In this guide:
At a glance:
- Creative and marketing agencies can choose from a wide range of all-in-one management platforms, including Synergist, Paprika, Scoro and more.
- Leading platforms have key differences in features, pricing and onboarding.
- The right system will improve efficiency, visibility and profitability in your agency.
Managing an agency isn't an easy task. With so many plates spinning and information flying around, keeping track of what’s happening across the business can be difficult. And as you grow, staying efficient and profitable just gets tougher.
The right agency management software (sometimes called a professional services automation system or PSA tool) can make it much easier, bringing estimating, workflow management, resource planning, project accounting, and reporting together in one place.
This guide walks through the features to look for and compares some of the main contenders, including some newer platforms. We’ll also share our tips and choosing and implementing a platform that fits your agency size, processes, budget and plans for growth.
What is agency management software?
Agency management software helps creative, marketing, digital and PR agencies manage their day-to-day operations.
Modern all-in-one agency platforms often include features like resource scheduling, client relationship management (CRM), project budgeting, and profitability analytics, creating a single source of truth for agency performance. They bring all the moving parts – projects, clients, time and money – together, improving efficiency, visibility and profitability.
There are lots of different types of agency and project management tools:
| Type | What it does | Best for |
| Quoting & invoicing | Estimates delivery time and cost, builds client quotes, and automates billing to keep financial management accurate. | Agencies wanting to improve forecasting and reduce admin. |
| Project management | Plans, manages, and tracks projects and tasks to keep work on time and make collaboration easier across teams. | Creative or digital agencies juggling multiple campaigns. |
| Resource management | Schedules and tracks work allocation so you can see who’s working on what, identify gaps and balance workloads. | Teams aiming to optimise utilisation and prevent burnout. |
| Time tracking | Logs hours accurately to monitor budget and utilisation. | Agencies needing reliable data for billing and profitability analysis. |
| CRM | Manages client data, pipeline forecasts and contact history. | Growing agencies wanting clearer sales and pipeline visibility. |
| Reporting & analytics | Consolidates financial and performance data to give real-time visibility of sales, capacity, and profitability | Management teams needing data-driven decision-making. |
All-in-one agency management software vs niche tools: which is best?
Where some agency software only deals with one part of the process, all-in-one agency management systems combine several of these tools into a single platform. As well as reducing manual data entry, this gives you better visibility of agency performance.
What are the benefits of using all-in-one agency management software?
All-in-one agency management software brings together your projects, people, and finances into one integrated system – improving collaboration, workflow automation and financial visibility.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Gain full visibility and control
With all your operational data in one centralised platform, you get a real-time view of project profitability, resource utilisation and financial performance. Which means you can quickly spot issues and make informed decisions.
Work more efficiently and accurately
No more duplicating data or logging into multiple tools. Standardising workflows in a single agency operations system means cleaner data, fewer errors and faster reporting.
Collaborate seamlessly
Say goodbye to waiting for handovers or missing attachments. Team members can access project dashboards, client notes, timelines and files in one place, improving collaboration and workflow transparency.
Stay commercially aware
Your project time and cost estimates, timelines, client quotes, actual time spent, billing plans, and targets are all tracked in detail in one system. That means you can:
- Forecast capacity, revenue, and billing accurately
- Allocate resources based on budget and timelines
- Spot overservicing before it becomes a problem
- Report on client, project, and service profitability
- Compare utilisation against workload
- Automate revenue recognition and reporting
In short, it keeps your agency focused on what matters most: happy clients, healthy profits and an informed, engaged team.
Read more in our guide: Multiple vs all-in-one agency software: which is better?
Top tips for choosing the right agency management software
Most agencies start looking for new software when they hit a breaking point. Projects slip, reporting takes forever, or team capacity just doesn’t add up.
It’s easy to get sidetracked by flashy features, but the real goal is to find a scalable agency operations platform that fits how your business works, now and as you grow.
