PSA

A PSA (Professional Services Automation) tool is the business engine behind an MSP. Where the RMM tracks devices, the PSA tracks work: tickets, projects, time entries, contracts, assets, billing.

Common products: HaloPSA, Autotask (now Datto Autotask), ConnectWise PSA (Manage), SuperOps, Atera (PSA + RMM combined).

Day to day, a frontline tech opens the PSA for almost every action: creating a ticket from a phone call, logging time against an existing ticket, updating ticket status, escalating to the next tier. Most frontline quality bars, first-response time, time-to-resolution, billable accuracy, are PSA metrics.

A healthy MSP has its RMM and PSA tightly integrated: an RMM alert auto-creates a PSA ticket; a PSA ticket can launch an RMM remote-control session in one click.