At a Glance

  • Sherweb last week connected its cloud marketplace to HaloPSA's professional services automation (PSA) platform, expanding back-office support for IT service providers. The integration replaces manual account reconciliation and daily syncs with real-time data, the two companies said in an announcement.
  • Purchases made through Sherweb, including services and licenses, flow directly into the PSA platform and are attributed to the correct customer records, reducing billing errors caused by subscription data changing faster than system updates.
  • "As a cloud solution provider (CSP), one of our core value propositions is acting as a billing aggregator," Rick Stern, senior director of platform at Sherweb, told Channel Dive. "That means ensuring data flows correctly from Sherweb to whatever tools MSPs use to run their businesses."

Deep Dive

PSA platforms are where MSP operations ultimately translate into invoices. If license counts, cloud consumption data, or software subscription changes are delayed or incorrect, the problem typically shows up on the bill, leading to unpleasant conversations with customers.

Billing complexity is not a new problem for MSPs, but it is getting harder as customers mix fixed monthly contracts with pay-as-you-go services across hybrid cloud environments. Every license change must be tracked accurately. Even a one-day delay can create reconciliation work, especially when MSPs are preparing invoices and the latest subscription changes have not yet been processed.

The HaloPSA integration eliminates the delay, with purchases and other accrued charges recorded as they are generated.

"'Native' describes the depth of the integration," Stern said. "It's a direct event-driven connection between Sherweb's billing infrastructure and HaloPSA, not a middleware layer or scheduled data pulls."

In a daily sync model, licenses added, changed, or canceled during business hours might not appear in the PSA until the next morning. Stern said this delay forces MSPs to log into multiple platforms, cross-check records, and manually correct errors before invoices go out.

The integration also supports multiple billing scenarios common among MSPs, such as pre-billing and post-billing, monthly payments for annually billed Microsoft licenses, bulk prepayments, and Azure subscription usage. Azure details, including meters, effective dates, and consumption, flow directly into HaloPSA without requiring a separate reconciliation process.

"Most billing failures happen in the gap between when a change occurs and when it actually shows up in an actionable place," Stern said. "This fills that gap and goes further: errors surface automatically before they become billing discrepancies, so MSPs are notified immediately when attention is needed, rather than discovering the problem when a customer calls about an incorrect invoice."

Stern gave an example: an MSP managing a healthcare customer's Microsoft 365 through Sherweb while using HaloPSA. If the customer onboards 12 employees and offboards 4 mid-month, a scheduled sync model would require manually reconciling prorations, tracking unmapped SKUs, and correcting errors after incorrect invoices are sent. Now, "every add and remove flows into HaloPSA in real time," Stern explained. "Quantities update, prorations calculate automatically, and if a new SKU is not yet mapped, the integration flags it in the activity log and notifies the MSP before recurring invoices go out. Issues are caught and resolved at the source, not on the customer's invoice."

The integration further reinforces Sherweb's channel strategy of moving beyond the traditional CSP role. The company recently expanded into the UK, where HaloPSA is headquartered, and received a $125 million investment from Investissement Québec to support global expansion. Stern said Sherweb began talks with HaloPSA about a year ago, when the PSA provider was also gaining momentum, particularly in the UK.

"When we entered that market, our new partners were already using the platform, which made the alignment immediate and practical," Stern said.

HaloPSA continues to gain share in the PSA market as MSPs seek platforms that reduce manual service desk work and support more complex operations. Omdia, a sister company of Channel Dive, recently named it one of the leading RMM and PSA platforms, citing its growth, professional focus, and AI capabilities for ticket prediction, categorization, and auto-acknowledgment.

Sherweb also sees HaloPSA gaining traction among mid-market and growth-stage MSPs, which are exactly Sherweb's target customer base. Stern said the company has expanded its engineering team and added product innovation resources around PSA integrations.

"Sherweb being the first CSP to build a native integration with HaloPSA is significant for partners evaluating PSA platforms," Stern said. "It shows the connection is built for the way cloud-intensive MSP operations actually work. For Sherweb, it reinforces that we are building the infrastructure MSPs rely on to run their businesses, not just selling licenses."