Agency management specialists Agency Works, Synergist’s long-term implementation partner, have worked with agencies for over 20 years. Here are their three top tips for choosing the right system:
1. Find out what’s working (and what’s not)
Start by analysing your current systems and processes. Ask your team what helps them day to day, what slows them down, and what they wish could be automated.
2. Identify your biggest pain points
Focus on issues that hurt profitability and delivery, such as over-servicing, capacity imbalances, or time lost in manual reporting. You won’t fix everything at once, so focus on solving the problems that have the biggest impact on profitability and team wellbeing.
3. Think about your long-term goals
Often, agencies want to tackle the here and now. But where will your agency be a few years from now? Client wins, new services and bigger teams bring a new set of challenges, so look
for systems that can scale as your agency grows. Ideally with modules for forecasting, financial management, and cross-team collaboration.
Investing time up front to choose the right agency operations system can save time, money, and frustration later on.
Read more: How to choose an agency management system
What is the best agency management software?
There are plenty of tools out there for managing agency work. To keep things simpler, this guide focuses on all-in-one systems designed for mid-sized creative, digital and marketing agencies.
Synergist is obviously the system we’re most familiar with, but we regularly test and review other tools too. Here, we look at how the top ten options compare, so you can find the one that fits your agency best.
Top 10 agency management software systems:
-
- Synergist
- Paprika
- Productive
- Function Point
- Scoro
- Deltek Workbook
- Teamwork
- Forecast
- Kantata
- Streamtime
Synergist
Founded: 2003 in Cheshire, UK
Best for: Established creative and digital agencies needing detailed project, resource and financial control
Overview
Synergist is a comprehensive agency management platform built to help creative, digital and marketing agencies manage projects, people and profitability in one system. It combines project management, resource scheduling, financial forecasting and reporting in a highly configurable platform that adapts to each agency’s workflows.
Key capabilities
- Project management: Plan, budget, and track multi-phase projects, retainers, and repeat work.
- Resource management: Forecast workloads, manage capacity, and balance utilisation across teams.
- Financial management: Handle quoting, billing, and revenue recognition, with integrations via API for Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, and other leading finance systems.
- Reporting and insights: Build dashboards for profitability, utilisation, and performance tracking.
- Integrations: Connects with Microsoft 365, Google, HubSpot, Salesforce, and other systems via API.
Forecasting
Ditch the spreadsheets and forecasting meetings. Synergist helps you accurately forecast your pipeline and capacity requirements and manage your P&L.
- Opportunity and existing client pipeline (weighted revenue, gross profit and net profit)
- Capacity forecasts for each team and resource based on confirmed work and weighted opportunities
- Purchase cost forecasts
- Billing (revenue and profit) forecast (confirmed, weighted opportunities and targets)
Synergist sales dashboard
Project management
Budget, plan, and manage your projects end to end, effectively and profitably.
- Multi-job projects, multi-phase/stage jobs, retainers, service orders, repeat jobs and job templates, multi-phase resource/time, purchase and profit estimating.
- Branded quotes using time, fixed-fee, or value-based pricing. Quote revisions and profit margin estimates
- Gantt charts, Kanban boards, activities, document templates, attachments, comms tracking, email alerts and reminders
- Purchase management, including approval workflows, supplier and tender management, and purchase tracking
- Live time, costs (inc expected), budget (estimate vs quote vs actuals), progress, run-rate and profit tracking
- Billing plans based on fixed or relative dates, auto invoicing, and planned vs actual reporting
Synergist job list
Resource management
Manage your peaks and troughs in resourcing. Synergist makes it easy to ensure everybody is busy on billable work - but not at overcapacity.
- Scheduling based on budgets and timing plans, including draft and tentative bookings and workload views, plus holiday and absence bookings
- Detailed work bookings with checklists, attachments, deadlines, feedback options and commenting
- Capacity reporting by company, team and individual, with utilisation targets and reporting
- Auto-populated timesheets and reminders, plus timesheet approval workflows
- Share resources and schedules across multiple divisions
Synergist capacity dashboard
Client management
Manage your prospects, new business opportunities and existing clients in one system
- Unlimited leads, prospects and clients, with opportunity management and new business reporting. Multiple companies and contacts under an umbrella company
- Manage activities and store client documents and communications
- Client-specific rate cards and terms, multicurrency quoting and billing
- Client target tracking, forecasting, profitability and client investment reporting
Synergist Opportunity list
Reporting
Synergist's reporting function gives you complete visibility on what's happened, what's happening and what's going to happen across your agency.
