The ultimate checklist for MSPs and integrators
The difference between a profitable managed service and a firefighting operation is documentation and discipline. This is the checklist we work through with partners.
- Audience
- MSPs and integrators
- Covers
- Onboarding to renewals
- Principle
- Standardise the stack
- Cadence
- Monthly and quarterly
Onboarding a new client
Full asset inventory, network diagram, credential handover into a vault, licence and renewal register, and a documented escalation contact list before the first ticket is taken.
Agree the scope in writing: what is covered, what is billable, and what response times apply to each severity level.
Standardise the stack
Pick one RMM, one PSA, one backup product, one endpoint security product and one firewall vendor, and deploy them the same way everywhere.
Standardisation is what makes an engineer productive on a site they have never visited, and what makes spares and templates reusable.
Ongoing hygiene
Monthly patch reporting, quarterly backup restore tests, annual DR exercises, licence true-ups, and a warranty and end-of-life register reviewed every quarter.
Review alert noise regularly: an alert nobody acts on is worse than no alert at all.
Commercial discipline
Track effort per client against contract value, review margin quarterly, and use deal registration and stocked distribution to protect pricing on projects.
Keep quoting fast, the partner that answers first usually wins the project.