Product next to service
Hardware and licences sit as their own line items next to the hours on one invoice, each position with its own billing.
ERP software for IT systems houses: hardware, licences and effort in one system.
An IT systems house sources hardware and licences on one side and takes on services billed by effort or against a quota on the other. The systems house is the link between customers and vendors. teamspace brings these worlds together:
- Setup and sourcing
- Services and operations
In brief
What is IT systems house software?
Systems house software helps IT systems houses bundle their commercial and operational processes into one system. Instead of running separate tools in parallel, every part of the business draws on the same information: less duplicated work, and orders, projects and services that can be steered profitably. On top of that, systems houses face challenges of their own.
- Managing managed services and service contracts
- Ticket and helpdesk system
- Project management for IT projects
- Time tracking and resource planning
- CRM for customers and sales opportunities
- Sourcing and managing hardware and software
- Licence and maintenance contracts
- Billing projects, service call-outs and recurring services
- Reporting on utilisation, profitability and service quality
Starting point
Why systems houses work differently from IT service providers.
An IT systems house is the first port of call for everything to do with the customer's IT systems.
Operations and services
Alongside the classic project work, one thing counts above all here: availability. Committed response times are written into the contract as a service level agreement, or SLA. Then there is billing against quotas and maintenance retainers. A maintenance retainer often includes a set amount of hours per month that is already paid for.
Deadline pressure and dependence on vendors and distribution
On the trading side the main problem is co-ordinating the timing. Hardware and licences have to arrive on time, the systems have to be set up and taken responsibility for. Price changes from the vendor want a quick answer. And every licence adjustment or cancellation has to be passed on, in both directions.
IT systems houses therefore work differently from ordinary IT service providers, who are finished once a project ends. The relationship is long-term and geared towards operations that keep running smoothly.
In daily work
IT systems houses design, source, deliver and operate.
A systems house supplies its customers with the services their day-to-day needs. And teamspace keeps the day-to-day of the systems house itself running smoothly.
One product, many orders
A licence grows over years. teamspace brings its positions together from all orders and shows per customer who draws how many.
From project into service
The implementation project becomes the service contract with one click, with master data and contacts carried over.
Service billing
Trade and service belong on one invoice.
Hardware and licence follow different rules than the service hour: one runs on regularly for years, the other is delivered once. teamspace ties both to one customer and settles them on one invoice, each position with its own logic.
Produkt · Handel
Hardware 3.600 €
einmal · Einkauf und Verkauf
Notebook ProBook · 4 Stück
Lizenz monatlich
läuft weiter · Zeitdauer
Microsoft 365 E3 · 24 Lizenzen
Ein Produkt
bündelt seine Posten
über viele Aufträge zusammengeführt
Einkauf, Verkauf, Marge am Artikel
Eine Rechnung
Leistung
Projekt
Festpreis oder Aufwand
Einführung Beta AG
Wartung
pauschal, Überlauf nach Aufwand
Kontingent 34 / 40 h
Ticket
Service-Zeit am Vertrag
SLA-Restzeit läuft
Stunden, pauschal oder nach Aufwand
Getrennt geführt, auf einer Rechnung abgerechnet.
Feature scope
What makes good systems house software.
Three qualities separate it from a tool that only writes invoices.
Carries two business models at once
The delivery and project business and the ongoing service rest on one foundation, not in two separate systems with a hand-off in between.
Trades without inventory management
Hardware and licences sit as line items on documents and invoices, with purchase and sales price. No warehouse, no stock, no ERP ballast.
Grows step by step
From service desk to full control: light, office and enterprise are configuration, not data migration. The system grows with the firm.
Scope
What teamspace is built for, and what it deliberately is not.
So the boundary does not first come up in the initial call.
Deliberately not
- Warehouse and stock per device
- Procurement logistics
- Production and manufacturing with bills of materials
- Monitoring of its own, meaning RMM. Yours stays where it is.
