IT services company

Context

An IT firm sells three kinds of service at once: fixed-price implementation by milestone, hourly support (T&M) and periodic maintenance (retainer). The biggest risk is billing hours twice or leaving hours unbilled.

Who is involved

• Sales: Deal, Quotation
• Service coordinator: Service Contract, Ticket, Service Order
• Consultants / engineers: SM Timesheet
• PM: Service Project, Milestone
• Accounting: Billing queue, Invoice

Apps & switches to turn on

• CRM, Sales
• Service Management (contracts, tickets, Billing queue)
• Time Tracking
• Finance
• Switch: deal_won_creates_service_contract (optional)

Flow

1. Won Deal → Service Contract (fixed / T&M / retainer)
2. Ticket or Service Project → work
3. Approved SM Timesheet / completed Milestone
4. Billing queue → Invoice → Payment

Initial setup

1. Link each service SKU to one service Catalog entry.
2. Prepare Service Contract templates per billing model.
3. Configure rate cards and retainer allowances.

Daily / monthly operations

• Daily: handle Tickets, log SM Timesheets.
• Weekly: approve Timesheets.
• Monthly: review the Billing queue, invoice, watch retainer utilization.

Common scenarios

• Hourly services (legal, IT, outsourcing)
• Multi-phase implementation / SOW
• Periodic maintenance / retainer
• Service hours: SM Timesheet or operations project time?
• Helpdesk request that belongs to a service contract
• Scope change mid-contract
• Worked 6 hours, bill the customer 4

AI assistants

• The Service Management assistant suggests Billing queue and retainer reviews; it only proposes, people decide.