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10 Best Professional Service Software Of 2023

The Best Professional Services Software List

Here’s a shortlist of the best PSS software:

  1. 1. Wrike — Best for generating accurate reports plus actionable insights
  2. 2. VOGSY — Best performance monitoring for client/project health
  3. 3. HaloPSA — Best PSA software for MSPs
  4. 4. Rocketlane — Best client portals for project insight sharing
  5. 5. BigTime — Best for managing timesheets
  6. 6. Kantata — Best for project management and resource planning
  7. 7. Hubstaff — Best PSS time management reports & analysis
  8. 8. Projector — Best PSA software for accessibility
  9. 9. Kimble — Best for salesforce users and management consulting
  10. 10. Adobe Workfront — Best cross-platform PSA software

There are lots of moving parts when it comes to digital project management. The intricacy of the planning, tracking, and completing digital projects demonstrates the need for the best professional services automation (PSA) software.

But why a PSA tool, Journey? Isn’t it what professional services firms, consultants, auditors, and IT service providers use to automate their business processes?

As a digital project manager (DPM), you are tasked with breaking down projects into plans, creating milestones, following the progress down to each task, and ensuring you spend your resources optimally. While professional services automation software is not a go-to tool for DPMs, the major functions of PSA software include project management, documentation, time tracking, and about 10 more. It goes without saying that PSA systems can support your processes in planning-slash-executing your projects.

But PSA is not a one-size-fits-all software solution. Some specialize in time-tracking features, while some focus on resource-management capabilities. Read on to learn about professional services software and how it can help you. I’ve listed some of the best PSA software and summarized their features so you can save time finding the one that best matches your needs.

What is Professional Services Automation (PSA) Software?

Professional services automation software or PSA software is initially designed for professional services organizations to run their business using a consolidated tool. Essentially, PSA software is grounded on the idea that using one solid platform is better than using many separate tools.

As its name suggests, PSA software allows professionals to automate specific manual processes through machine learning and artificial intelligence. It provides easily accessible and valuable data and helps you save time as it streamlines and automates repetitive and work-intensive processes during the entire project lifecycle.

Professional Services Automation Software Comparison Criteria

A DPM’s responsibilities include nudging a project along and keeping things on track. Hence, any powerful PSA software should allow you to easily input data and effortlessly see the progress of each task.

So what do I look for when I pick the best professional services automation software? Here are the selection criteria that I’ve used in picking out the best PSA tools today:

  1. Functionality: What is the use case that the software is best for? Does the software live up to its purpose and primary functionality?
  2. User-Friendliness: Is the software easy to use and navigate? Can you efficiently manage your calendar, expenses, work time, and invoicing?
  3. Integrations: Can you easily integrate the software with your other project execution tools?
  4. Value for Money: Does the software meet your budget and provide a good ROI?

PSA Software Key Features

Here are some of the key PSA software features that you should look for:

  1. Scheduling: PSAs have scheduling capabilities that DPMs can use to manage their team’s time effectively. With the help of an excellent scheduling feature, digital project managers can prevent scheduling conflicts and ensure that all assigned tasks are completed on time.
  2. Project Management: This is probably the most critical feature for a DPM because it allows you to launch projects and easily manage them until completion. A project management feature can help a DPM optimize resource utilization and ensure that a project gets completed on time while staying within budget.
  3. Document Management: This feature allows a digital project manager and other team members to quickly share project-related documents within one storage location to avoid missing documents and allow for quick access to them when needed.
  4. Reports Generation: DPMs often need to generate reports to present a project’s impact on a company’s finances. A reports generation feature can simplify reporting so DPMs can save time while generating accurate reports.

Aside from helping professionals with project delivery management, documentation, and reporting, PSA systems also have the following features:

  • Full project accounting & project financials management
  • Calendar management
  • Team collaboration
  • Proposal generation
  • Customer relationship management
  • Resource management
  • Expense tracking, expense management, budgeting
  • Invoicing and billing
  • Business intelligence
  • Forecasting
  • Revenue recognition
professional services software logos list

Overviews Of The 10 Best PSA Software

Here’s a brief description of each PSA software on my list, showing what it does best and a few screenshots to showcase some of the features.

1

Wrike

Best for generating accurate reports plus actionable insights

Wrike is a project management software that is designed for marketing agencies, project teams, and professional service providers. Wrike offers an all-in-one collaboration solution, which simplifies the project management process as well as resource allocation and people management.

