MSPbots to SquaredUp: How Focus IT cut costs by 80% and regained trust in their dashboards

Focus IT is a pioneering UK-based Managed Service Provider with over 20 years of industry experience. As one of the first MSPs established in the UK, they've evolved from their origins as a security-focused business into a comprehensive IT partner that prides themselves on being "trusted advisors" rather than just support technicians.

Today, Focus IT operates as a modern hybrid business with team members spread across the UK. Specializing in Microsoft 365, Azure, and modern workplace solutions, they support customers not just through technical delivery, but as strategic partners — often sitting on boards and helping guide long-term technology decisions.

For Matt Dunn, the Operations Director who has been with Focus IT for nearly a decade, the journey from trainee engineer to leadership has given him a unique perspective on what makes an MSP truly successful: visibility, efficiency, and data-driven decision-making.

Life before SquaredUp

Matt's search for the right analytics solution at Focus IT has been a three-year journey through multiple platforms, each with their own limitations.

Three years ago, Focus IT made a strategic decision to migrate from ConnectWise to HaloPSA. At the time, Halo was rapidly evolving and becoming a popular choice among MSPs looking for a modern, actively developed platform that better supported future growth.

Moving to Halo brought many improvements, but they needed to find a reporting solution to complement the powerful data capabilities of Halo.

"While there are templated reports in Halo, there’s no built-in dashboarding. You have to go off and create your own dashboard or create a report to then adjust as a widget."

Without dashboards, Matt couldn't easily answer fundamental questions: How many tickets has someone got open? How many tickets have we closed this week? How profitable are we per customer?

Custom development wasn't sustainable

Urgently needing a solution, Focus IT turned to their internal development team to build custom Power BI dashboards. While this worked for high-level business analytics, it wasn't sustainable for the real-time visibility they needed for day-to-day operational needs.

Maintaining these dashboards also became increasingly cost and time intensive for the development team, who were already focused on major client projects.

“Pulling ticket data in real time became harder to maintain, and it was a lot of work for our development team. We needed them focused on client projects, not building internal dashboards.”

Expensive tools that didn't deliver

So Focus IT tried MSPbots but it only brought more challenges.

"We swapped to MSPbots, and it didn't really work very well. It wasn't very accurate, so we paused progress."

For about 18 months to two years, Focus IT stuck with MSPbots as their dashboard solution. But it was far from ideal.

"Whilst it didn't look great, it gave us the information that we needed, is what I would say. The setup was just a bit more technically complex."

And the cost was significant — they were on the top tier with unlimited integrations, but Matt estimates that they were using only 20% of the functionality. They were essentially paying for features they didn’t need.

Hours wasted on manual work

But the visuals and the cost weren't the biggest problem. The real issue was time. Without proper dashboards, Matt found himself relying on time consuming manual checks to understand what was happening across the support desk.

‘‘Without a dashboard, I could spend hours clicking through individual tickets just to see where things were up to. It was impossible to get a quick sense of what was progressing and what needed attention.”

This lack of visibility created unnecessary back‑and‑forth: managers often had to follow up directly with engineers simply to understand ticket status or workload.

All this manual checking didn’t just consume time; it also made it hard to spot patterns or emerging issues.

Trends like rising ticket volumes, slipping response times, or overloaded engineers could go unnoticed until they became real problems. This meant the team were often reacting after an issue appeared, rather than having the data they needed to catch it early.

By late 2025, Matt was actively looking for alternatives. That's when someone in Halo's Discord channel mentioned SquaredUp. Matt reached out immediately.

Why Focus IT chose SquaredUp

Focus IT knew exactly what they needed after their experience with other tools.

They needed a solution that could deliver:

• Accurate, real‑time HaloPSA data
• Intuitive dashboard building without specialist training
• Reuse of existing Halo reports and ticket lists
• No developer involvement or ongoing maintenance
• A clean, TV‑friendly visual design for the support office

Within just a few hours of trialling SquaredUp, Matt was already building dashboards and reaping the benefits of the integration with HaloPSA.

