Most Comprehensive All-in-One Agency Software: Top 3 Picks

There are many agency management softwares that include comprehensive feature sets. You may see names like Productive, Teamwork, Scoro, Function Point, helloHQ, and more during your search. These systems typically combine:

• Project management (i.e., project intake, project planning, and project monitoring)

• Resource management (i.e., staff scheduling and time tracking)

• Financial management (i.e., billing, invoicing and profitability reporting)

Some also offer customer relationship management (CRM) software and/or client management modules.

However, the primary thing most of these systems miss is accounting software to support invoicing, payment processes, and revenue reporting. They encourage you to integrate QuickBooks or Xero to complement their tools and fully sustain agency workflows.

Some systems, lacking more than just accounting software, advertise themselves as a “single source of truth” and encourage you to link your tech stack and use all software in sync.

Most agencies searching for “all-in-one” software typically want to reduce software costs (among other goals). They’re already using various systems; integrating all systems is clunky, and even then, they’re still paying for multiple software subscriptions, wasting time on manual tasks, and working between tools.

So, we’ve identified the most comprehensive agency management solutions that consolidate your tech stack and offer comprehensive features:

• Workamajig (our solution)

• Advantage

• Clients & Profits

Workamajig

Flexible all-in-one operating system for creative & marketing agencies

Workamajig is an operations management system for agencies of all sizes; our system has a robust toolset and is highly configurable and scalable to support unique agency preferences. It includes a handful of core components:

• Project management

• Resource management

• Client management

• Media accounting software

• Business intelligence and financial reporting

Our platform’s tools work together and communicate in real-time. In addition, Workamajig is backed by powerful automation to streamline back-office processes, like building out client invoices, so you can focus your time on more value-adding activities.

We’ve worked with graphic design studios, advertising agencies, media agencies, digital marketing agencies, SEOs, and various creative professionals over the years. Workamajig helps them organize operations, improve efficiencies, promote project collaboration, drive greater project profitability, and, most of all, scale their operations.

In the following sections, we’ll review Workamajig’s core components in more detail so you can preview our system’s complete offerings.

If you’d like to learn more about Workamajig after reading about it, you can request a personalized demo with our team here. During the demo, we’ll discuss your current processes, tech stack, and challenges and show you how Workamajig can support your agency operations.

Workamajig Project Management

Workamajig’s project management module includes everything agencies need to manage projects from start to finish.

It includes a CRM, project setup, project planning tools (i.e., task management, staff scheduling, estimates, templates), a real-time project monitoring dashboard, and team collaboration tools.

CRM

Workamajig CRM features a user-friendly Kanban board for managing new leads through the sales pipeline.

It shows the source of new leads and automatically stores client information (like names, email addresses, and business details) and the details of sales conversations. Then, it converts closed opportunities to new projects, preserving all relevant details.

Simply click contacts or opportunities to view the details; you have the data at your fingertips to learn more about the deals you’ve won and lost, pinpoint commonalities, and improve your sales or marketing strategies.

Our system also includes reports showing leads by stage and percent closed rate, allowing managers to improve pipeline management and gauge high-level performance.

Project Intake Forms

Our project management module also includes customizable intake forms. These aren’t as popular for agencies as for in-house creatives; that said, some agencies use them to streamline requests from clients who rely on them for various services or brand collateral.

You can create different project intake forms for various project types to gather details about requests during the first communication. You can get as detailed as you’d like in these forms to collect all necessary information and prevent back-and-forth at kickoff.

You can include these forms on your website or in portals (more on those later) for others to easily access and submit.

Project Planning & Estimating

Workamajig includes various tools to assist with planning projects, budgets, and timelines, including task management, staff assignments, and templates.

First, many agencies like templates because they allow them to predefine tasks, resources, and timelines for various projects and services. These templates are handy for project managers to grab and plug in the fields when they’re ready to kick off work.

When planning new projects, managers can use Workamajig task management tools to break key deliverables into manageable tasks, allocate hours per task, and add due dates.

