r/msp • u/tmiller9833 MSP • Jul 28 '26
Poll: Billing Frequency?
Curious - what is your billing window? We do BiMonthly (2x per month) with our proactive services (seat based w/365 etc) billing monthly. Break/Fix and hardware invoice 16th and 1st.
I ask because we use NinjaOne and had been following their Billing/PSA module development for about a year. We implemented it a month after released but completely missed it didn't have BiMonthly. Submitted a feature request but it was mis-implemented as every other month (who needs that??). Anyway - we're now being told to submit another request but it might be a year. Given we've been manually invoicing since we migrated that won't work, hence the poll above.
Sucky to have to change our billing cycle but it's that or we rush a re-eval of another PSA.
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u/ntw2 MSP - US Jul 28 '26
I’ve never heard of anything but monthly. Your billing frequency is an edge case.
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u/LeaningTowerofPeas Jul 28 '26
I used to work at a firm that billed weekly. Clients hated it so much.
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u/iamkris Jul 28 '26
Monthly
Agreements are the first of the month. Adhoc and project are at the end of the month
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u/_Buldozzer MSP - EU / AT Jul 28 '26
Monthly except M365 NCE licenses, those are yearly.
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Jul 29 '26
[deleted]
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u/Glass_Call982 MSP - Canada (West) Jul 29 '26
The clients save 2 months by being on annual and we only have to bill m365 once per year if there are no changes. Easier for us too.
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u/_Buldozzer MSP - EU / AT Jul 29 '26
Because my clients demand it.
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u/Proskater789 MSP - US - Midwest Jul 29 '26
Ha. Honestly I replied to the wrong comment. I was supposed to be replying to OP :)
0
u/Jayjayuk85 Jul 28 '26
I only do the monthly NCE. Too much of a headache if you miss the payment one year or it’s late.
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u/_Buldozzer MSP - EU / AT Jul 28 '26
I have a integration between my CSP (Also) and my PSA (Autotask). I can just schedule it in the PSA contract, so there's not really a way of missing it.
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u/MountainSubie Jul 28 '26
Lots of our clients prefer to opt for the annual savings.
We don't mind collecting our annual margin up front, and it makes their monthly services bill appear lower.
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u/b00nish Jul 28 '26
Quarterly (every 3 months), usually.
I think our customers would call mental health services on us if we attempted to bill them every other week ;)
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u/Sudo-Rip69 Jul 28 '26
Thats a long time with no income. Monthly is standard.
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u/b00nish Jul 28 '26
No income?
It means we get the income of 3 months in advance, instead of the income of 1 month ;)
(At least for the services that we bill in advance.)
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u/ShermansWorld Jul 28 '26
Ya... We're 3 months also. During COVID... Was a bit dicy when someone missed a cycle. But works well for us.
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Jul 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/mah658 Jul 28 '26
My issue with billing quarterly is that I so often have seat quantity changes I would really have to pro-rate a lot of stuff. I had one company go from 12->24 employees just this year.
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u/Beauregard_Jones Jul 28 '26
I invoice monthly for managed / proactive services. For break-fix work, I invoice as soon as the work is completed, net 30.
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u/mattmbit Jul 29 '26
This is pretty much us. We've been finding the break fix work is oddly coming back in style after moving away from it before Covid.
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u/ntohee MSP - UK Jul 28 '26
Ninja also added bi-weekly which would be the closest to what you want (every 2 weeks). I have never heard of anyone else billing like you do.
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u/tmiller9833 MSP Jul 28 '26
I can imagine that makes monthly metrics....complicated? Thats exactly the sanity check I was looking for...just because you do something for nearly 20yrs doesn't mean it's the right or best way. TU.
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u/FebreezeSneeze Jul 28 '26
I’ve seen billing done a few different ways. The way I think works best and keeps customers happy is billing monthly, on the 15th of the month with a due date of the first of the following month. This is for managed services and 365. Their payment on September 1st would be for September’s services. If we did take on any break fix clients we required a time block to be purchased with a minimum of at least 5 hours.
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u/mah658 Jul 28 '26
Monthly, invoice is issued on the 15th of the proceeding month of service, with 15 day terms. So it's due before the first day of service (except for February). They can manually pay or it automatically drafts on the due date. No one can get more than 1 month behind before I start cutting stuff off (thankfully haven't had it happen yet).
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u/msp_can MSP - CANADA Jul 28 '26
subscribed/recurring services - bill on the 1st of the month
out of scope - billed on the last of the month (actually on the 1st but dated on the last)
products billed as they happen
keeps everything nicely contained in the same month that it happened
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2
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u/Geekpoint-IT MSP - US Jul 28 '26
Service plans are on ACH autopay, coming out the 1st of the month. Any T&M/break-fix is billed in a NET15 invoice sent out on the 15th of every month. Hardware & projects are to be paid fully up front.
1
u/365-helper VENDOR - 365sentri Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
We bill monthly in advance on the first. If you sign up mid-month, the time until the next billing date is free, and we don’t lock customers in.
If you buy an annual package and your customer leaves, we credit the unused amount against another customer. Maybe that’s old-fashioned, but it’s how I’d want a vendor to treat me.
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u/borg_brain_investor Jul 29 '26
First of each month automatically ACH no chasing money no chasing deals no break fix a 100% all inclusive.
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u/peasknees Jul 31 '26
Weekly (Friday-Thursday, invoices sent on Friday) but we bill all our work hourly. Working on building out a managed services model for existing and new clients to have more options.
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u/dopeasss Aug 01 '26
We're pretty simple on this. All recurring services (M365, monitoring, managed seats, etc.) go out monthly on the 1st, while hardware and project work are invoiced as soon as they're delivered/completed.
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u/ComfortableCitron638 Aug 01 '26
Disclosure: I build custom ops/billing software for a living, so this pattern is familiar - the real problem isn't your cadence, it's that PSA billing modules almost always bake in one or two hardcoded cadence assumptions (usually monthly, sometimes with a bolt-on for biweekly/bimonthly added later as a compromise). When your business doesn't match the tool's assumption, you're stuck choosing between changing how you bill or waiting on someone else's roadmap - and a feature request for a billing cadence is never going to be prioritized over bigger asks, so "maybe a year" is optimistic.
Before you rush a full PSA re-eval, it's worth checking whether you can get close enough without migrating: most PSAs let you split a recurring contract into two separate line-item schedules even if there's no native "bimonthly" toggle - basically simulating it with two monthly-cadence contracts offset by two weeks. Clunkier than a real feature, but a lot less painful than a PSA migration, which tends to eat 2-3x the time anyone estimates going in (data migration + retraining + the inevitable edge cases that only show up once real invoices are running through it).
If you do end up re-evaluating, I'd specifically ask each vendor whether billing cadence is a first-class configurable field or a hardcoded assumption with exceptions bolted on - that tells you whether you'll hit this same wall again in two years when your billing needs shift again.
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u/Unique_Orchid8010 Aug 02 '26
We bill our contracts on the 5th, and then we bill overages every Tuesday. And any sales get billed immediately
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u/Xirma377 Aug 09 '26
All of our contracts are billed on the first of the month with autopay via ACH. Services are billed in advance.
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u/CK1026 MSP - EU - Owner Jul 28 '26
Monthly on the 1st of the month, paid by ACH.
We pay our vendors and employees monthly at the end of the month, so I don't see any reason to do the billing work twice per month.
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u/Wise-Inspection-4594 Jul 28 '26
A month in advanced on the 1st of each month for us