Transforming MSP Operations with SquaredUp & HaloPSA: The Focus IT Story

In just one day, Focus IT gained real‑time operational visibility across their HaloPSA tool. After struggling with manual checks, complex internal dashboards, and costly tools that never fully delivered, they found a solution in SquaredUp.

Focus IT is one of the UK’s pioneering Managed Service Providers, with over 20 years of experience and a reputation as trusted strategic advisors.

By guiding long‑term technology decisions, they support customers not just through technical delivery, but as strategic partners.

For Matt Dunn, Operations Director, the journey from trainee engineer to leader over the last 10 years has given him a unique perspective on what makes an MSP truly successful: visibility, efficiency, and data-driven decision-making.

Life before SquaredUp – the MSP visibility challenge

Matt's search for the right analytics solution at Focus IT has been a three-year journey.

Three years ago, Focus IT made the 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.

“We wanted live dashboards that showed what was happening right now. This included ticket volumes, workload distribution, customer trends.’’

Without dashboards, Matt couldn't easily answer simple operational questions in real time without manual checks across multiple reports.

Internal tools reached their limit

Focus IT turned to their internal development team to build custom Power BI dashboards. While this worked for high-level business analytics, they weren’t designed for the real‑time operational insight the team needed.

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.”

Third party tools fell short too

Focus IT then explored external dashboarding tools to bridge the gap.

Although these tools provided some useful metrics, they didn’t fully meet the team’s needs for accuracy, ease of use, or day‑to‑day operational visibility.

They also found they were paying for far more functionality than they used – the cost was significant, but realistically, they were using only 20% of it.

Manual work became a bottleneck

But the visuals and the cost weren't the biggest problem. 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,” Matt explains. “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 began looking for a solution. He saw SquaredUp mentioned in the HaloPSA Discord community - just as SquaredUp and HaloPSA released a webinar showcasing their partnership integration. He 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:

“This 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, Focus IT has completely transformed how they manage their MSP operations.

Real‑time visibility has replaced hours of manual checking, giving the team instant clarity across workloads, ticket queues, customer activity, and performance trends.

Their main operational dashboard is displayed on a TV in the support office, giving the entire team a shared, always‑on view of what’s happening.

Matt can monitor it from home, team leads use it to prioritise work, and engineers can instantly see how the day is shaping up.

Key metrics surfaced instantly include:

• Tickets In Progress - by Team Member
• Tickets Needing Responses
• Unassigned Tickets
• Customer Activity Levels
• ‘Kill Rate’ Percentages

Visual design that works

Clear colour‑coded monitoring highlights issues immediately. With red or amber tiles signalling where attention is needed and enabling the team to resolve potential problems before they escalate.

This shared visibility has eliminated the need to dig through individual tickets or rely on constant check‑ins to understand progress.

Instead, Matt now sees the full picture, at a glance:

“For example, I can see there are 12 tickets in progress on the support board and 3 in projects.’’

The dashboards have delivered several major benefits for Focus IT.

Results at a glance

• Hours of manual ticket checking eliminated
• Real‑time visibility across hybrid teams
• Operational dashboard built in under one day
• Proactive workload management & reduced burnout
• Instant data accuracy from HaloPSA
• Single source of truth across teams

Enterprise-level insights without enterprise-level cost

Beyond functionality and ease of use, SquaredUp provided value over and above Focus IT’s expectations.

Instead of paying for large, rigid tiers with unused features, they could start with exactly what they needed and scale naturally as their requirements grew.

As Matt explains:

“Cost wasn’t the main factor, but once we understood how the pricing aligned with the value we were getting, it made the decision even easier.”

What's next for Focus IT and SquaredUp?

Having transformed visibility across their support operation, Focus IT isn’t slowing down.

Matt and the team are now expanding SquaredUp across the wider business’ tech stack to unlock even more insight and efficiency.

Next on the roadmap:

• Sales dashboards: Bringing the same real‑time visibility to quotes, pipeline health, and team performance.
• Customer‑facing dashboards: Giving clients live, shareable views of their environments.
• Unified “single pane of glass” views: Combining HaloPSA, Microsoft 365 and Azure into one place.
• Future integrations: Preparing to enhance dashboards even further once integrations such as NinjaOne and Huntress become available.

The bottom line

For Focus IT, data‑driven decision‑making is no longer a goal it’s a necessity to how they run their business.

Teams like Focus IT aren’t just seeing better dashboards — they’re transforming the way their MSP operates.

SquaredUp is providing MSPs with the flexible analytics platform that adapts as your 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.