How many days do we have left?
The customer bought licences last year with ten days of implementation and two days of training. Some was used at the start. An engineer spent half a day on a follow-up call in the spring. A training session was booked, then postponed. Now the customer asks how many days they have left, and nobody can answer without going through timesheets, emails and the original quote.
Elsewhere, an engineer has been helping another customer for weeks on a goodwill basis, on a deal that included no services at all.
Why services days drift out of view
In a reseller, services are sold by account managers as part of a licence deal, but delivered by a technical team that works from a different system. The deal records the days sold. Timesheets or a PSA tool record time spent, often against a general customer code rather than the specific services purchase. Nothing joins the two.
Prepaid days may also have terms, such as a use-by date, that your sales team agreed and your services team never saw.
| Where it is recorded | What it holds | What is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Quote and deal | Days sold, price, terms | What has been used |
| Timesheets or PSA | Hours logged by engineer | Which purchase they draw from |
| Engineer's notes | What was done | Whether it was billable |
| Invoice | What was billed | Remaining balance |
What the drift costs
Unused prepaid days expire with the customer unhappy, or are honoured long after they should have been, depending on who asks. Work delivered without being sold is margin given away. Customers lose trust when you cannot tell them their own balance. Engineers cannot see whether a request is covered, so they either refuse politely or say yes to everything.
It also muddies scoping. If nobody knows how many days an implementation of a given product really took, the next quote for the same product is another guess, and the pattern of underselling services repeats.
The services balance we build
- Services purchases: services lines on each deal become a services purchase for the customer, with days or hours, type such as implementation or training, and any terms your team agreed, such as a use-by date.
- Time link: engineers log time in your PSA tool or timesheet system as now, and entries for that customer are linked to the right purchase, with a prompt when more than one could apply.
- Balance view: each customer shows days sold, used and remaining per purchase, visible to account managers, engineers and, if you wish, the customer through a simple report.
- Alerts: balances running low and days approaching a use-by date alert the account manager, which is a natural moment to talk about more services or schedule the remaining days.
- Unsold work report: time logged for customers with no services balance is listed each month, so managers can decide whether it was goodwill, billable or a sign a customer needs a services package.
- Billing link: where services are billed on use rather than prepaid, used time flows to draft invoices in your accounts package.
What your team sees afterwards
When a customer asks for help, the engineer can see whether they have days available. The account manager knows who is running low and who has days about to expire. Monthly reports show services sold versus delivered by customer and by account manager, so services pricing and scoping improve over time.
Is this happening with your services days?
- Nobody can quickly say how many prepaid days a customer has left.
- Engineers log time against a general customer code.
- Prepaid days have expired without the customer being told.
- Engineers do unbilled work because they cannot see what was sold.
- Services terms agreed in sales never reach the technical team.