After you have all the tasks laid out, you can assign staff members to the work. They’ll see when to kick off tasks, how long to spend on them, and when to complete them.

Our system saves employee hourly rates and your agency’s rates per service or task to automatically calculate estimated budgets as you build project plans. Estimates will also incorporate indirect costs and contingency percentages and show expected profitability.

Managers can view estimates when they’ve completed project plans, edit them (say, if they need to add line items for other billable hours or deliverables), and save them in Workamajig.

Project Monitoring

Workamajig real-time project monitoring keeps projects on course, and within budget, with Gantt charts, overrun notifications, and color-coded warnings.

First, project teams can view all in-progress projects from the main project monitoring dashboard.

Then, they can customize Gantt charts to make the dashboard more visually appealing and view project progress at a glance. It works by splitting projects into phases and assigning a color to each phase; then, you can see project statuses quickly by looking at which color phase they’re in.

The left-hand columns provide more details about the project's status. You can see its stage, allocated hours, actual hours, and percent (%) complete.

Notice the icons highlighted in the Finance and Project Timeline columns — green, yellow, and red. Those indicators tell you if a project is on schedule (green), risking delays or budget overruns (yellow), or already beyond budgets or timelines (red).

Managers can easily see these warnings in the dashboard; however, our system also sends notifications once projects show the risk of potential overruns. This way, managers can intervene promptly and keep projects on track.

Note: Our system can calculate actual costs as projects progress because it stores employee and agency rates, as mentioned above.

Employees add hours as they complete tasks, and Workamajig calculates labor costs at each project step. Managers can also tag other project-related charges in our accounting module. (More on these tools later.)

Team Collaboration

Workamajig provides native collaboration tools for project teams and stakeholders, allowing them to centralize project-related messaging, share files (and track file versions), and streamline feedback processes.

All collaboration tools are included on task cards, so managers and other project team members can open task cards, view comment threads, see attached files, and quickly get up to speed.

Project teams can share files for feedback by uploading them to the task card. Workamajig accepts most standard file types (images, videos, PDFs, etc.), HTML, and website links.

Then, managers, project teams, and clients (to whom you grant access, no login needed) can annotate files with Workamajig’s internal proofing tools. Workamajig notifies users when others leave feedback so they can make the appropriate changes and upload new versions for review.

Workamajig saves all feedback so others can view previous notes and see how content evolved through iterations.

Today Dashboard

Another critical tool in Workamajig’s project management module is the Today Dashboard. This is available for all users — managers, accountants, creatives, freelancers — to assist with scheduling and keep them organized.

This dashboard provides a clear task list, showing their to-dos for the day and previewing the week’s agenda.

The dashboard includes a daily feed to update users on project progress and highlight other to-dos.

For example, look at the Today dashboard for a project manager below — it provides status updates on projects and neatly lists the items requiring their attention. With this, managers know exactly where to focus their attention, so nothing slips through the cracks.

Nearly 65% of all projects fail, and 55% cite budget overruns as the reason — along with unclear goals, lack of resource planning, etc.

Workamajig’s combination of project management tools boosts project success rates and helps teams work more productively. They no longer have to take losses on work or leave clients dissatisfied.

Workamajig Resource Management

Workamajig resource management lets you strategically schedule staff, optimize resource utilization, and ensure all project tasks are covered.

Our system also provides an Agency Insights dashboard with various hourly reports, allowing you to understand where your teams spend their time and dissect billable vs. non-billable hours.

These reports help you determine which services or clients require the most resources, who is clocking the most hours, and how to shift schedules to prioritize billable work. Then, you can set appropriate billable rules and utilization goals and share those with project team members.

Staff Scheduling

We briefly discussed our staff scheduling tool above. While project managers can schedule team members directly from the project schedule, Workamajig provides a dedicated scheduling dashboard to improve resource utilization.

Take a look below — this dashboard shows all project team members, the total number of hours they’re available, their utilization percentage, and the remaining hours to be scheduled. It also provides a breakdown of hours by day.

