The (pervasive) and conventional wisdom seems to be that all MSP’s and IT solution companies need ticketing systems. All incoming service calls absolutely need to be routed through a ticketing system and not via phone calls or other means. If you seek out advice online in this regard, you’re pummelled with all the stern advice about ticketing systems and the various free (and not so free) options.

You’re a small IT Consulting company and you’re just not sure. You trust what everyone keeps telling you, but something in your gut says something isn’t right. Your gut got you this far, right? Well, I’m here to give you a little bit of sanity.

Let’s face it, not many of the small IT Consulting firms are going to need ticketing systems.

Here’s why: If your work is scaled to you or a small group of three or fewer people, you can field all of the requests for support via email, rule out phone calls, and use some central repository for your work reports. The net effect is the same. As your company gets larger, then consider a ticketing system, but to start, you really don’t need it.

Even better, removing that one layer of abstraction from the client to you is going to create a more personal support environment. Your clients will appreciate that.

When do you get the ticketing system? When your company grows takes on a mass of work that can’t easily be tracked via email. This could be the point when you take on an ambitiously large client yourself. In other cases, though, as a constant, you may be working for a company that has it’s own IT department and 200+ seats. In that case, it might be smarter to setup a ticketing system for them internally (such as the free Spiceworks).

So, if you’re starting a small one (or more) person IT Consulting firm, you might be better off skipping the ticketing system.

If you need some advice about how best to approach your own internal systems, let me know. Also, if you’re starting out in IT consulting, check out this new Reddit community and ask your questions there.