40+ definitions covering everything from PSA and CRM to SLA, MRR, capacity utilization, AI ticket summarization, and SOC 2. Written for MSP founders, ops leaders, and procurement teams evaluating PSA platforms.
42 terms · grouped by category
8 terms
Software that runs the operational backbone of a service business — ticketing, time tracking, agreements, projects, and invoicing in one platform with shared data.
Why it matters
Without PSA, MSPs run 5–8 disconnected tools (ticketing, time, billing, CRM, calendar) that don't share data. PSA collapses that into one system of record.
Software for tracking sales pipeline, accounts, contacts, and renewal opportunities. In MSP contexts, CRM is paired with PSA — sometimes in one unified platform.
Software that monitors and manages endpoints (laptops, servers, network devices) remotely — patch management, alerts, scripts, anti-virus orchestration. Paired with PSA via integration.
Why it matters
PSA + RMM is the MSP duo: PSA runs the business; RMM runs the tech. They share alerts as auto-created tickets.
A company that provides ongoing IT services — typically endpoint management, help desk, security, backup, and strategic IT — to other businesses under a recurring contract.
The customer-facing function and tooling that receives, triages, and resolves IT requests. Service desks sit on top of a ticketing system; the service desk is the practice, ticketing is the engine.
A framework and discipline for delivering IT as a service to end users. ITIL is the most well-known body of practice. PSA is the MSP analog of internal-IT ITSM.
Information Technology Infrastructure Library — the most adopted ITSM framework. Defines processes like incident, problem, change, and request management.
An arrangement where an MSP works alongside an internal IT team rather than replacing it. PSA tooling has to support both teams operating on the same tickets.
9 terms
The system of record for client requests, incidents, and service tasks. Tickets carry status, priority, SLA timer, owner, and a conversation thread.
A contractual commitment to respond to and resolve specific ticket categories within defined timeframes. Common SLAs: 15-min response for P1, 4-hour resolution for P2.
Why it matters
Tracking SLA performance is how MSPs prove they're delivering against the contract — and how they catch capacity problems before clients complain.
An internal target a service team aims to hit, usually tighter than the contractual SLA. Hit your SLO, and you're never in danger of breaching the SLA.
Logging billable and non-billable time against tickets, projects, and clients. Drives invoicing, payroll, capacity planning, and per-client profitability.
Coordinating multi-step work that spans days, weeks, or months — onboarding a new client, deploying Microsoft 365, migrating to a new firewall. Tracks tasks, milestones, dependencies, and budget vs. actuals.
Rules and triggers that automate operational steps — e.g., auto-route P1 tickets to the on-call tech, auto-send a renewal reminder 60 days out, auto-charge a card when an invoice generates.
An incoming email to a shared address (e.g., help@) is automatically parsed into a ticket — sender becomes contact, subject becomes title, body becomes description.
The act of assigning a new ticket to the right technician, with the right priority, in the right queue. Increasingly augmented by AI.
The percentage of available technician hours that are billable. The single most predictive metric of MSP profitability. Healthy range: 65–80%.
5 terms
The set of active sales opportunities, organized by stage (prospect → qualified → proposal → won/lost). Lives in CRM.
The contract event at the end of an agreement term, when a customer either renews, churns, or renegotiates. MSP businesses live on renewals.
The unified record of a client company — contacts, agreements, tickets, time, invoices, lifetime value. Lives at the intersection of CRM and PSA.
A regular review meeting between MSP and client covering performance, projects, roadmap, and the renewal trajectory. The leading indicator of retention.
A fractional senior advisor — usually provided by the MSP — who runs strategic IT planning for the client. Drives QBRs, technology roadmaps, and budget conversations.
8 terms
The signed scope-of-service document between MSP and client — what's covered, what's billable extra, term length, price, escalation. The PSA turns this into recurring invoices.
Auto-generated invoices on a fixed cadence (monthly, quarterly) tied to an agreement. Combines per-seat fees, fixed retainers, and metered usage.
The predictable monthly revenue from active agreements. The valuation multiplier for MSP M&A. Tracked separately from one-time project revenue.
MRR × 12. Standard metric for board-level reporting.
How long unpaid invoices have sat past their due date — 0–30, 31–60, 61–90, 90+. The cash-flow health indicator.
Total revenue earned divided by total hours worked (billable + non-billable). Reveals whether a flat-fee contract is actually profitable.
Revenue from a client minus the labor cost to deliver. PSA platforms surface this in real time so the MSP knows which clients are profitable before year-end.
Billing built directly on the Stripe payments platform — invoices, retries, card-on-file, and dunning happen inside the PSA rather than via an export to a separate accounting tool.
7 terms
An attestation report (Type I or Type II) showing a vendor's controls meet the AICPA Trust Services Criteria — security, availability, confidentiality, processing integrity, privacy. Required by most enterprise buyers.
EU General Data Protection Regulation. Governs how vendors handle personal data of EU residents. Requires a Data Processing Addendum (DPA) with sub-processor disclosure.
California Consumer Privacy Act and its successor CPRA. Grants California residents rights over their personal data — access, deletion, opt-out of sale.
US health-data law. MSPs supporting healthcare clients need their PSA configured to handle PHI under a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
The contract between a vendor (processor) and customer (controller) that defines how customer data is handled under GDPR Article 28.
A third-party service the vendor uses to deliver its product (hosting, email, analytics). GDPR requires disclosure of all sub-processors handling customer data.
Multi-Factor Authentication (something-you-have + something-you-know) and Single Sign-On (one identity across all apps). Both are table-stakes security for PSA access.
5 terms
Using LLMs to produce a short summary of a long ticket thread so the next technician can ramp in seconds rather than reading 40 emails.
Proactive surfacing of clients showing churn-risk patterns — silent for too long, escalating ticket volume, slipping NPS. In Orbit, this is Tuesday AI's daily brief.
The class of AI model (e.g., Claude, GPT-4) used for natural-language tasks — summarization, classification, drafting. In a PSA context, LLMs power ticket assistance and intent routing.
Auto-categorizing inbound messages by what the customer actually wants (password reset, billing question, outage report) so they can be routed to the right queue.
Automatically assigning a new ticket to the right tech based on rules (client → owner) or AI (intent → skill).
See the terms in action
PSA, CRM, ticketing, time, agreements, recurring billing, AI risk briefings, and security posture — $59/user/month vs $174 of fragmented stacks.
