10 Best Agency Management System Tools Of 2023

Wrike is an easy-to-use advertising agency software that is suitable for teams with five or more members. It’s highly configurable, allowing users to customize processes, workflows, dashboards, reports, and request forms to suit their exact needs. Break down costly silos between teams, centralize communication, and automate time-consuming admin tasks.

Wrike enables users to switch between customizable Kanban boards, one-click Gantt charts, and classic workload views, so teams can choose how to visualize their campaign deliverables. Wrike also features task lists, subtasks, shared calendars, custom workflows, file sharing, and real-time collaboration. Users can get advanced performance insights across 50 marketing platforms, assess resource management and allocation, and track time.

Wrike has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface and navigation with distinct spaces, folders, and tasks. Toggle between the home screen and timesheets, dashboards, calendars, reports, and the activity stream. Wrike has a dedicated help center with interactive training, videos, a ‘Getting Started’ guide, and a thriving community. The tool also offers a specific solution for marketing teams, as well as a variety of templates for common organizational processes.

Wrike offers 400+ pre-built native integrations, including integrations with Adobe Creative Cloud; file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox; and over 50 marketing-specific tools.

Pricing starts at $9.80 per user per month. There are four different price points, including a free version and plans which offer the ability to invite free external collaborators to a paid account.

monday.com is a great advertising agency software because of the way the tool has done away with a lot of the trimmings of typical management tools and focused on simple, visually intuitive layouts that help clarify the sequence of work.

monday.com features for managing advertising projects include resource and project management modules, as well as some great collaboration tools. For example, users can upload and attach files to cards, make comments, mention teammates, and more. It also offers a great project reporting dashboard that can collect data from multiple boards, allowing better tracking abilities of progress. And while monday.com doesn't offer a complete set of tools for project accounting and invoicing solutions, you can use monday.com to track hours, timelines, and invoices.

Overall, it's a highly customizable tool that lets you work in whatever methodology—kanban or otherwise—that fits your project and team. You'll also find some useful workflow tools for automating parts of your process.

monday.com's integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and many more, accessible via Zapier.

monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

Parallax is a resource and capacity planning software great for agency management. It offers a robust suite of tools for resource planning and forecasting, sales collaboration and forecasting, project financials, and business intelligence. 

Parallax connects with operational tools for time tracking, CRM, and project management to build detailed visualizations around resource utilization information. With Parallax, you'll have access to project health tracking, auto-generated resource plans, customized real-time alerts (on unallocated time, projects over budget, unassigned roles, past start dates, and past end dates), and plan-vs-actual reports. 

Overall, Parallax makes for a great agency management solution because you can connect to whatever tools you and your clients are using and create comprehensive charts, dashboards, and visualizations for data-driven decision-making. 

Parallax integrates with Asana, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Tempo, Salesforce, Oracle Netsuite, Harvest, Hubspot, Jira Software, and others.

Parallax offers pricing upon request and a free demo. 

Height App is a project management system that supports agency operations. The software includes project management, time and expense tracking, resource management, and financial management capabilities. A client portal allows users to log client data like contact information, project history, and project notes. Clients can be given guest access, and all client communications can be stored in the software so employees can keep track of progress and client requests.

Users can create project briefs, assign tasks to team members, and monitor progress. Tasks can be assigned with drag-and-drop scheduling, and users can keep track of everyone's workload in one place. Built-in time tracking allows users to track how much time is spent on each project and track billable hours.

Users can use timesheets to log time entries which provide detailed reports for each project they work on for better project management and analysis. The software's reporting and analytics features uses its data to analyze an agency's performance metrics, and provides reports on things like time, expenses, and revenue.

Integrations include Figma, Github, Notion, Slack, and other workplace tools. Paid plans start from $8.50/user/month and a 30-day free trial is available.

ClickUp is a work management software tool with project management, team collaboration, goal-setting, and document management functionality. Users can plan projects and assign tasks to manage team members' workloads and time. The task management features include subtasks, checklists, prioritization, reminders, and templates. Users can filter and sort tasks and reorder them to meet their preferences.

Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendars, and timelines are all available for visualizing team workloads. Time tracking can be done directly in the platform or through a third-party integration. Files can be shared through the platform and users can collaborate on work through live chat, whiteboards, comments, and work proofing features. Users can set measurable goals right in the platform and connect them with specific tasks, helping keep team members aligned on shared objectives.

Reporting dashboards are available in the software to monitor team productivity, project progress, KPIS, and other team metrics. This includes goal tracking, workload tracking, milestone tracking, and even automatic pulse checks from the software's machine learning capabilities.

Clickup has native integrations for other SaaS apps like Dropbox, Figma, GitHub, Google Drive, Harvest, HubSpot, Intercom, Loom, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, Slack, Toggl Track, Webhooks, Zoom, and more. Zapier can also unlock additional integrations.

A freemium plan is available with unlimited tasks and users, and paid plans start from $9/user/month.

Productive is a well-rounded agency management software with a stack of powerful functionality that gives you the tools and data you need to keep an agency running smoothly. The tool was built by a team with a decade of experience in founding, managing, and scaling a software development shop, so it's especially well-suited to digital agencies.

The tool's features fully satisfy my criteria for agency management tools. You'll find client and prospect management in the Sales Pipeline (manage deal flow, get sales organized). The Resource Planning feature, time tracker, and task collaboration tools fit the criteria for resource and project management that I look for in an agency tool or platform.