Built exactly for this
- Hardware, licence and hour as line items on one invoice
- One product bundles its licences across many orders
- Maintenance as a retainer, the overflow by effort
- From the order the project, from the project the service contract
- Margin per order from the post-calculation, up to date daily
Product view
Licences across many orders in one view.
Customers rarely buy licences, managed services and maintenance all at once. They grow over years, spread across many quotes and orders. Anyone who then wants to know how many a customer holds today ends up searching through individual documents.
- teamspace counts for you: brought together from the orders, you see the licences currently running per customer.
- Up and down stays traceable: how the licence count developed over time sits with the product.
- Since when and at what price a customer draws a product is visible at a glance.
Anyone reordering regularly from the vendor also sees here what needs reordering.
“Brilliant. I can see what sales agreed with the customer, something I never used to see.”
What systems houses gain
Product, service and margin under control.
Trade and service on one foundation: hardware and licence as their own line items, maintenance and tickets on the same logic, and the margin per order visible before it closes.
Product
Hardware and licence as their own line items.
Products sit as positions on the order, each with price and billing type, and a product bundles its licences across many orders.
- Hardware, licence and service on one document
- Licence count per customer from the orders
- Hardware with purchase and sales price
Service
Maintenance and tickets on the same footing.
Maintenance runs as a retainer, the overflow by effort; tickets carry the SLA held in the CRM as a remaining-time indicator.
- Retainer and effort on one order
- SLA per customer, remaining time as a traffic light
- Service time booked on the ticket and billed
Margin
Margin per order, before it closes.
The post-calculation sets order, project actuals and invoice against each other, up to date daily instead of at the quarterly close.
- Plan against actual per order, daily
- Post-calculation: order against actual against invoice
- Revenue per product across all customers
What matters
Three things that make the difference.
Highlight 1
Book where the work happens.
Technicians book in the browser, in the app or on a tablet, against a project, a maintenance contract or a ticket. Every hour carries its category, billable or internal.
Highlight 2
Hardware and licence from the item master.
Products pull into the quote and the order with price and price break, and the licence count per customer comes out of the documents.
Highlight 3
One customer, one history.
Project, maintenance, tickets, licences and invoices sit on the same contact, shared instead of maintained four times over.
Recurring
Maintenance and subscriptions bill themselves.
Licences, maintenance and service fees are the quiet backbone of many systems houses. In teamspace they run as a recurring contract instead of being created by hand every month.
- Recurring invoice via a duration position: monthly, quarterly or annually, on a fixed rhythm.
- Automatic renewal for as long as the contract is not cancelled.
- Retainer and effort side by side: the retainer includes a quota of hours, and only what goes beyond it is added to the invoice.
Price changes take effect from the next period if you wish, so the running billing stays stable.
Seen in the system
One order, hardware, licence and service in a single view.
In the order all positions sit side by side, each with its own billing type, delivery status and amount. Four statuses run in parallel, and the post-calculation compares order, project actuals and invoice.
PositionenAbrechnungNachkalkulationHistorie
Auftrag 20260042 · Müller GmbH
Auftrag laufend Lieferung in Teilen Rechnung Abschlag Zahlung offen
Konzept & Umsetzung
Konzeptphase Festpreis geliefert 12.000 €
Umsetzung · Seniorsatz Aufwand 64 / 120 h 9.280 €
Wartung & Hardware
Wartungspauschale Zeitdauer monatlich 480 €
Hardware · 4 Lizenzen Lieferposition Lieferschein 3.600 €
Auftrag
25.360 €
beauftragt
Projekt-Ist
22.910 €
Ist gebucht
Rechnung
21.480 €
gestellt
Die Nachkalkulation vergleicht alle drei, bis auf die Position.
Feasibility
Bring along an order with hardware and service.
In the initial call you see how product and service come together as separate line items, and where your contract logic is covered.
Who it is for
Which firms get the most out of systems house software.
Software for systems houses pays off where work is delivered, operated and sourced on top. Three profiles we see particularly often, from a team of ten to a firm with several hundred staff.
