How SquaredUp helped DeKind turn client visibility into a selling point

DeKind has seen measurable changes in our client satisfaction score as well as service metrics. By giving not only our employees more visibility into performance, but our customers too, we've seen improvements in our core operational areas thanks to the visibility and simplicity SquaredUp brings to our operations.

Brian DeKind

President, DeKind

For managed IT service providers, client transparency isn't just a nice-to-have — it's what builds trust, and strengthens long-term partnerships.

Brian founded DeKind Computer Consultants straight out of high school, driven by a simple belief that businesses deserve technology partners who stay ahead of problems, not just fix them. Over two decades later, that one-man shop has grown into a 35-person team serving clients who rely on DeKind to keep their operations running smoothly every single day.

As the business scaled, so did the expectations. Clients wanted more visibility, more data, and more proof that their investment was paying off.

Living with the constraints of manual reporting

For years, Brian and his team relied on a reporting process that was almost entirely manual.

"We would have clients reach out and we would manually pull those out of Zendesk and email those to them, whatever their query was, this was quietly expensive in time, and it wasn't going to scale.”

Clients wanted their data mid-month and at invoice time, but with no self-serve dashboard, every request meant a manual pull from Zendesk. It was a constant cycle of back-and-forth emails. As the team grew, this manual overhead was costing the team days of work every month.

"Here's your data. Godspeed." — why HaloPSA reports weren't enough

The move from Zendesk to HaloPSA was driven by growth. DeKind needed scalability, along with client portals, workflows, quotations, order tracking that Zendesk couldn’t provide. After a 12-month evaluation of the major PSA platforms, they selected HaloPSAand went live in December 2025.

But then HaloPSA introduced a different challenge. The reporting itself worked, but it wasn’t easy to present to clients in a meaningful way. The data was there, just not in a format that felt visual or client-friendly.

"Their reports aren't really user-friendly. There's no graphics to them. It's just very static — here's your data, Godspeed," says Brian.

Clients still wanted clear visibility into their environments, and the team needed a better way to present that information.

SquaredUp filled the gap Halo left behind

A search for Halo dashboard solutions led Brian to SquaredUp. Two things stood out immediately: it was easy to use and offered a pre-canned integration (plugin) for HaloPSA.

What DeKind wanted was something visual, something they could put on a screen, and something they could share with clients as a link. SquaredUp could do all of it, and unlike Halo's static exports, it could pull from multiple sources and display everything in one place.

Professional services — an unsung hero

Outside of the dashboards themselves, one of the defining factors in how DeKind got value from SquaredUp was the professional services.

“We wouldn't be using three quarters of what we're using if we didn't have access to that support. If I was in your shoes and I was going to highlight something, The professional services and onboarding support is a real highlight. The block of hours. That's been huge for us”

For a team moving fast and building dashboards for every new client, having that support on hand meant the platform grew with them rather than ahead of them.

"I hear back from the SquaredUp team in about 15 minutes - hey, it's done, take a look at it."

A single pane of glass in "The Pit"

The first major win was internal. DeKind built a dashboard that now sits on two TVs in what the team calls "The Pit", which is the central area where help desk staff and field technicians work side by side.

At a glance, the whole team can see:

• How many urgent and hot tickets are open right now
• Which clients are generating the most requests
• Backup and automation failures in the last 24 hours
• Uptime and machine health data pulled from NinjaRMM

It's pinned in the team chat too, so even staff who aren't in The Pit can check in on the day without pulling anyone aside.

"I can look and say the guys are pretty busy here today. I have good visibility without jumping into multiple platforms."

The result: no one needs to log into three separate platforms to understand the state of the business. The dashboard does the work.

Giving clients real-time visibility

The bigger shift and the one with the most measurable impact was the client-facing dashboard.

DeKind now builds each client a personalized dashboard showing:

• Ticket status and resolution rates
• Top requesters and busiest days of the week
• Drill-down ticket detail linked directly into Halo

These dashboards are secured via the client’s own SSO and shared as a simple link, without involving anyone at DeKind. Clients can log in at any time, adjust the date range, and pull the data they need independently.

“They love it. They’re able to log in, view it, change the timeline, and pull all that data and budget their spend — a lot more detail than what they had with us emailing back and forth.”

The result: ~48 hours a month that used to go toward manual reporting and back-and-forth emails are now fully reclaimed.

How SquaredUp turned a reporting problem into a growth tool

What started as a fix for static Halo reports has become part of how DeKind wins new business.

"We're responding to bids now and a customer dashboard is required, Every new client is asking for it and we're giving it to them — it's turning into the norm for us."

Today, SquaredUp is part of DeKind's day-to-day operations, helping the team stay on top of SLAs, track client activity, and provide the visibility customers increasingly expect.

The result is more than better reporting. It's stronger client relationships, greater trust, and a competitive advantage when bidding for new business.

See how SquaredUp can help you deliver the same level of visibility to your customers.

The visualization inside of SquaredUp is second to none.

Brian DeKind

President, DeKind