Managers can view schedules, open the Service tab to see unassigned tasks, and begin scheduling work.

Employee hours are updated as managers assign tasks so they can avoid overloading team members and balance workloads.

Vendor Management

You can also source contractors for projects via Workamajig vendor management — request quotes, review bids, and assign work all in our hub. We support free logins for vendors, and you can create vendor portals to manage each relationship separately.

Portals are also convenient for vendors because they can easily view assigned work, record hours, and submit invoices after completing projects.

Time Tracking

Employees can record work hours directly in Workamajig, and we conveniently include time-tracking tools on task cards so employees don’t forget to add hours. No more nagging co-workers to submit timesheets!

Users can track time by:

• Manually plugging in hours.

• Using timers to record hours as they work. Users can pause timers to switch between tasks and stop timers when finished.

• Importing time from calendar events. Workamajig integrates with Microsoft and Google’s calendar apps so users can easily record meeting hours with projects.

Managers can see time as employees work, and Workamajig will calculate actuals against estimates to tell you if projects are on course.

When submitting hours after completing tasks, employees can select the “I’m done with this task” button and specify any overtime hours. Marking tasks complete records the total labor hours per task, helping managers calculate the ROI of work and improve future project planning.

Read more: 6 Best Agency Time Tracking Software for Creatives

Agency Insights

Workamajig’s Agency Insights dashboard shows year-to-date hours in various categories: for example, by client, service, or account manager. It also shows what’s on the agenda for the day and how many hours you’re allocating per task or service.

You can filter these reports to analyze hours over different timeframes or contexts. You can also save custom reports and edit your Agency Insights dashboard to monitor the metrics most important to your agency goals.

Read more: Creative Resource Management for Agencies: Software + FAQs

Workamajig Client Management

Workamajig supports client relationships and organizes communications and contracts via client portals.

(Despite the name, you can use portals to manage relationships with any group you work with, like vendors, as mentioned above. In-house creatives use these to manage requests and conversations with other business departments.)

You can establish dedicated portals for each client — Workamajig supports unlimited client logins at no extra cost — and share access to Workamajig through these portals. Then, clients can use portals to:

• Request work

• Check project status

• Join feedback discussions

• Approve work

• Access and download final deliverables

Another way Workamajig supports client management is with change requests.

A key reason projects fail is scope creep, which occurs as a result of out-of-scope requests. Workamajig helps you incorporate these requests into project plans and prevent them from pushing projects beyond timelines or budgets.

Workamajig change management lets clients record these requests in the system. Then, managers can update estimates and project plans with the new details, share updated estimates and plans with clients, and get the green light to continue work.

Estimates reflect the new charges so clients cover the extra resources required to bring projects over the finish line.

Workamajig Accounting Software

What sets Workamajig apart from other all-in-one agency management software is the inclusion of full accounting software. Workamajig’s accounting software can replace systems like Xero or QuickBooks to fully consolidate your tech stack.

Developing Workamajig with accounting software also enables agencies to manage project finances in the project workflow, which we’ve found is critical to accurate budget tracking and maintaining project profitability.

Connected Accounts

You can connect Workamajig with your credit card and spending accounts to display account balances in the Accounting Today dashboard. As the name suggests, this dashboard updates daily to show current funds and prevent overspending.

Workamajig also prevents overspending by reporting revenue in various ways. For example, Workamajig supports:

• Advanced billing — so you can bill for projects upfront, without reporting the income, and realize revenue as projects progress.

• Pre-billing — so you can bill for certain project expenses in advance and direct these funds to a project spending account.

• Work-in-progress billing — this helps teams with unbilled expenses or labor realize these potential assets for reporting.

Billing & Invoicing

Workamajig automates invoicing by pulling resources and labor hours from projects and following your preferred billing method. Our system supports a variety of billing methods (time and materials, fixed fee, media, and retainer), and you can specify billing method per client or project.