The platform enables users to collaborate on projects without having to constantly call, text, or email to communicate. Users get access to collaborative features like automated notifications, dynamic reports, live editing, and real-time comments to make sure that every team member, stakeholder, and project contributor is on the same page throughout the project development process. Apart from the ability to share information and digital assets within the team, the platform is also tailored to make it easier for project managers and professional service providers to share updates with clients as needed.

Project managers can significantly improve client collaboration by simply inviting their clients into Wrike and making them a part of the work process. This allows clients to provide direct feedback and approvals on critical project decisions. And project managers can reduce the tedious back-and-forth process of getting requirements from clients on project requests or scope changes by using customizable request forms. This will enable agencies and teams to quickly collect all the necessary information from clients in one location and trigger fully planned projects with predefined actions, task assignees, and timelines.

Pricing begins at $9.80 per user per month. A 14-day free trial and free plan are available.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2 2544

Free plan available

From $9.80/user/month

2

VOGSY

Best performance monitoring for client/project health

VOGSY is a simple but powerful professional services solution with automation capabilities, designed for startups, small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), and B2B services firms. The professional services automation (PSA) software offers end-to-end solutions purpose-built for Google Workspace and the Windows system.

The cloud-based PSA platform also provides tools for project management, task management, resource management, performance monitoring, as well as automated billing and invoicing. It allows professional services firms to keep track of every client and deal, engage in a more efficient and sustainable quote-to-cash approach, and generate a more concise and reliable statement of work (SOW) on soft-booked services and projects.

With VOGSY’s professional service software, startups and SMEs can effectively plan their projects with great detail. They can leverage the platform’s robust work breakdown structure to design and implement a cohesive project road map based on key objectives and desired outcomes. The software gives them the ability to budget the required work, resources, potential revenue, and margins accordingly, oftentimes even before the deal is finalized.

With the task management feature, users can allocate tasks and assign them to the appropriate personnel with the right skill set to get them done on time and on budget. Users can set tasks for themselves or for their entire team, addressing everything from their quote-to-cash cycle, which includes the clients, the nature of the deal, the proposed projects, as well as the billing and invoicing.

Moreover, it’s also possible to use the online project and task management software to incorporate billable task time into the project time sheets. On the other hand, users can always choose to utilize the built-in time tracking tool to monitor billable and non-billable hours.

Features include resource and project management, collaboration, reporting dashboards, budgeting, professional services automation, Gantt charts, notifications & alerts. 

Integrations include Google Workspace, Jira, Microsoft Excel, Xero, Intuit Quickbooks Online, Copper, Hubspot, Salesforce, and Zoho.

VOGSY has a free version that is accessible through a personal Gmail account. It comes with all the features and is limited to a single user. Paid plans cost from $13/user/month. All paid plans require a minimum of 10 users and include a free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.6 31

Freemium plan

$13/user/month

3

HaloPSA

Best PSA software for MSPs

HaloPSA is a solution, designed for MSPs and service providers. HaloPSA gives users powerful out-of-the-box functionality. With an integrated PSA platform, you get features such as time-tracking and billing, advanced reporting, asset management, remote access, seamless integrations, automation tools and more.

HaloPSA is a fully configurable system for managed IT services and is the PSA solution of choice for enterprises such as ATOS, NEC and Gijima.

HaloPSA integrates with many popular tools such as Microsoft CSP, Splunk, N-Able N-Central/RMM, Xero, Teams, Slack, Zapier, and TeamViewer to name a few. View their entire list of integrations on their website.

HaloPSA costs from $29/user/month.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.8 20

30 days free trial

From £30/user/month

4

Rocketlane

Best client portals for project insight sharing

Rocketlane is a professional service software purpose-built to run customer-facing projects. It uniquely combines project management, document collaboration, and communication to help teams hit their project goals, accelerate time-to-value, and deliver a 5-star customer experience.

Rocketlane offers private and shared views for project plans and documents as well as a customer portal for stakeholder and client views. You can also codify your best practices with project and document templates to create them once and reuse them forever across projects.

With Rocketlane, you'll be able to keep your customers involved and make them accountable with reminders, notifications, and actionable emails. You can work together and create new or embed existing documents, collaborate on them synchronously and experience Slack-like chat inside Rocketlane.