Mid-sized systems houses that trade
- Hardware and licences as line items next to the service
- One product bundles its licences across many orders
- Maintenance as a retainer, overflow by effort
Managed service providers (MSP)
- Service contract with an hour quota and overflow
- Tickets with SLA remaining time and escalation
- Recurring invoicing via recurring contracts
Systems integrators and resellers with project work
- Implementation project and service contract on one foundation
- Contractors and subcontractors in the same resource pool
- Licence count and revenue per product visible
Prices
Prices, price breaks and margin per customer.
Prices sit on the item, not in a separate spreadsheet. teamspace keeps a price list per customer, with tiered rates and volume discounts.
- Tiered prices and volume structures, closed, open or as a percentage tier.
- Hardware with purchase and sales price, so the margin per position is visible.
- Price changes across many items at once, optionally taking effect only from the next period.
That keeps the price consistent, from the price list through the quote to the invoice.
Comparison
Tool mix against teamspace.
Where an end-to-end system differs from a helpdesk tool, hours in Excel and a separate licence spreadsheet.
Feature
Helpdesk, Excel, licence sheet
teamspace
Recommended Hardware, licence and service on one invoice
Licence count per customer from the orders
manual
Maintenance as a recurring invoice
manual
Retainer and effort on one order
SLA remaining time as a traffic light, with escalation
Margin per order from the post-calculation
ZUGFeRD and XRechnung without an extra tool
Hosting in an ISO 27001 data centre in Frankfurt
varies
Category
PSA, MRR, RMM: the industry's three acronyms.
PSA stands for professional services automation: the software category that bundles everything commercial into one system for IT service providers and systems houses, meaning tickets, contracts, time, projects and billing. Internationally, Autotask and ConnectWise are the well-known names. teamspace is the PSA from Germany and goes one step further in one respect: hardware, licence and hour sit on the same order and on the same invoice. Add to that the certified DATEV interface, XRechnung and ZUGFeRD out of the box, hosting in Frankfurt am Main and a contracting party under German law.
MRR, monthly recurring revenue, is the revenue that comes back every month from running contracts. Maintenance, licences and hosting retainers run in teamspace as recurring contracts, and the running contracts are visible per customer and in total, with count and amount. That is the figure that shows how predictable your business really is alongside the trading side.
RMM stands for remote monitoring and management and watches over your customers' systems. That is the technical half of a systems house's day, and it is not what we do. teamspace is the commercial half: alerts become tickets, tickets become booked hours, hours become invoices against the right contract. Via the REST API, tickets can be created in teamspace straight out of your monitoring. You keep your RMM and gain end-to-end billing alongside it.
Where it fits
Is teamspace an ERP for systems houses?
Yes, an industry-specific one. An ERP for systems houses runs customers, quotes, orders, projects, service and billing on one data foundation. That is exactly what teamspace does, and it leaves out the part a systems house rarely needs: production, bills of materials and warehousing. Whether you call the result ERP software for systems houses or software for IT systems houses is a matter of language. Either way it means the same bracket around customer management, projects, support tickets, time tracking and billing.
Systems house ERP: what sits behind the search term
Anyone searching for a systems house ERP is rarely after a manufacturing ERP with a systems house module, but a system that carries the day-to-day of an IT systems house. A classic ERP comes from manufacturing. It thinks in material, stock and production orders, and a systems house drags three quarters of that along without ever using it. An ERP for the IT systems house thinks in customer, contract, hour and product instead: hardware and licence are positions with a purchase and a sales price, maintenance is a contract with a quota, the hour hangs on a work package. That is the leaner cut, and the reason a rollout takes weeks rather than quarters.
What that means for the trading side
teamspace runs hardware, licences and maintenance as products with a price list, price breaks and margin, but without a warehouse and stock. Anyone who stores devices and orders from a distributor keeps their inventory management system for that. Anyone who passes hardware through, has it shipped straight to the customer and mainly sells licences, cloud services and managed services no longer needs a second system. Anyone looking for the framework entirely without trading will find it in the software for IT service providers. teamspace has been developed in Darmstadt since 1999.