Workamajig generates new invoices when projects wrap and displays them in managers' dashboards for review. Managers can edit invoices, customize invoice format, and add branded headers or personalized messages before finalizing and sending invoices to clients.

Managers can also create invoices by uploading billing worksheets. Billing worksheets include project budgets, project-related transactions, and prior billing amounts; Workamajig can extract the data and convert these to invoices for managers to review.

Receipt Management

Workamajig also includes a receipt management module to:

• Eliminate manual file-keeping

• Manage reimbursements

• Support invoice processing

Users can upload pictures of receipts in Workamajig to store them in the system and verify project-related expenses.

Vendor Invoice Management

Accounting teams can also upload vendor invoices to Workamajig to reconcile them with work orders and prepare digital payments. This also eliminates file-keeping and helps managers ensure timely payments.

You can store unlimited invoices in Workamajig and filter them in various ways. For example, you could filter by status to see what requires attention and what’s already paid, or you could look at invoices by vendor to see resources needed for projects.

Digital Payments

Workamajig also lets you dispatch and receive digital payments, so you can avoid snail-mailing checks or having to complete this last step in a separate payment processing system.

All payments can be managed through Workamajig, which is also convenient for collecting early payments for project-related expenses, realizing real-time revenue, and monitoring cash flow.

Financial Reporting Dashboard

Speaking of monitoring cash flow, the Workamajig accounting system includes a financial reporting dashboard to track revenue and measure project and agency profitability.

Our dashboard includes a variety of profit and loss reports to help you analyze your wins and losses and understand where you’re successful. It also includes cash projections, revenue forecasting, and general ledger (GL) reports.

What agencies really love, though, is the custom reporting option and the ability to create a key metrics monitor and star favorite reports. You can design a personalized reporting hub unique to your agency’s workflows and objectives.

Take a look at the screenshot below to see some of the reports commonly used by agencies:

Read more: 5 Best Media Accounting Software

Workamajig Integrations

Workamajig integrations power certain features, like your chart of accounts and digital payments, and support our core functionality. Some of our key integrations include:

• Strata/Freewheel, GaleForce Media, Bionic, and Mediaocean — Workamajig’s media buying integrations enable you to import costs and data from insertion orders. Then, you can include this data in project plans and client invoices. These integrations also let you reconcile invoices for insertion orders.

• Plaid — this integration enables you to connect with bank and credit card accounts. Beyond feeding your chart of accounts, these integrations also let you generate expense reports and import, map, and tag project-related charges.

• PayFlowPro / Authorize.net — these integrations allow you to accept client payments online.

• FastPay, CSI vCard, and AMEX vPayment — these integrations support digital payments by enabling you to pay vendor invoices.

• Avalara — this integration automatically generates accurate sales tax rates for client invoices.

• Excel Financials & Google Sheets — these integrations allow you to download reports to Excel or Google spreadsheets.

We also offer an API to accommodate custom integrations.

View the full list of integrations here.

Packages & Getting Started

Our packages for agencies are based on team size, and pricing is per user seat:

• $41/user/month for teams of 10+

• $39/user/month for teams of 20+

• $37/user/month for teams of 50+

We also offer custom enterprise packages to support even the largest agencies (up to 10K users).

All packages come with free onboarding and training. We’ll configure Workamajig to your workflows and agency needs. Then, we provide one-on-one training to walk you through the various modules, ensuring you can navigate Workamajig’s complete feature set and take advantage of all its benefits.

Our platform is intuitive and user-friendly, so despite its robust feature set, it doesn’t require a steep learning curve. Most creatives can familiarize themselves with the platform without lengthy training. Typically, we see agencies achieve organization-wide adoption in 60 to 90 days.

You can also watch a brief introduction to Workamajig below:

Contact our team to schedule a free personalized demo.

2. Advantage

Advantage is another popular all-in-one agency management system. This software typically appeals to media agencies, in particular, because it's partnered with Simpli.fi to offer native media planning and buying.

