Accounts rarely churn suddenly. They decline through rising ticket volume, slipping margin, and a quiet contact who stops attending reviews, all visible a quarter or two ahead if anyone is scoring them.
Estimate margin including unbilled work. An account at full fee that consumes twice the budgeted hours is unprofitable. Track hours against the account, including the informal favours, or the scorecard measures revenue rather than margin.
Watch the relationship indicators. A contact who stops attending reviews, or a new IT-literate hire on the client side, both predict churn more reliably than ticket volume. Score them explicitly.
Attach an action to each band. Scoring without a triggered action is just reporting. Define what happens at amber and red: an account review, a commercial conversation, a service improvement plan.
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Score each dimension 1-5. Total out of 25, with the bands below.
| Client | Margin | Ticket trend | Estate risk | Relationship | Payment | Total | Band | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client A | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 21 | Healthy | Standard QBR |
| Client B | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 13 | At risk | Account review this month |
More free templates IT teams use alongside this one.
A QBR that reports ticket counts tells the client what they already suspect, that they pay you and things happen. A QBR that prices the risks you are carrying and proposes specific remediation creates both renewal confidence and new work.
Margin erosion in managed services comes from scope ambiguity rather than from underpricing. Written exclusions are worth more than written inclusions, because disputes are always about something that was never listed either way.
MSP onboarding determines the margin on an account for its entire life. Estates documented properly in the first thirty days generate predictable ticket volumes; estates taken on blind generate surprises that get absorbed into a fixed fee.
Margin including unbilled work, ticket volume trend per user, the risk condition of their estate, relationship engagement, and payment behaviour. Each scored on a defined scale with an action triggered by the band.
A contact who stops attending reviews, recommendations declined without discussion, a newly hired IT-literate person on the client side, requests for itemised billing breakdowns, and questions about the contract notice period.
Track hours consumed against the account, including informal unbilled work, and compare against the fee. An account at full price consuming double the budgeted hours is loss-making, and revenue-based reporting will not show it.
