Blocks with a balance. Every morning.
Every prepaid block’s hours left, every morning, to the owners and whoever they name. The client can be told what is left before it is gone.
Industries · Value-added resellers
The hardware is quoted. The hours are counted.
Services are where the margin is. Ceed keeps the hours on the statement of work and holds the one that would cross it.
For resellers of two to fifty people. Ceed runs the services hours, not the product quote.
Foxglove Manufacturing · May · 24 h blockHeld
25.0 of 24 h
Wed 20 May · 3.0 h · Switch-stack cutover, VLAN remap and validation · Devin R.
Held for approval. 1.0 h over the block.
ApproveDecline
$4,440
the implementation block
24 h
the hours behind it
$210
the hour past it
$4.44
Ceed, this month
Absorbed into the margin. Or raised at the hour.
A switch refresh ships with 24 implementation hours on the statement of work. The engineer’s hours are compiled after cutover night, finance compares them with the statement, and the overrun is written off against the hardware margin or raised as a change order weeks after the work.
Ceed counts every entry against the block the day it is logged. The hour that would cross 24 waits for the services lead, and the change order is a conversation on cutover night, with the client, not a write-off in the next quarter.
“A VAR is profitable because of volume… there are months you make almost no money.”
u/SteadierChoice, r/msp, September 2025.
Held. Not hidden.
The hour that would push a client over budget is saved, marked, and waits for a yes or no. Nothing is billed quietly. Nothing disappears.
- Logged
3.0 h · Foxglove Manufacturing · Cutover
- Held
Over the 24-hour block. Waiting for Renee.
- Approved
2.0 h inside the block. 1.0 h as a change order at $210.
One set of hours. Everything follows.
Subcontracted hands. Same record.
A deployment sub’s hours count against the same statement of work. Their statement is computed from the entries your invoice used.
Beside your quoting tool. Not instead of it.
Product margin lives in your quoting tool and your ledger. Ceed is the record of hours and money for the services you sell beside the box.
Invoice · Foxglove Manufacturing · May 2026Computed
Implementation block · 24 h at $185.00$4,440.00
Approved change order · 1.0 h at $210.00$210.00
Total$4,650.00
Computed from the statement of work dated 4 May 2026. The hardware is invoiced from your quoting system as before.
From the field. In their words.
What resellers and their customers say in public about services margin, prepaid credits and the hours behind the quote. Linked and dated. Not our words.
Said on X.
Selling a laptop or licence is easy to copy. Understanding a customer’s infrastructure, combining products from several vendors, managing deployment, and supporting the system after installation creates a deeper relationship.
… Large infrastructure projects can generate substantial cash profit but carry lower percentage margins. Hardware grew faster than software and services. That mix helped revenue and absolute profit, but diluted the gross profit rate.
It’s because of the channel. 100%. If all vendors published their price points it would be trivial to back into reseller margins. I’m not allowed to even send a quote directly to a customer.
Without further ado, let’s dive into how a legacy value-added reseller tumbled into bankruptcy with a stressed capital structure from untimely acquisitions, rising floating-rate debt, and supply chain disruptions exacerbated by vendor concentration.
Said on YouTube.
Said elsewhere.
- RedditHow do you handle process management as a software VAR?r/msp · October 2025 · a VAR co-founder on invoices, renewals and margins in spreadsheets
- RedditVAR? MSP? What to do? Sanity checkr/msp · September 2025 · hourly everything against bundled fees, and payment upfront for small clients
- RedditWhat do you value out of your VAR?r/networking · September 2025 · customers and vendors on design help, statements of work and unpaid after-hours work
- ArticleService Leadership Index, Q4 2024: product up, project services downService Leadership · February 2025 · the VAR benchmark
- ArticleState of the Channel 2025GTIA · March 2025 · who sells product, who sells services
- ArticleHPE Service Credits datasheetHPE, hosted by BlueAlly · unused credits are forfeited at the end of the term
Of what you invoice. That is the pricing page.
Invoice $4,440 of services this month and Ceed costs $4.44. The hardware you invoice from your quoting system is not Ceed’s invoice and costs nothing. No seats, no tiers, no minimum.
Questions. Answers.
Does Ceed replace our quoting tool or ERP?
No. Quotes, product margin and the ledger stay where they are. Ceed is the record of hours and money for the services on the statement of work, and the invoice comes out as a document for your ledger.
Services are 15 percent of our revenue. Is 0.1% charged on the hardware invoices?
No. Ceed charges 0.1% of the invoices it computes. Product you invoice elsewhere costs nothing.
The statement says 24 hours and the engineer is at 23 on cutover night. Does the hold stop the work?
No. The hold holds the billing question, never the work. The hours are logged and held, and the services lead decides in the morning, with the client’s yes or no on the record.
Prepaid credit packs expire after 12 months. Can Ceed show the client what is left?
The balance is visible every morning to the owners and whoever they name, and you can tell the client before it is gone.
Our deployment sub bills us monthly. Can their statement net against the hours the client approved?
Yes. The sub’s hours are on the same record as yours, so their statement and your invoice are computed from the same entries, approved hours included.
From the blog: Held. Not hidden. The agreement said 40 hours. The month said 47. Other firms Ceed is for: IT MSPs · IT consulting · Security MSSPs · all nineteen.