Billing and invoicing can also be managed straight from the tool, along with useful reports on profitability and costs to help with finance management. The reporting feature actually goes quite a bit beyond that, with real-time reports on margins, utilization, and a whole lot more—including reports on individual employees' or contractors' history with the company, salary report, etc.

Productive's integrations include Zapier as well as Jira, Open API, QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Exact.

Productive costs $17/user/month. They also offer a fully-featured, free 14-day trial.

VOGSY is a comprehensive agency management tool built on Google Workspace. The tool includes features for real-time collaboration between teams, a CRM and opportunity management, project and resource planning, tasks, time and expense tracking, billing, and reporting.

VOGSY integrates Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Sheets to allow you to set up complete workflows and assign tasks from your inbox; easily design, edit, and track version history on quote and invoice templates; and perform reporting with customizable Sheets reports.

The tool’s project cards are visually appealing and facilitate tracking for schedules, completion, and estimated vs. actual budgets and margins. Documents, tasks, notes, project planning, communications, and emails are all organized in one place.

VOGSY’s Gantt chart timelines make workload management intuitive and provide an overview of all projects, resources, and tasks. The tool also offers Kanban views for tasks. Teams can communicate and assign tasks throughout the quote-to-cash project life cycle.

VOGSY automates workflows like resource skill matching on projects, time tracking, project budgets, and quote and invoice creation. Users can also automate financial reporting for metrics like sales pipeline, client profitability, revenue forecasting, and billability. Another great feature is the ability to duplicate projects or individual deliverables with activities and calculated costs when planning projects.

In addition to Google Workspace, VOGSY integrates with software tools like QuickBooks, Copper, Salesforce, Xero, Zapier, HubSpot, and Jira.

VOGSY starts at $9/user/month and offers a 30-day free trial. It also offers a free version limited to one user.

Kantata is an agency management system that can be used to manage everything from client relationships to workflows and project tracking. This highly customizable tool allows agencies of all sizes to streamline their operations and increase profits. In this article, we'll explain how you can use Kantata for successful agency management. 

Kantata has a range of features designed specifically for agencies, including tools for client onboarding, project planning, time and resource tracking, invoicing, contracts, communication management, and more. With these features in place, you can easily monitor your team’s progress against deadlines or budgets and track the status of clients or projects at any given time. You’ll also have access to key performance data such as team utilization rates or revenue forecasts.

Kantata's core function is to provide users with comprehensive data management solutions. It allows you to store customer information, generate reports, manage tasks and projects, track expenses, collaborate with colleagues or partners remotely, and share information in an organized way. Additionally, it offers real-time insights into customer trends and market conditions so that you can make informed decisions quickly. This makes Kantata a great solution for businesses that need to stay ahead of the competition by utilizing data-driven insights. 

Features include analytics, billing/invoicing, customer management, data import, data export, file transfer, Google apps integration, third-party plugins/add-ons, resource management, software integration, API, budgeting, dashboard, data visualization, expense tracking, forecasting, multi-user, project management, timesheets, time management, collaboration support, workflow management, batch permissions & access, calendar management, CRM integration, Gantt charts, notifications, scheduling, task scheduling/tracking, report & compliance, and campaign management

Integrations include other business apps like CRM, HCM, and financial software. On top of the M-Bridge platform, Mavenlink provides several pre-built integrations with these tools: Expensify, G Suite, Xero, Salesforce, Netsuite, Jira, Hubspot, Slack, Concur, Dynamics 365, Qualtrics, Quickbooks, and Sage Intacct.

Kantata offers pricing upon request and a free demo.

Hub Planner is a web-based project management tool that allows you to schedule tasks and resources for projects.

Why I picked Hub Planner: It offers a range of features that make resource management easier for agencies. The tool provides real-time insights into team utilization, capacity, and availability, allowing you to efficiently allocate resources and prevent overbooking. Additionally, the tool offers customizable reporting features that allow you to quickly identify and address any resource-related issues.

The thing I like the most is that you can schedule unassigned work, which is perfect for all those projects where you are unsure of the mix of external contributors and employees that you will use.

Hub Planner Standout Features & Integrations

Features include resource scheduling, time tracking, customizable reporting, project budgeting, resource management, PTO planning, reporting, skills matching, task management, templates, drag-and-drop scheduler, project budgets, approval flow, and smart scheduler.

Integrations include DIY options via the Hub Planner API and webhooks. Additionally, you can access thousands of apps using a Zapier account.

Forecast is a platform for advertising agencies to manage resources and projects used in 40+ countries worldwide. The tool includes capabilities for managing the project life cycle from quote to invoice, as well as intelligent automation for predicting project delivery dates and forecasting capacity needs.

Users can create project plans with Forecast’s auto-schedule. The powerful AI automatically estimates tasks, assigns and optimizes workload across resources, and sets a project delivery date. The tool also provides dashboards with overviews of the organization to allow for informed adjustments to time and resource allocation.

Forecast also introduced a unique feature for managing projects in a retainer setup. A dashboard with retainer periods and totals lets you track the financials of ongoing projects in addition to staff workloads and time spent on delivery.

Forecast integrates natively with Slack, Google Drive, QuickBooks Online, Salesforce, and Xero. Other integrations are available through Zapier.

Forecast has Lite, Pro, and Enterprise options that cost from $29/user/month (14-day free trial).