What the percentage should mean

Patch compliance is the share of managed endpoints that had every approved patch installed on the last day of the period. Endpoints that were offline for the whole period count against you unless the client agreed to exclude them. Write that rule down once; the number is only comparable quarter to quarter if the rule does not move.

Do not present the RMM's live figure. It changes every hour and the client will check it during the meeting. Present the period-end snapshot and say so.

Explaining a drop

Compliance falls for three reasons an executive can act on: devices the client added without telling you, devices the client asked you to leave alone, and updates the vendor pulled. It also falls for one reason they cannot act on, which is that your team missed a window. Say which it was. A client who hears the honest version keeps the contract; a client who finds out later does not.

Show the previous value, the current value, and the change in points. Eighty-six to ninety-four is eight points, and eight points is a sentence, not a chart.

The decision to request

Every unpatched endpoint is either an exception the client approved or a task the MSP owns. The QBR is where exceptions get approved or withdrawn. Bring the list, ask for a decision on each class of exception, and record the owner and the date. Next quarter the number either moved or the exception list explains why it did not.

  • Approve or withdraw each standing exception.
  • Agree the target for next period, in points.
  • Agree who tells whom when a new device appears.

Where it sits on the page

Patch compliance is a finding when it moved more than a few points, and a source row otherwise. A one-page brief keeps the two periods side by side and ties the recommendation to the row it came from, so the client can check the arithmetic instead of trusting the slide. Sourcerow builds that page from the two rows; the exception list is still yours to bring.

A worked example

A forty-seat accountancy firm shows 86 percent last quarter and 94 this quarter. The eight-point gain came from retiring three laptops that had not connected since spring and from the client finally approving the reboot window for the file server. Two endpoints remain out of compliance: the practice-management server, which the vendor will not certify on the latest cumulative update, and the partner's home desktop, which the partner asked to keep off the schedule.

The page says exactly that in two sentences, shows both periods in the source row, and asks for two decisions: keep or withdraw the vendor exception, and keep or withdraw the partner's. Either answer is fine. What matters is that next quarter's 94 or 97 has a written reason, and the client owns half of it.