Feature scope
Features for IT systems houses at a glance.
Included in the plan, with no per-module surcharge.
Product and trade
- Hardware, licences and maintenance as products
- Licence count per customer from the orders
- Hardware with purchase and sales price
- Price list per customer, tiered prices and volume discounts
- Products from templates per product type
Project and service
- Project structure with phases, tasks and work packages
- Booking hours against a project, maintenance contract or ticket
- Maintenance contract with hour quota and overflow
- Service tickets with SLA remaining time and escalation
- Contractors and subcontractors in the resource pool
Billing and control
- Recurring invoices via recurring contracts
- Fixed price, effort and retainer on one order
- ZUGFeRD and XRechnung without an extra tool
- Post-calculation: order, project actuals and invoice
- Hand-off to DATEV Unternehmen online (Enterprise)
- Since 1999
- ISO 27001 data centre
- GDPR with a data processing agreement
- Processing within the EU
- GoBD compliant
The data centre in Frankfurt am Main holds the certificate, not teamspace itself. The contracting party is 5 POINT AG under German law.
Next step
We go through your orders and contracts.
Show us an order with hardware, licence and service. We show how teamspace carries both worlds on one invoice, and where your current setup is good enough.
Why teamspace
What stands behind the software.
From Darmstadt since 1999
We have been developing teamspace in Darmstadt since 1999, self-funded and without outside capital. More than 80 IT companies work with it every day.
Hosting in Frankfurt
Operated in an ISO 27001 certified data centre in Frankfurt am Main, with data processing strictly within the EU. The data centre holds the certificate, not teamspace itself.
Product, service and invoice in one place
Trade, project, maintenance and invoice all draw on the same records. No export between a licence sheet, a ticket tool and the accounts.
Case Study
From a tool mix to the licence on the right contract.
A typical migration scenario: a Microsoft partner systems house that implements cloud migrations, then operates them and resells licences, with separate tools for tickets, hours, invoices and licences. The real reference point for this is tetronik: more than 750 maintenance projects run there in teamspace, with sales, order and invoice on the same record. The example itself is hypothetical and serves to illustrate how this works; actual figures depend on the starting position, size and implementation and are not guaranteed.
Starting point
Tickets ran in a helpdesk tool, hours in a time tracking app, invoices in the accounts, licences in a spreadsheet kept centrally by one person. At month end someone brought the figures together by hand. Which licence ran at which customer on which contract was not recorded in any reliable list, and the hand-off from project into service was tracked manually.
Solution
Hardware, licence and service now sit as line items on the same order, each with its billing type. One product bundles its licences across all orders, and the count per customer sits in the system. Maintenance runs as a recurring contract, with the overflow billed by effort. The post-calculation shows the margin per order before it closes.
1
System instead of four separate tools
0
Licences without an assigned contract
live
Margin per order, not first at the close
Module overview
What borders on trade and service.
Six areas go deeper on individual questions around product, order, billing and service.
Product management
Licences, maintenance and hardware as products, with the count per customer from the orders.
Learn moreOrder management
Effort, fixed price, maintenance and hardware in one order, with the status up to date daily.
Learn moreInvoicing software
Recurring invoices, ZUGFeRD and XRechnung, hand-off to DATEV.
Learn moreOrder billing
Retainer, effort and maintenance on one order, with post-calculation.
Learn moreService desk software
Tickets with channels, SLA traffic light and escalation, service time billed directly.
Learn moreProject management
Project structure, plan against actual and contribution margin per project.
Learn moreTerms
Eleven terms from the systems house day.
Words that keep coming up in trade, project and service work, plus the four English acronyms the industry uses to describe itself.
- PSA
- Professional services automation: software that bundles tickets, contracts, time, projects and billing into one system for systems houses. teamspace is a PSA from Germany.
- MSP
- Managed service provider: a firm that runs customer IT continuously for a retainer instead of only repairing it when it breaks. Contracts with a quota and an SLA are at the heart of the model.