- Dashboards show all the key metrics you need at the click of a button
- View agency-focused reports for analytics on your clients, projects, utilisation, financials, and profitability
- Create custom reports using powerful filters, formulas, multiple data fields, cross-tabs and custom data and build custom dashboards for different groups
- Feed report data into your other systems using our powerful API
Integrations
Synergist has two-way integrations with leading software, including Microsoft 365, Xero, Quickbooks, HubSpot and many more. Plus, our API enables you to integrate with anything.
Learn more about: Synergist integrations
Advanced features
Synergist offers more advanced functionality when you need it, including revenue recognition, multi-job quoting and quoting with options, tender management, managed sales orders, multi-company resourcing and group-level reporting.
Pricing
Your monthly subscription is made up of the number of full and timesheet users you require:
- Full users are the people in charge of your clients, projects, people or finances. They will have access to all features, including time and expense entry
- Timesheet users are the people who do the work. They will have access to enter time and expenses and view job-related information
Price per user is determined by the number of users you have. User pricing is the same across all tiers.
Learn more about Synergist pricing
Set up, training and ongoing support
Synergist comes with hundreds of features and gives you more advanced functionality as you grow. But there's no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to agencies. This is why Synergist is configured to work as your agency does and give you the exact business intelligence you need.
Our onboarding experts, Agency Works, will help you design your perfect Synergist set-up, configure Synergist to the way your agency needs, train your teams, and help you get the data insights you need to grow. Their vast industry experience means they know what makes an agency really work and how to help elevate your agency's performance. You'll also enjoy ongoing access to advice and support to help you get the most out of Synergist and get the best for your business.
Book a demo
See why thousands of agencies - from design to digital, 10-500 people - choose Synergist to manage their operations more intelligently and profitably.
Paprika
Founded in 1982 in Kent, UK.
With a global user base of creative agencies and capabilities in six languages, Paprika incorporates a powerful accounting system with multi-company and multi-currency capabilities.
Their purpose is to flawlessly integrate every agency function, from client and contact management and job-costing and quoting to project and resource management, invoicing, and accounting.
Key features:
- Time and expenses
- Purchasing
- Client billing
- Managing clients and jobs
- Estimating and quotes
- Resource and scheduling
- Finance and accounting
Productive
Founded in 2014 in Zagreb, Croatia.
Productive is relatively new compared to the others in this list, which means you might not find the same level of functionality as you would with a more established system.
Productive describes itself as ‘a one-stop shop for agencies of all types and sizes.’ Their tool’s main objective is to provide agencies and service providers with a complete and real-time overview of their business. They offer a number of packages, but agencies that want to use all the features will need to move to the 'premium' tier.
Key features:
- Budgeting
- Resource planning
- Reporting
- Project management
- Time tracking
- Sales
- Billing
Function Point
Founded in 1997, in Vancouver, Canada.
Function Point started as a platform for automated pricing calculations, transforming into an all-in-one web project management solution used by over 500 small and mid-sized creative agencies.
Recent acquisition by Volaris Group means they’re looking to expand internationally and support creative agencies, internal marketing teams and professional service firms.
Key features:
- CRM and estimating
- Team collaboration
- Project management
- Agency financials
- Resource management
- Business reporting
Scoro
Founded in 2013 in Tallin, Estonia.
Scoro is an all-in-one business management system built for consultancies, agencies, and other professional service businesses to gain visibility, boost profitability and standardize operations. It combines a range of project management features with resource and financial management.
Key features:
- Resource scheduling and management
- Time tracking
- Project budgeting and profitability tracking
- Project and task management
- Reporting and analytics
Deltek WorkBook
Founded in 1983 in Virginia, US.
