Kaseya has acquired ConnectBooster in a move that adds invoice collection and payment processing to an expansive portfolio of solutions and services for MSPs.
Terms of the deal, which was completed some 13 months ago but first revealed today, were not disclosed. Purchasing ConnectBooster positions Kaseya to help users of its IT Complete platform automate a critical but labor-intensive business process, according to CEO Fred Voccola.
“Most MSPs have serious challenges in billing and invoicing and collections from their customers,” he says. “Not that they’re not getting paid, but they’re spending too much effort to do it.”
ConnectBooster software can lower credit card processing fees as well by automatically applying an “ACH discount” to transactions and helps MSPs improve cash flow, the company says, noting that 74% of users reduce average accounts receivable aging by at least 30 days.
Echoing remarks he made following Kaseya’s recently closed acquisition of one-time rival Datto, Voccola vows that ConnectBooster partners will pay less for software with richer functionality and an accelerated roadmap in the future.
“They can expect prices to go down, they can expect more investment in the product, and they can expect a lot more integrations with everything inside of IT Complete,” he says.
They will also have access to the company-wide Global Partner Program Kaseya is presently building. Based on Datto’s partner program, that offering will provide benefits including MDF, training programs, sales and marketing resources, not-for-resale licenses, and more.
Integration with Kaseya ONE, the vendor’s centralized cross-product hub for viewing invoices, getting support, and other operational tasks, is available now. ConnectBooster partners who also use products from Kaseya itself or its IT Glue, ID Agent, RapidFire Tools, and other units can take advantage of Kaseya ONE’s single sign-on functionality for IT Complete solutions as well.
“It provides the customer a single unified login experience to be able to access ConnectBooster and anything else that they have from Kaseya,” says Nadir Merchant, the vendor’s general manager of IT and business operations, of Kaseya ONE.
Further integrations in development now will let MSPs setup auto-pay and automated billing via ConnectBooster from directly inside Kaseya’s BMS and Autotask PSA products. Integration with both the MyGlue and Autotask self-serve client portals will let end users change auto-pay settings, review bills, update credit card details, and more on their own.
“All of that stuff will happen through a single unified customer gateway, as opposed to going through a separate gateway for ticketing and a separate to gateway for payments,” Merchant says.
ConnectBooster software will exchange data with PSA, RMM, and other solutions from Kaseya competitors just as it does today going forward, Voccola says. “We absolutely will continue to integrate with N-able, continue to integrate with ConnectWise, continue to integrate with everyone.”
Brady Nash, ConnectBooster’s founder, will continue to manage the company under its current name as a Kaseya business unit out of ConnectBooster’s existing headquarters in Fargo, N.D. Kaseya, in fact, plans to take advantage of Fargo’s low taxes, affordable real estate, and educated workforce by roughly tripling its employees in that city over the next 18 months.
“We expect our presence in Fargo to just explode,” Voccola says.
Rumors of an acquisition involving Kaseya and ConnectBooster have been circulating among channel pros for months. According to Voccola, Kaseya has further announcements related to financial technology for MSPs coming.
“There’s so many things that MSPs struggle with in the financial management, financial operations, parts of their organization,” Voccola says. “We believe that is a monster market for MSPs to be able to take advantage of.”
In a similar bid to streamline invoice collections, ConnectWise purchased Wise-Sync, a maker of accounting integration and payment processing software for MSPs, in August.