Overall, this system combines client management, project management, resource management, accounting software, financial management and reporting, real-time communications, and media buying. However, it does not include a full CRM like Workamajig.

Users say it offers a range of capabilities, makes project management easier, and has improved their agency’s productivity. It also receives positive reviews for its accounting software and automated invoicing features. However, the system does not handle multi-company or multi-currency accounting very well.

The notable downside is that it has a longer learning curve. Plus, despite Advantage's cost savings, it’s still a pricier option and may not be accessible for smaller agencies. Advantage typically works with mid-size and large agencies.

Notable Features

• Project management — including project intake and project monitoring

• Task management

• Resource management

• Collaborative tools like proofing & reviews

• Time tracking

• Media planning & buying — including broadcast buying, digital buying & media reporting

• Risk analysis & burn rate tracking

• Media accounting software

• Billing & invoicing

• Estimates

• Budget Monitoring

• Financial reporting

• Revenue forecasting

• CRM

• Client management

• Reporting dashboard (to analyze project performance, financials, staff hours, etc.)

• Mobile app (for Android)

Pricing

Advantage offers custom quotes per client.

Read more: Best Advantage Software Alternatives for Creative Teams

3. Clients & Profits

Clients & Profits is the last all-in-one agency management tool that meets all of our criteria.

It includes CRM, client management, project management, resource management, accounting software, and financial management. It does not include a full media buying system like Advantage, but it does include media planning tools to prepare campaigns.

Clients & Profits offers a quick, two-minute demo and visual tour on their site to introduce you to the platform, but you can also request a personalized demo with their team to see how the platform works.

Clients & Profits offers affordable pricing per user and primarily works with small and mid-size companies. They offer tailored solutions per client but are especially popular with advertising agencies and marketers.

The (potential) downside here (depending on your preferences) is that Clients & Profits is an on-premise application you have to download and run on your laptop or desktop. This comes with monthly updates and maintenance. However, they offer a hybrid, cloud-based storage model, so they maintain your database, and you don’t have to store data on your desktop.

This on-premise solution also means Clients & Profits doesn’t offer mobile apps (and you can’t access their solution from your mobile device).

Notable Features

• CRM

• Project request forms & project planning

• Project management & monitoring — request forms & project planning tools, such as task management

• Resource management — team management with live scheduling & time tracking

• Collaborative feedback tools for project teams & clients

• Portfolio management

• Workflow automation

• Accounting software

• Automatic billing & invoicing

• Vendor invoice management

• Financial reporting

• Integrations with bank and credit card accounts & media planning systems

• Adobe XD plugin

Pricing

Clients & Profits offers dedicated solutions for graphic design studios, agencies, and marketers — you select your use case and pay by user. C&P charges variable rates per user:

• $9 for freelancers

• $19 for creatives

• $39 for project managers

• $59 to $109 for power users

Take a peek at C&P pricing below:

Clients & Profits also offers free onboarding and training to get you started.

Read more: Clients & Profits Software: Reviews & Alternatives

The Runner-Ups

The names mentioned in our introduction — Productive, Teamwork, Scoro, Function Point, and helloHQ — are all popular tools that receive positive feedback on review sites like G2 and Capterra.

The primary issue with these tools is that they lack essential modules to support agencies (like accounting software, CRM, or client and contract management). Agencies that choose these solutions still have to invest in external software and take the time to integrate systems. Then integrations are often prone to issues and require frequent troubleshooting.

Our guide, available here, explains more about these systems and compares other project management tools for creative agencies.

You can also explore different types of all-in-one platforms for agencies in our related guides:

• Best Marketing Operations Management Software

• Best Creative Workflow Management Software (& Best Practices)
  
  

Final Notes

Workamajig was developed with everything agencies require to manage operations. We’ve updated and released new features through our experience to continually optimize our platform for agency needs. We carefully tailor each instance of Workamajig to client specifications so our system can work its best for your agency.

Request a personalized demo with our team to see how Workamajig can support your agency, project team members, and clients.