Deltek Workbook provides best-practice solutions to help agencies grow. It streamlines projects, people and finance in a single cloud-based solution, giving real-time control, insights and visibility.
It offers complete project and resource management, plus additional features to support new business and finance.
Key features:
- Estimating, SOWs and briefs
- Project planning and scheduling
- Task management
- Utilisation and capacity forecasting
- Invoicing, billing and POs
- Profit reporting
- Business Intelligence
Teamwork
Founded in 2007 in Cork, Ireland.
Teamwork is an all-in-one team platform to manage client work – projects, budgets, teams and clients.
Key features:
- Resource and workload management
- Project and task management
- Time tracking
- Team and client collaboration
- Reporting and analytics
Forecast
Founded in 2016, Denmark
Forecast is an AI-powered resource and project management software for agencies and professional service businesses. It helps you manage your tasks, projects, programs, resources and finances in one easy-to-use platform.
Key features:
- Project management
- Time tracking and invoicing
- Resource management
- Capacity planning
- Financial management
- Business insights
Kantata (formerly Mavenlink)
Founded in 2008 in Irvine, California.
Kantata is an agency management system which manages a full range of operations, including client relationships, workflows and project tracking. It’s customisable, so agencies can shape it to work alongside them as they grow.
Key features:
- Project and task management
- Resource management
- Financial management
- Collaboration and file sharing
- Analytics
- Customer management
Streamtime
Founded in 2002 in New Zealand.
Streamtime project management software has been specially designed for the creative industry for effective planning, tracking and scheduling.
Key features:
- Job planning
- Quoting and invoicing
- Time tracking
- Scheduling
- Reporting
- Collaboration
What other software and tools do agencies use?
There are hundreds if not thousands of software applications out there for agency management, encompassing everything from project management, time tracking and billing, Gantt charts and Kanbans to resource management and agency reporting - you name it, there’s an app for it. (Read more on One agency management system vs separate tools).
Other project management software creative agencies use:
CMAP - Founded in 2000 in the UK, this project management software helps professional services companies win more work, deliver it more profitably and make better business decisions.
Accelo - Founded in 2011 in Australia, Accelo is a client work management platform that provides an end-to-end solution for sales and quoting, project management, tickets, time tracking, billing, retainers and reporting.
Wrike - Founded in 2006 in California, Wrike is a project management platform for managing cross-functional work at scale. It offers a single digital workplace for departments and teams, supporting complex workflows through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.
ClickUp - Founded in 2017 in California, this work and project management platform enables teams to manage tasks, collaborate in real-time, gain insights via reporting and more.
Monday.com - Founded in 2012 in Israel, this work management platform helps teams to manage tasks and workflows to fuel team collaboration and productivity. Everything starts with a visual board which can be tailored to fit your needs.
Screendragon - Founded in 2005 in Ireland, Screendragon is a work management platform for enterprise teams, enabling them to manage projects, people, processes and content in one place.
FunctionFox - Founded in 2000 in Canada, FunctionFox offers simple online timesheets and project management software for creative professionals who want to get control of their projects, bill more hours every month, and develop a deeper understanding of their business.
Workamajig - Founded in 1986 Arizona, project management software for creative agencies and in-house teams. Includes integrated financials and business insight.
Ravetree - Founded in 2013 North Carolina, Ravetree helps agencies manage their projects, resources, and creative workflows — all in one place.
Other software agencies use:
Time tracking tools: Track how each team member uses their time to improve utilisation using Harvest, Toggl Track, or Hubstaff.
Resource scheduling tools: Assign jobs to team members or freelancers, optimising utilisation and identifying gaps using Resource Guru, Forecast, Calendly, Float, Toggl Plan, or Teamdeck.
Task management tools: Break projects down into tasks, assign team members, and track actions using Trello, Asana, Todoist, MS Planner, Basecamp, or Jira.
Project planning tools: Plan out project timelines and track project progress using TeamGantt, Microsoft Project, GanttPro, ProofHub, or Hive.