The accuracy of the data, coupled with SquaredUp’s ease of use, immediately set it apart.

A key advantage was the ability to reuse existing Halo reports and ticket lists. Instead of rebuilding everything from scratch, Matt could plug in familiar data sources and start visualising them instantly.

By the end of his first day using SquaredUp, Matt had already built a full operational dashboard.

He noted:

SquaredUp is incredibly impressive. It’s far easier to use than anything we’ve tried, and the data is consistently accurate.”

The impact of SquaredUp on Focus IT

Since adopting SquaredUp, Matt and the Focus IT team have transformed how they manage their MSP operations, thanks to real-time visibility that makes workload management more efficient and scalable across their hybrid organization.

The operational dashboards they built have been game-changers. They went from manually clicking through every ticket and messaging staff for status updates to having instant visibility into team workloads, ticket backlogs, customer activity, and performance metrics — all accessible whether working from the London office or remotely from home.

Real-time visibility and accurate data

The primary dashboard now sits on a TV in the support team office, giving everyone instant visibility into what matters. The team leader can look at it, Matt can monitor it from home, and the entire support team has a shared view of operations.

Focus IT's main support team dashboard showing real-time ticket metrics and team performance

The dashboard displays critical metrics at a glance:

• Tickets in progress — by team member
• Tickets needing responses
• Unassigned tickets
• Customer activity levels
• ‘Kill rate’ percentages

This visibility has eliminated hours of manual work. Instead of clicking through every single ticket to check on status or messaging team members on Teams, Matt can see the general scope of what's happening across the business instantly.

Visual design that works

Unlike MSPbots, SquaredUp's visual design makes a real difference when displayed on a TV screen all day in the support office.

"SquaredUp definitely looks a lot nicer than the MSPbots dashboard. The visual design is really well thought out, especially when you're putting it on a TV all day."

The visual appeal isn't just aesthetic — it improves usability. Features like the ticket leaderboard showing who's closed the most tickets each week create healthy motivation among the team. With color-coded monitoring, problems stand out immediately — if something's red or amber, it signals action is needed.

Exceptional value

Beyond the functionality and ease of use, Focus IT found SquaredUp delivered exceptional value.

Unlike the all-or-nothing approach of their previous solution, SquaredUp offered a pay-for-what-you-use approach that allowed Focus IT to get started quickly without a massive upfront investment.

"Costing wasn't necessarily a factor for us to moving, but then when we found out what the cost was, it was also a no-brainer."

The scalability was key — Focus IT could start with what they needed and expand as their requirements grew, rather than paying for features they'd never use. This approach saved them over 80% of their annual dashboarding license costs compared to MSPbots.

What's next for Focus IT and SquaredUp?

Having transformed their ticket management and team visibility, Focus IT isn't stopping there. Matt has ambitious plans to extend SquaredUp's dashboards across more areas of the business.

The next priority is building sales dashboards to track quotes, pipeline activity, and team performance by bringing the same visibility they now have in support to the revenue side of the business.

Customer-facing dashboards are also on the roadmap. Matt has already built prototypes for select clients, and when Ninja RMM integration becomes available, these will become even more powerful.

The goal is creating true "single pane of glass" dashboards that pull together data from multiple sources to tell the complete story of their operations and customer environments.

For Focus IT, data-driven decision-making is fundamental to how they operate. SquaredUp has provided them with the analytics capability they needed — a flexible platform that adapts as their business evolves.

Ready to transform your MSP operations?

By replacing guesswork with real‑time insight, Focus IT now runs with confidence, clarity, and data‑driven decision making.

If you want the same transformation for your MSP, SquaredUp can get you there — fast

👉Start your free trial or book a demo to see how SquaredUp can unlock real‑time insight from your HaloPSA data.