How a Request Becomes a Resolved, Billed Ticket
What happens between a customer emailing for help and you being paid for the work — including the parts that run themselves.
What this covers
The service desk is where most companies spend most of their day. This explains the full journey of one request.
Before you start: read Start Here if you have not.
The flow
Email / call / portal → Ticket → Assigned → Worked → Resolved → Invoiced
1. The request arrives
Three ways in:
| How it arrives | What happens |
|---|---|
| Connect your support mailbox and every email becomes a ticket automatically. Replies attach to the same ticket instead of starting a new one. | |
| Client portal | Customers log in and raise it themselves, and can see progress without phoning you. |
| You type it | Somebody phones; you raise the ticket by hand. |
2. It gets assigned
A ticket sitting unassigned is a ticket nobody owns. You can assign by hand, or set automation rules so that, for example, anything mentioning "printer" goes to a particular team.
An SLA starts counting here — the clock on how quickly you promised to respond and fix.
3. Somebody works on it
As people work they log time and add comments. Two things worth knowing:
- Comments to the customer go out as email. Internal notes stay internal. Check which you are writing.
- Commenting follows the ticket for you. Once you comment, you get notified when it changes. See Following Records.
4. It might need more than a reply
- Needs someone on site → raises a work order in Field Service.
- Needs a part → pulls from Inventory, or triggers a purchase.
- Needs remote access to a machine → handled in Remote Management.
5. It gets resolved
Mark it resolved. The customer is told, and can be asked to rate the service. Those ratings become your satisfaction score.
If the fix was something worth writing down, it can become a knowledge base article so the next person does not solve it from scratch — and so customers can find the answer themselves.
6. It gets billed
Time logged on the ticket flows to invoicing. Whether it is actually charged depends on the customer's contract:
- Covered by a support contract → drawn down from their included hours.
- Pay-as-you-go → billed at the agreed rate.
- Goodwill → mark it non-billable.
The bit people miss
Recurring tickets. Anything you do on a schedule — monthly maintenance, quarterly reviews — should be a recurring ticket. Plenix raises it on time, every time, instead of it depending on somebody remembering.
For your IT team
- Mailbox connection is IMAP; configure under Settings → Mailboxes.
- SLA policies are per-contract and can differ per customer.
- Automation rules run on multiple conditions and can call webhooks.
Where to go next
- Site visits → Field Service
- Where tickets come from on their own → How a Device Problem Becomes a Fix
- Stop checking tickets manually → Following Records
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