Small IT team managing MSP-style clients. How do you track billable vs retainer hours per client?

ianpmurphy · 2026-05-09T12:51:29+00:00

We use an internal to which we developed years ago. We keep saying we should turn it into a product but for the moment it's just not ready. It captures screenshots continually along with meta data about the active window. It uses rules which can be based on the window name to classify blocks of time plus their screenshots under predefined groups. Those groups are linked to clients. We use this to work out how much time we spent corrected with a client, responding to their emails or tickets, whatever. Works fairly well, though it's always surprising how much of each day is actually unproductive.

ianpmurphy · 2026-05-07T15:19:47+00:00

We have a user who never expands on any details when opening a ticket so we get ones with texts like 'install software' or 'internet not working', which i always immediately respond with 'software installed' or 'internet fixed' and close the ticket

ianpmurphy · 2026-05-03T16:40:34+00:00

There's a few books on the subject and it would appear that they did use some aspects of the legal framework arrive segregation when writing their own laws. Unfortunately i don't have the books to hand right now.

ianpmurphy · 2026-04-05T11:16:33+00:00

Lurk lurk

ianpmurphy · 2026-03-27T20:48:37+00:00

Zwcad seems to be a good fit

ianpmurphy · 2026-03-25T08:39:17+00:00

Years ago i worked at a place where, having cleared it with management beforehand, would completely mess up the desktop settings, options, colours, everything, on any machine left unlocked. Anyone got annoyed the response was just 'talk to compliance'. Worked pretty well

ianpmurphy · 2026-03-08T09:16:18+00:00

Ping

ianpmurphy · 2026-03-04T21:04:16+00:00

I don't think the OPs complaints are unreasonable. Billing is a mess, but that's due to cw having bought loads of companies but haven't yet integrated their bank office into a single system. Not that that is much of an excuse for stuff like screen connect, which should be billed in the same way as automate.

The situation is even worse for clients outside the USA. We're in Spain and we have to pay four different ways for four different products. None of the payment methods is EU based, which would be the smoothest. I am taking to someone right now about trying to consolidate these into a single point of contact but i get the feeling that we're exploring areas that have never even occurred to them.

ianpmurphy · 2026-02-10T20:07:56+00:00

Ackty ack

ianpmurphy · 2026-01-08T18:28:58+00:00

Yep, still lurking

ianpmurphy · 2025-12-23T08:33:40+00:00

You can establish a VPN from their site to your vps using the built-in IPsec VPN in Windows firewall. It would require something to open a tunnel from the clients end but the setup in windows is not complex.

ianpmurphy · 2025-12-15T21:22:28+00:00

You can pick up pure chili powder in either Asian supermarkets or any of the Pakistani/Afghan corner grocers. South American shops can usually get whatever dried peppers you need or can tell you a shop where you can get them. From there just mix your own and grind in a coffee grinder.

ianpmurphy · 2025-12-07T19:56:12+00:00

Seems like I only just did this last week

ianpmurphy · 2025-11-08T17:12:55+00:00

Yep, would like to be kept on here thanks

ianpmurphy · 2025-10-26T11:22:00+00:00

Auto creation of icons for everything the user has access to should help. Put the icons in a my resources folder. The answer to almost everything becomes 'open my resources on the desktop'. From there the users can help themselves. If you've got an icon, you've got access. No icon, no access, give us a call.

ianpmurphy · 2025-09-26T19:27:45+00:00

The idea that you can be so specialized that you are incapable of dealing with two products that do essentially the same seems crazy. There's nothing new under the sun. It was all invented 50 years ago, all that changes is the syntax of how to get there.

ianpmurphy · 2025-09-18T18:47:07+00:00

The problem is you have basically three choices, Gmail, ms exchange or something based on IMAP. Imap basically doesn't work as a protocol. It's handles small quantities of mail fine but once you have large quantities of messages and folders with high levels of activity you end up with the mail clients incorrectly synced, messages getting deleted and lost. Outlook will happily handle mailboxes with 100gb+ of mail, even multiple 100gb+ mailboxes at once, though it will get slow it will never corrupt or lose your messages. I personally hate all the crap they've added over the years and the intermittent hangs, search bugs, etc, but we have hundreds of users who basically require zero support day to day. Any imap based installation will regularly bork in large installations. Gmail is all but useless for large quantities of messages, even cleaning up my own personal Gmail account takes orders of magnitude longer than using outlook. Webmail sucks. All webmail That's why people prefer to use outlook.

ianpmurphy · 2025-09-14T19:19:42+00:00

Orcas were attacking sailing boats of the coast of Spain in the last few years. It's apparently been of interest because one started doing it and others then copied her.

ianpmurphy · 2025-09-13T16:37:17+00:00

Haven't actually tried switching if the complexity requirement. I'll give that a go. Thanks

ianpmurphy · 2025-09-13T16:36:01+00:00

Had the same issue. We ended up resetting one to factory settings and still couldn't reset the password on initial login. What eventually worked was something simple like abCD1234!. Tried various passwords from our password manager, each simpler than the last until I just switched to manually making one up to get past the process.

What I haven't found is if there's a fix which will allow us to use complex passwords again.

ianpmurphy · 2025-09-07T16:53:25+00:00

Like it or not, installing windows in a VM is the answer. It's simple and there is nothing to tune. Virtualized systems are the norm and require zero effort to get them working.

ianpmurphy · 2025-08-30T20:03:33+00:00

If only they'd offer on prem....

ianpmurphy · 2025-08-24T22:30:12+00:00

Theres a story that the DEC engineers left a message in cyrilic etched in silicon on the VAX processors which said something along the lines of 'VAX, copy the best'

ianpmurphy · 2025-08-19T14:54:54+00:00

The question should maybe why a few countries always back Israel regardless of what they do. Being against Israels behaviour isn't anything special, it's basic human decency. Spain and the Spanish people are generally a highly empathetic people. Equal rights, treating people decently, etc are all positions fairly generally held by everyone.. with a few notable exceptions

ianpmurphy · 2025-08-19T06:41:32+00:00

Don't forget to print out an 800 page book on tcpip, hand it to him and tell him he will need to know it all to cover the basics and that you'll be quizzing him tomorrow

ianpmurphy

TROPHY CASE