What PSA software is
A service firm sells expertise by the hour, the day or the project. Its stock is people’s time, so its weekly questions are about time: who is free, what the work is costing, what can be invoiced and whether the client has paid.
Professional services automation (PSA) software is one system that holds those answers for every client job. It follows the path each job takes from agreement to cash, which the trade calls quote-to-cash:
- Quote. Scope and price are agreed with the client.
- Plan. The project gets a budget, tasks and dates.
- Staff. People are assigned against the capacity they actually have.
- Deliver. The work is done and hours are logged against tasks.
- Review. A manager approves timesheets, and approved hours become cost.
- Bill. Invoices go out, once or on a schedule, and unpaid ones are followed up.
- Learn. Hours and expenses are set against what the project earned.
Without a PSA, each step lives in a different place: a proposal document, a task board, a timesheet spreadsheet, the accountant’s invoicing. The link between them is someone’s memory, and the margin on a project is known weeks after it closes, if at all.
What a PSA covers, and what PLYNTUM covers today
Most PSA tools share the same core. The table goes area by area and says where PLYNTUM stands today; plan names refer to the pricing page.
| Area | What a PSA does | PLYNTUM today |
|---|---|---|
| Projects and tasks | Holds every client job with its tasks, owners, dates and status. | Projects and tasks in list, board, calendar and timeline views, with requests and approvals, files, team chat and recurring work in the same workspace. |
| Resource and capacity planning | Shows who is free and who is overbooked before new work is accepted. | Assignments, attendance and leave per person. No skills matching or long-range forecasting. |
| Time tracking and timesheet approval | Captures hours against the work and routes them for review. | Manual time tracking on every plan; manager approval of timesheets from Core. Each hour belongs to a task, the task to a project and client. No automatic desktop capture. |
| Project budgets and profitability | Compares what a project costs with what it earns while it is still running. | Approved hours at each person’s loaded hourly cost, plus direct expenses, against the project value. Salary figures are visible to leadership only. |
| Invoicing and receivables | Turns work into invoices and tracks what is still unpaid. | Basic invoices and receivables on every plan; recurring invoices from Core. |
| Expenses | Records costs on the project and client so they count in the margin. | Recorded on the project and counted in its profitability. |
| Client access | Lets clients see their own work, not your internal numbers. | A scoped client portal from Core. |
| Quotes, proposals and sales pipeline | Tracks deals and turns an accepted quote into a project with a budget. | Planned. A sales CRM with pipeline and proposals is in development, with no release date. Today a deal lives in another tool until it becomes a client. |
| Accounting ledger | Some PSAs include a general ledger; others leave the books to accounting software. | Not included. No ledger, bank feeds, tax filing or payroll; your accountant keeps the books in their own system. |
| IT ticketing and device monitoring | In PSAs built for IT managed service providers: helpdesk tickets, service levels and monitoring of client devices. | Not offered. PLYNTUM has no ticketing, helpdesk or device monitoring. |
PSA vs project management vs ERP vs MSP PSA
The labels overlap, and vendors stretch them. Four distinctions hold up in practice.
Project management software
Tasks, boards, deadlines and who does what. Tools such as ClickUp or monday.com Work Management organise this well, but invoices, expenses and receivables live in another system. It is enough when you bill a fixed monthly fee and nobody needs a margin per project.
PSA for client-work firms
Project management plus the money around it: people’s capacity and cost, approved hours, expenses, invoices and project profitability in one record. You need it when you sell hours or fixed-fee projects and want to know the margin while the work is still running. This is the category PLYNTUM is in.
ERP
Runs the whole company’s finance and operations: general ledger, procurement, payroll, often inventory and consolidation across legal entities. For a 15-person agency an ERP is usually more system than problem; accounting software for the books and a PSA for the work is the simpler split.
MSP or IT PSA
Built for IT managed service providers that look after clients’ computers and networks: tickets, service-level agreements, contracts per device or seat, and links to remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools. ConnectWise PSA and Autotask are typical examples. If that is your business, PLYNTUM is the wrong tool: it has no ticketing and no device monitoring.