- MRR
- Monthly recurring revenue, the revenue that comes back every month from running contracts. The key figure for predictability alongside the trading business.
- RMM
- Remote monitoring and management: software for remotely watching over and maintaining customer systems. The technical counterpart to a PSA, connected via the REST API.
- Systems house software
- An application that runs the product and the service side of an IT systems house on one data foundation: hardware and licences as line items next to projects, maintenance and support tickets, with one invoice for both worlds.
- Product without a warehouse
- Licences, maintenance and hardware as term-based products. A product bundles its document positions across many orders and shows the count per customer, without anything sitting in a warehouse.
- Licence count
- The number of licences currently running per customer, added up by teamspace from all orders, together with how it developed over time.
- Recurring contract
- An order that renews automatically and bills on a fixed rhythm, for example for licence and maintenance retainers.
- ERP for systems houses
- An ERP cut to the shape of a systems house: customer, contract, project, hour and product in one logic, without the production, bills of materials and warehousing of a classic ERP.
- Inventory management
- A system for warehouse, stock and supplier ordering. teamspace is not that: trade runs at document and invoice level, and an existing inventory system stays in place alongside it.
- SLA
- A response time committed per customer or per ticket. The remaining time runs in the ticket as a traffic light, and the escalation kicks in before the deadline.
Related modules
Three modules that trade and service hang on.
Behind every invoice sit the booked hour, the billing engine and the customer with their terms. These three modules mesh directly.
Time tracking
The booked hour is the basis for the effort position and the plan against actual comparison.
Read moreInvoicing software
Documents, dunning and e-invoicing: the billing engine around product and service.
Read moreCRM software
Customer, SLA and terms sit on the contact, shared instead of maintained twice.
Read moreOther industries
Solutions for other service firms.
teamspace comes in versions for six industries. Here are the five alongside the IT systems house.
Software vendors
Your own product on a release cycle, with licences and maintenance as a running base.
Industry pageManagement consulting
Days of clever minds, utilisation across teams and fee invoicing.
Industry pageIT service providers
Projects and ongoing operations, every hour on the right contract.
Industry pageFrequently asked questions about systems house software
What sets systems house software apart from software for a pure IT service provider?
A systems house is the IT service provider that also trades. On the invoice, hardware and licences sit as their own line items next to the service. teamspace runs product and service on one data foundation: a product bundles its licences across many orders, and the hours run against projects, maintenance contracts and tickets. More on the pure operations side on the overview for IT service providers.
Can we carry hardware and licences on the order?
Yes. Hardware, licences and other delivery positions sit as positions on the order, with quantity and price from the item and the price list. Delivery notes and invoices take them into account. If you calculate hardware with a purchase price, a sales price and a margin, product management is where that happens. teamspace is not an inventory management system, though: trade stays at document and invoice level.
How do we keep track of licences across many orders?
Every document position can be attached to a product, whatever the document type. teamspace brings the positions together from all quotes and orders and shows per customer the licences currently running, how they developed over time, since when the contract has run and at what price. More in product management.
How do a maintenance retainer, effort and support tickets come together?
The maintenance contract carries a quota of hours, and the support tickets book their time against it. As long as the quota lasts, support is covered by the retainer; anything beyond it is billed by effort through the allocation rules. Retainer, effort and licence positions sit on the same order, and the invoice at the end of the period brings them together in one document. Every ticket also carries the SLA held in the CRM as a remaining-time indicator.
Can maintenance and licences be billed automatically?
Yes. Maintenance, licences and subscriptions run via duration positions. The order becomes a recurring contract, renews automatically and issues its invoice on the rhythm you set, monthly, quarterly or annually. Price changes take effect from the next period if you wish. More on order billing.
How does the ticket system with SLAs work?
Service enquiries reach the service desk by email, phone or a web form. The SLA held per customer in the CRM is assigned to new tickets automatically, the remaining time runs in the ticket as a traffic light, and the escalation kicks in before the deadline, not after it. Service time is booked on the ticket and billed from there. More on service desk software.