Communications tools: Stay in regular contact with your team with updates, internal and client meetings and one-to-ones using Teams or Slack.
Client collaboration and approval tools: Keep everyone in the loop for client feedback and amends using Filestage, HolaBrief or Ziflow.
CRM tools: Manage and keep track of new business opportunities using Hubspot, Salesforce or Pipedrive.
Reporting tools: Automate agency reporting using AgencyAnalytics, Improvado or Whatagraph.
How much does an agency management system cost?
Agency management software is typically priced per user. While some have a flat fee per user, Synergist has one fee for full system users and a lower fee for timesheet-only users. Some companies reduce the user price the more people you add. Most have a minimum number of users, so there’s a minimum subscription.
It’s important to do your due diligence when you’re looking at pricing. Some systems can appear quite cheap upfront, as they offer limited-functionality packages with a low user fee. But if you need to add more features – which you very likely will – the price can suddenly rocket.
Top tip: Make sure you can add and remove user subscriptions whenever you need. Some providers offer discounts for paying a year in advance. But beware... you could end up paying for more subscriptions than you need, eroding any discount. Plus, these annual contracts usually only allow you to cancel around the annual renewal point.
Onboarding fees
Implementing agency management software isn’t about plugging it in and switching it on. The best agency management systems are perfectly configured for your agency’s needs. Your teams need to be properly trained; not only on how to use the system but how to get the most out of it. And you're continually supported as your business and the software features evolve.
Source: Successful customer onboarding never stops, Intercom.
Onboarding services range from free online articles to bespoke change management, implementation, training and ongoing support.
The general rule of thumb is that successful software onboarding will equal your subscription costs in year one. However, the price of onboarding will depend upon a number of factors:
- Do you have tightly defined business processes?
- Do you need lots of different workflows?
- Are you using standard functionality, or is it going to be highly customised?
- How much data will need to migrate?
- Are there any integrations required?
- Are you adding complex modules?
- Do you have a large number of departments/users?
- How much ongoing support is needed?
When you understand these points, you can get the true cost of your agency's software implementation.
“Having your own consultant to lean on and shape the software step-by-step makes it feel even more bespoke. It’s also someone to run things by to make sure I’m looking at things in the right way.”
Choosing your agency management software
It can seem daunting with so many functions and options out there. But choosing your system can be broken down into five relatively simple steps.
- Identify your goals and pains. Consider what you need your software to achieve, what problems you’d like to solve and what the strategic value could be.
- Establish your wants and needs. You can break this down again into must have, should have, could have, and won’t have to make sure you’re focusing on your key priorities.
- Identify options and create a shortlist. This is when you start looking at suppliers. Ask around, find out the industry recommendations and check out some customer reviews.
- Make your decision. Once you’ve done your due diligence, it’s time to pick. Refer back to step one and two to make sure you’re covering the bases. But remember, you won’t solve everything or please everyone, so you need to make the best overall decision for the whole agency.
- Manage the change. Teams will resist, because it’s more work, more training, more to remember, but ultimately it will make their lives easier. Proper engagement, training and support upfront can help to soothe any fears or anxieties. Read more: How to choose an agency management system
Read more: How to choose an agency management system
The best agency management software for you?
But the big question is... what’s the best agency management software for your business?
Agencies are all unique places. It’s what makes them so great. There isn’t an off-the-shelf solution which will work across them all. What works for one agency doesn't necessarily work for another.
Choosing the best agency management software can feel like a minefield. Setting out upfront exactly what you’re looking for and what you want the outcomes to be from your system can help you stay focused.
While it can be tempting to trial each and every system that you find, a word of caution. A trial won’t really show you just how the software will work within your agency, as this is such a unique and bespoke function.
Read more: Why trialling a system isn’t a good use of your time
Is Synergist the best agency management software for your agency?
Synergist is an ideal system for medium-sized agencies. The customisable features mean we can help you build a tailor-made system that works with you and for you, growing and evolving alongside your agency.
Book a demo
See why thousands of agencies - from design to digital, 10-500 people - choose Synergist to manage their operations more intelligently and profitably.