Signs you need a PSA
Each of these can be patched with a spreadsheet for a while. When several are true at once, the problem is no longer discipline; the data sits in too many places.
- You learn a project’s margin after it closes, or never, because hours and costs are added up at the end.
- Timesheets are rebuilt from memory on Friday afternoon or at month end, and nobody trusts them.
- Invoices wait for someone to total the hours from a spreadsheet before they can go out.
- “Can we take this on in March?” needs three conversations and still ends in a guess.
- A retainer client has quietly grown past what the fee assumed, which is scope creep, and it only shows at renewal.
- You cannot say what share of last quarter’s paid hours was billable, which is your utilization rate.
- One project is spread across four or five tools, each holding a different piece of the truth.
What PSA software costs
Most PSA and agency tools charge per user per month. The table applies the prices vendors publish on their own pages, read 14 September 2026, to a 10-person firm. Annual billing unless stated, excluding tax. Feature scope differs from tool to tool, so this compares price, not value.
| Tool | Published price per user a month | 10 people, per month |
|---|---|---|
| Productive | Essential $10, Professional $25, Ultimate on request; minimum 3 seats | $250 on Professional |
| Teamwork.com | Basics $9.99, Accelerate $24.99; higher tiers on request | $249.90 on Accelerate |
| Function Point | Standardize $53, Optimize $62, plus an onboarding fee | $530 on Standardize, plus onboarding |
| Scoro | €15–€52 depending on the apps chosen; minimum 5 users; billing cycle not labelled; onboarding and add-ons extra | Roughly €150–€520, not a confirmed quote |
| Accelo | Not published; quote only | Ask the vendor |
| Kantata | Not published | Ask the vendor |
| PLYNTUM | Per workspace, not per user: Core $150 a month with 10 members included | $120 billed annually ($1,440 a year) |
Two things the table does not show. First, per-user prices grow with every hire, while PLYNTUM moves in steps: Launch $55 for 5 members, Core $150 for 10, Scale $450 for 25 and Intelligence $1,050 for 50, billed monthly; annual billing is 20% less. The steps are steep: an eleventh member moves a firm from Core to Scale. Second, the lower figure is not always the fuller product. Productive and Scoro have a sales pipeline today, which PLYNTUM does not yet. The comparison pages go tool by tool, and the Productive alternatives page covers the closest match.
Where PLYNTUM fits and where it does not
It fits firms of roughly 3 to 50 people that sell hours or fixed-fee projects: agencies, consultancies, studios, and accounting or engineering practices. Pricing is per workspace with a set number of members included, so adding a junior or a part-timer costs nothing extra until you pass the plan’s member count. A firm with two legal entities gets a workspace for each under one login, on every plan. The interface is in English and Georgian.
It does not fit if you need:
- skills matching, resource forecasting for large teams, revenue recognition or ERP-level finance; tools such as Kantata are built for that scale;
- quote-to-invoice with contracts and tickets in one tool today, where Accelo goes deeper;
- a sales pipeline and proposals in the same system now, because PLYNTUM’s is planned, not released;
- helpdesk tickets, service levels and device monitoring for an IT managed service business;
- automatic desktop time capture, a general ledger, payroll or tax filing.
How to evaluate a PSA in a 7-day trial
A demo shows a tool at its best. A trial with one real project shows whether your team will use it. These five steps work for any PSA. PLYNTUM’s 7-day free trial is on the Launch plan (5 members); timesheet approval, recurring invoices and the client portal start on Core.
- Pick one live project. Ideally one with a fixed fee or a set budget, three to five people and at least one direct expense. Enter the client, the project value and the tasks.
- Put a cost on each person. Enter a loaded hourly cost for everyone on the project. If you do not know it, the hourly rate calculator helps you work it out.
- Log time daily for five days. Everyone on it logs hours against tasks each day. Watch whether they do; a PSA nobody fills in is a spreadsheet with a login.
- Close the loop. Go through the week’s hours, add the expense and draft the invoice you would really send. Count how many other tools you had to open.
- Read the margin and the gaps. On day seven, compare the project’s profitability with your gut feeling. Then go down the table above and mark what you would still need elsewhere: pipeline, accounting, ticketing.