Is a plain ticket tool enough for an IT systems house?
For support alone a ticket tool will do, for a systems house rarely. Alongside support, a systems house also sells hardware, licences and projects, and those belong on the same customer and the same invoice. A plain ticket system takes in enquiries but knows neither the product nor the maintenance contract nor the margin per order. A ticket tool on its own is therefore not yet a systems house tool. Systems house software brings support tickets, projects, maintenance contracts and billing together in one system.
Does teamspace have an RMM of its own?
No, and that is deliberate. RMM stands for remote monitoring and management, meaning the remote monitoring and maintenance of customer systems. teamspace is a PSA and not an RMM: we do not build monitoring, we connect to yours. Via the REST API, tickets can be created in teamspace straight out of your monitoring, and those become booked hours and invoices against the right contract. If you are looking for a single package of monitoring and billing from one supplier, providers with their own RMM are closer to what you need. If you want to keep your monitoring and settle the commercial side properly in Germany, teamspace fits.
Is teamspace a PSA tool?
Yes. PSA stands for professional services automation, meaning software that bundles tickets, contracts, time, projects and billing into one system for systems houses and IT service providers. teamspace is a PSA from Germany, developed by 5 POINT AG in Darmstadt, and it additionally carries hardware and licences on the same order as the service. The internationally known names in the category are Autotask and ConnectWise.
How do invoices reach e-invoicing and the accounts?
Every invoice is created as ZUGFeRD or XRechnung without an extra tool. Through the certified interface to DATEV Unternehmen online, invoices and credit notes go straight into the DATEV cloud, with no CSV file. Lexware and Sage have no direct interface; there the standard export handles the hand-off. teamspace runs in an ISO 27001 certified data centre in Frankfurt am Main, with processing strictly within the EU; the data centre holds the certificate, not teamspace itself.
Is teamspace suitable for small systems houses too?
Yes. teamspace can be introduced step by step and grows with you. You start with the modules that matter today, usually service desk, time, orders and invoicing, and add product management or CRM later, with no data migration. Moving between the light, office and enterprise editions is configuration, not migration.
What does MRR mean, and does teamspace show it?
MRR stands for monthly recurring revenue, the revenue that comes back every month from running contracts. For managed service providers it is the key figure for predictability. teamspace runs maintenance, licences and hosting retainers as recurring contracts and shows the running contracts per customer and in total, with count and amount.
Is teamspace an ERP for systems houses?
Yes, an industry-specific one. An ERP for systems houses runs customers, orders, projects, service and billing in one logic. teamspace does that and leaves out what comes from manufacturing: production, bills of materials and warehousing. That makes the system leaner than a classic ERP and closer to the day-to-day of a firm that delivers, operates and sources on top.
What does systems house software cost?
teamspace starts at €19 per user per month on a one-year term, with all modules in the plan and no surcharge per feature. On a shorter term a premium applies. The office and enterprise editions differ in feature scope, not in the data foundation, and moving between them is configuration rather than migration. All prices are published openly on the pricing page.
Does teamspace replace our inventory management system?
No, and that is deliberate. teamspace does not cover warehouse, stock or supplier ordering. Hardware and licences run at document and invoice level, with a purchase and a sales price per position, and the margin sits on the order. Anyone running a warehouse keeps their inventory system and gains from teamspace the commercial bracket of project, service and billing. Anyone who passes hardware through and mainly sells licences and managed services needs no second system.
How long does a rollout take in a systems house?
That depends on how much you take on at the start. The usual route is a step-by-step start with the modules that hurt today, usually service desk, time tracking, orders and invoicing; product management and CRM follow later, with no data migration. Because production, bills of materials and warehousing fall away, the cut is leaner than with a classic ERP. In the initial call we go through your orders and contracts and say what makes sense in which order.
Initial call
Systems house software assessed in 15 minutes.
In 15 to 30 minutes we go through your trading side, your orders and your service business. You get a clear read on whether teamspace fits your mix of product and service.