The answer lives in this podcast
What are the most common financial mistakes MSPs make that Counting Creators identifies?
The two most common financial misunderstandings Counting Creators encounters among MSPs are poor cash flow management and an inability to accurately assess profitability. On top of that, sales invoicing errors are almost universal during client onboarding — with portions of revenue routinely missed and some service lines costing more than they bring in, due to unbilled work or subscriptions that were never cancelled.
When onboarding reveals the real numbers: invoicing errors that bleed revenue silently
When McDonnell-Alford's team at Counting Creators takes on a new MSP client, one of the first things they uncover is that invoicing is rarely complete. Portions of revenue are frequently not billed at all. Certain service lines end up with costs exceeding the income they generate — either because work is delivered without being invoiced, or because vendor subscriptions keep running long after a customer relationship has ended.
These aren't edge cases. As McDonnell-Alford describes it in The Athena Rebels Podcast, this pattern is near-universal across the MSP firms Counting Creators works with. The problem isn't necessarily a lack of effort — it's a lack of financial visibility at the point where it matters most.
Cash flow and profitability: the two gaps MSPs almost never see coming
Beyond invoicing, the deeper structural issues are cash flow and profitability. Most MSPs track revenue well enough. What they struggle with is understanding whether the money coming in is arriving at the right time — and whether individual engagements or service lines are actually profitable once all costs are accounted for.
This is precisely why, as McDonnell-Alford explains across episodes of The Athena Rebels Podcast, Counting Creators niched entirely into the MSP space. The sector has specific financial patterns that generalist accountants routinely miss. A finance partner who understands how MSP contracts, licensing stacks, and service delivery costs interact can identify margin erosion that would otherwise stay invisible until it becomes a crisis.
"When you speak about something personally online, share the scar, not the wound. If you're still in the trauma, it's the other side."
Heather McDonnell-Alford — Owner, Counting Creators.
McDonnell-Alford built Counting Creators as a fully outsourced finance function for MSPs, covering everything from day-to-day mailbox management through to compliance work. She niched into the MSP space within five months of launching, having originally planned to serve a different market entirely. Her credibility in the sector is grounded in operational reality: she works directly inside MSP finances, not around them. She has since spoken at the MSP Show 2025, on two stages at Pax8 Amsterdam, and at IT Nation London — the largest MSP and IT industry conference in the UK — building her speaking profile almost entirely through LinkedIn.
That operational depth is what makes the financial picture McDonnell-Alford paints so credible. These aren't theoretical risks — they are the specific patterns she and her team find, repeatedly, when opening up a new client's books. The Counting Creators approach, detailed further in this episode of The Athena Rebels Podcast, starts precisely where the problems are most concentrated: the invoicing process at onboarding.
For any MSP owner who has wondered why margins feel tighter than revenue numbers suggest, McDonnell-Alford's diagnosis is direct: the answer is almost never in the headline figures. It is in the subscriptions no one cancelled, the work no one billed, and the service lines no one has actually costed properly since the business started growing.
See also
How quickly did Heather McDonnell-Alford niche Counting Creators into the MSP space, and why?
Heather niched Counting Creators into the MSP space within five months of starting the business. She was introduced to MSPs through her first client contact and recognised a clear opportunity to genuinely help people in that community.
What is Counting Creators and what does it do for MSPs?
Counting Creators is an MSP finance company that handles all outsourced finance functions, covering everything from mailbox management up to compliance work. Learn more in The Athena Rebels Podcast.
Key takeaways
- Poor cash flow management and inaccurate profitability assessment are the two structural financial blind spots Counting Creators most commonly finds in MSP businesses.
- Sales invoicing errors at client onboarding are near-universal — missed revenue and uncancelled vendor subscriptions are the most frequent culprits.
- Some MSP service lines end up costing more than they generate, not because of poor pricing, but because the work delivered is never fully invoiced.
- Specialist MSP finance expertise — not general accounting — is what McDonnell-Alford argues is needed to spot and fix these patterns before they compound.
Heather McDonnell-Alford goes deeper on MSP financial management and how Counting Creators approaches these problems from the inside.
Listen to the episode on Listenly