Rocketlane costs from $19/user/month and offers a free 14-day trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7 324

14-day free trial

From $19/user/month

5

BigTime

Best for managing timesheets

BigTime is a fully integrated operating platform designed for professional service companies, providing them with the necessary tools to deliver services to their clients on time and within budget. The platform is built to support different professional service firms across multiple industries, including accounting, consulting, IT services, architecture, and engineering.

Among the core features are time tracking, billing and invoicing, resource management, project management, workflows, reporting and analytics, and seamless integrations. The time tracking software facilitates the tracking of time spent on work and the associated expenses to ensure that teams stay within their budget limits.

The resource management software enables project managers to assign the right people to the right project and task, at the right time. It allows them to find the right people with the right skill sets and match them to a project that will benefit most from their skills.

BigTime’s professional service software also offers advanced reporting and analytics dashboards that allow managers and stakeholders to get a real-time bird’s-eye view of their business. They can drill down on individual ongoing projects to see the status and evaluate their progress through available data, KPIs, and other relevant metrics. The platform features a professional services automation (PSA) software solution that is capable of supporting teams of anywhere from five to 500 members or more.

Pricing starts at $10 per user/month, billed annually. All plans have a minimum requirement of five users and a 14-day free trial.


This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.5 1094

14-day free trial

From $10/user/month for a minimum of 5 users

6

Kantata

Best for project management and resource planning

Kantata is an all-in-one PSA tool, but its core features include project management and resource management. For effective project management, you can use the built-in Gantt tool in the software. The Gantt charts allow you to drag and drop tasks and see their progress in specific periods. Additionally, the charts let you create 'dependencies,' which help you manage the relationships between tasks. These allow you to manage your project timeline efficiently because the dates of “dependent” tasks change as the dates of “predecessor” tasks change.

Kantata's resource allocation management feature has four other sub-features or sub-stages. These are Estimating, Planning, Executing, Analyzing & Optimizing. For Estimating, you can access project templates to outline estimates of your resource needs (including hours and budgets). For Planning, you can view your active projects and your resource pool to easily plan the assignment of tasks. In Executing, the project's timeline automatically changes by looking at your resource schedule, allowing you to easily make appropriate adjustments. Lastly, in Analyzing & Optimizing, you can see trends on your resources, making forecasting your resource needs easier than usual.

Kantata offers a 10-day free trial and a free demo. Their pricing is customized for specific company needs and is provided upon request.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.1 715

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

7

Hubstaff

Best PSS time management reports & analysis

Hubstaff is a full-featured, free time tracking + professional service software (with freemium upgrades) tool that’s best for remote or distributed teams. It’s a lightweight, native time tracking tool that includes screenshots, time tracking, and project management. Its simple interface and design make it really easy for your team to enter their time and for you to track their progress.

Budget management is straightforward—using Hubstaff you can easily set time limits and budgets for your team to bill against with a maximum number of hours you want a member to be able to work in a week and the app will automatically prevent them from exceeding the limit.

When you’re working with a distributed team it can be hard to verify exactly what people are doing and how they’re spending their time so Hubstaff has some pretty handy tools to give you insight into what your team is doing in the time they’re logging to your project with screenshots and activity levels. Now you can also see which applications your team members are using and what URLs they are browsing while they’re tracking time.

Integrations are well supported across stacks of different tools including project management tools Asana, Jira, and Basecamp, payments, accounting, and invoicing integrations including QuickBooks, Paypal as well as Salesforce and Zendesk among others.

Hubstaff is free to use for 1 employee. Paid plans cost from $7/user/month and come with a 14-day free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.3 392

14-day free trial

From $7/user/month

8

Projector

Best PSA software for accessibility

Projector is a cloud-based PSA that acts as an Employee and Management Portal and is accessible to users via a browser that allows users easy access to the application as long as they have an internet connection. One advantage of being browser-based is that users can use Projector on the go; they can use other computer terminals and mobile devices without installing an application.

Projector PSA makes collaboration between team members easier by providing them with a workspace accessible merely to designated project members. This feature is beneficial to project managers working on a sensitive project since it can prevent non-team members from accessing sensitive information. Projector also has a Task-Scheduling feature that makes designating specific responsibilities easier while allowing the project manager to track progress.

