uh and then starting to uh you know on a on a standardized chart of accounts and and then starting to to to understand the trends and understand the margins get getting to some of the detail on on on which which products and which services are profitable and which aren't, which clients are profitable and which aren't. Well, you know, and and starting to understand some of these ratios because once you do then you absolutely can start really honing into what's important, what are the priorities. You know, um and how do you start pricing things?

How do you start deciding whether you can afford that next engineer or not or where that problem is, you know, is the problem somewhere else? You don't actually need another engineer. Um and you can't do any of that unless you start with the bedrock of your data, your finance data, your PSA data. And and I think that's what we see our mission as here. It's it's really that that whole journey um or or of growing alongside our clients um building that bedrock of the found out of the data uh the bookkeeping um educating our clients around how to use that data, how to start to understand it and how how to make better decisions which will ultimately just drive the gross margin and then the profit and ultimately of course the the the exit value.

Uh and and that's just a huge piece here And and um, you know, that's what we're looking to do. And and it's just I guess opening our clients' eyes to that to that thinking. Um, and how actually just with a few dials yeah, twisted here, three or four dials twisted. Do you know what? They're all going to come together and and before you know, before you know it, your business is worth 2 million not 1 million.

Yeah, I'd love to know more about those dials. Okay, excellent guys. How can how can our viewers or listeners get in touch with you for more info and help? Shall I go first? Well, Yeah, go first.

Yeah, so on on all the usuals, LinkedIn, Twitter, um, Facebook. Just Google your name, Chris. Um, just Google my name. I'm I'm up in lights. In fact, if you go on to YouTube, I think um, I think Scott very nicely put me on on on your YouTube channel, Scott, um, as the Audit Tasks Guy.

And I think if you type Audit Tasks in in YouTube, I pretty much come up as the first hit. Um, but otherwise, sendelaconsulting.com um, or also, um, on my book website, um, which I'm just going to do a shameless plug for now, which is psaprofitability.com, um, where you can go buy the book from there or Amazon. So, yeah, I'm I'm everywhere. You'll find me. Excellent.

Good Yeah, and so, not not as complex as Chris. [email protected]. Um, we also have a podcast coming online. Um, uh, or or or just, you know, give us a call. Um, and uh, but great to great to be uh, on the call today, Scott.

Yeah, thanks thanks for your time. And hey folks, if you want to find out more about um, all of this, um, PSAs, finance services for MSPs, you can look at the whole market over at msp-navigator.com. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks. Bye.

Thanks, guys. Cheers. Thank you. Bye. Hey.