Projector PSA is available at a starting subscription of $15 per user per month. Users can request a free 30-day trial of Projector.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.5 136

30 days free trial

From $15 per user per month

9

Kimble

Best for salesforce users and management consulting

Kimble is PSA software available in AppExchange, which is the app store of Salesforce. Since Kimble runs within Salesforce, it can be an ideal software for those who are already using Salesforce. Digital project managers who use Salesforce can access Kimble via a Salesforce tab for a smoother workflow. Salesforce integration can also help minimize clutter since you don't need a different app to manage your projects.

Suppose you are a digital project manager who manages your own team. In that case, you may love Kimble's wide variety of resource scheduling tools because it allows you to determine which resources you will use to fulfill business requirements. Kimble also comes equipped with Smart Insights that alerts users to issues that require immediate attention so you can prioritize more pressing matters.

Kimble pricing is by request, so there is no available data on how much the starting price is, and they also don't provide free trials.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.3 475

Pricing upon request

10

Adobe Workfront

Best cross-platform PSA software

Workfront is an all-around PSA software that you can use to manage workflow, projects, and portfolio. Workfront can help you manage both resources and tasks in just one software so you can declutter your workstation by removing redundant programs. Workfront has its integration platform to work freely across other systems like Slack, Jira or Adobe, which means that you can increase your team's productivity and efficiency.

If you manage multiple projects at any given time, Workfront can help you manage those tasks using merely one app. With the help of Workfront, you can view the progress of projects using customizable dashboards, so you are always on top of everything. You can also use Workfront to create workspaces specific to each team member to understand their tasks and deliver optimum results easily.

Workfront pricing is customized depending on a business' needs and available only by request. Workfront does not provide a free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.1 896

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

Need expert help selecting the right Professional Services Automation (PSA) Software?

We’ve joined up with Crozdesk.com to give all our readers (yes, you!) access to Crozdesk’s software advisors. Just use the form below to share your needs, and they will contact you at no cost or commitment. You will then be matched and connected to a shortlist of vendors that best fit your company, and you can access exclusive software discounts!

Best Professional Service Software Summary

Tool Free Option Price
1
Wrike

Best for generating accurate reports plus actionable insights

Free plan available

From $9.80/user/month Visit Website
2
VOGSY

Best performance monitoring for client/project health

Freemium plan

$13/user/month Visit Website
3
HaloPSA

Best PSA software for MSPs

30 days free trial

From £30/user/month Visit Website
4
Rocketlane

Best client portals for project insight sharing

14-day free trial

From $19/user/month Visit Website
5
BigTime

Best for managing timesheets

14-day free trial

From $10/user/month for a minimum of 5 users Visit Website
6
Kantata

Best for project management and resource planning

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Visit Website
7
Hubstaff

Best PSS time management reports & analysis

14-day free trial

From $7/user/month Visit Website
8
Projector

Best PSA software for accessibility

30 days free trial

From $15 per user per month Visit Website
9
Kimble

Best for salesforce users and management consulting

Not available

Pricing upon request Visit Website
10
Adobe Workfront

Best cross-platform PSA software

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Visit Website

Other PSA Software Options

Here are some more powerful PSA tools I came across that didn’t make the top list but also offer great functionalities:

  1. Birdview PSA

    Best for BI reporting

  2. Netsuite OpenAir

    Best for small businesses

  3. Workamajig Platinum

    Best for creative teams

  4. Unit4PSA

    Best for end-to-end administration

  5. Changepoint

    Best CRM-integrated PSA

  6. Upland

    Best for managing large teams

  7. Deltek Workbook

    Best for client transparency and communication

  8. Celoxis

    Best PSS for enterprises

  9. Ravetree

    Best for retainer contracts

  10. Height

    Best for cross-functional project and resource planning

  11. ConnectWise

    Best for data-driven reporting

  12. Easy Projects

    Best for real-time team collaboration

  13. Accelo

    Best for customization options

  14. Clarizen One

    Best for centralized document management

  15. Oracle NetSuite

    Best for complex accounting and billing

What’s the Ideal First Step in Picking the Right Professional Services Automation Solution?

A typical buyer’s guide would tell you to list down the features that you want from a tool to select the best PSA software. But I suggest that you first list down the major business outcomes that you want to see for the next months or so.

If you want to have a comprehensive resource planning strategy or have a centralized location for all your documents, let those factors drive your selection process. You can then match these outcomes with the features of the project management tools. This way, you can make sure that you will be able to achieve your business goals using the PSA solution.

What Do You Think About These PSA Software Options?

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By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. Ben's a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut.

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