6 Best Project Management Tools for Creative Agencies (2024)

Creative agencies have unique considerations when searching for a project management tool — in addition to standard features to plan tasks, assign team members, and track project progress, they also need ways to:

• Manage new project requests, determine bandwidth, and send accurate estimates. 
• See staff availability and make sure team members are appropriately scheduled. 
• Simplify collaboration and track file revisions so teams aren’t juggling disparate tools.
• Create project budgets and monitor time and expenses (per project, client, or service) to measure the profitability of their agency. 

That’s exactly what creative project management software is designed to do. These are sometimes called agency management or operation management software because they combine project management with resource management, time tracking, and financial management to give you better control over all behind-the-scenes components of project planning. 

Our solution, Workamajig, and names like Scoro and Productive, all fall into this category, so we put together this review guide to explain our solution and the decisions we made to design a useful and functional project management tool for creative agencies. At the end of this piece, we’ll review a few other top-rated tools for creative agencies. 

To learn more about our solution after reading, you can schedule a free demo with our team. 

Workamajig

Workamajig is a creative project management platform specifically designed for creative agencies and in-house creative teams. We have over 35 years of experience working with designers, marketing teams, and other project-based teams, and have developed our software as a single source of truth to support all aspects of your operations.

Our platform includes key project management features like project intake forms and task management. We also include resource management and time tracking for better managing staff along with a suite of financial tools to send more accurate estimates and improve agency profitability. 

During the transition to Workamajig, we show you how our platform works and how our full feature set can support (and improve) your current processes. We offer guided onboarding and optimize our platform for your workflows so you can get up and running without challenges. Most agencies can achieve full adoption in less than 90 days. 

In this article, we’ll briefly show you our key features in the context of a new project — but keep in mind that this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

If you want to see our platform’s full functionality, schedule a free demo.

Workamajig Project Management Suite 

We’ll start off by talking about the benefits for project managers, and then explain how our tools make life easier for employees and clients. 

New project requests

Project management for most creative agencies begins the moment someone submits a request. Our system provides customizable project intake forms so you can easily accept new requests and gather pertinent project details from the get-go. Our system automatically sends notifications when you receive new project requests so you can take action and send prompt replies. 

We also provide a native CRM as part of our agency management suite — this lets you store customer data and new project information in Workamajig for your sales team to manage leads. Your sales team can communicate with new leads to finalize project details (all communications are saved for reference), and everyone can see the progression as team members move leads through the sales funnel to closed won. 

Resource and finance management tools (more on those below) allow your sales teams to determine bandwidth, pull in vendor quotes, create project timelines, and send estimates to leads for final approval. 

Having staff schedules and financial data to calculate accurate project timelines and estimates is crucial for ensuring that every client and project is profitable. We’ve noticed that many creative agencies (some may argue most!) do not track expenses, including employee hours or time spent on each project, so they have no visibility into whether projects or entire accounts are profitable. Getting this clarity can dramatically transform the financial strength of an agency.  

Our system automatically converts approved project requests into new client projects in your Workamajig dashboard — it saves all notes, spec sheets, budgets, and other project details, so you don’t have to re-enter them. 

Note: You can also create new project briefs in our dashboard — we offer project templates to help you hit the ground running, or you can add and customize templates modeled off your past projects. 

Kicking off new projects 

New projects are displayed in each manager’s project management dashboard. This is where you can see all the details of new projects, including the required resources, to start creating tasks and assigning staff. 

The task management tools let managers specify time allotments and due dates and assign team members to each task. Then, task cards let you manage all of the moving parts, including:

• Adding all of the relevant information for staff — spec sheets, client notes, etc. — so they know exactly what they’re responsible for and need to achieve. 
  
  
• Attaching all relevant documents to store and share files in Workamajig. (Our system integrates with file servers to keep files linked to the right projects.)
  
  
• Using internal proofing tools to leave comments, annotate creative work, assign edits, and track the version history of files — both internal users and external stakeholders can collaborate on the platform.
  
  
• Automating approval routing to ensure file reviews reach the right people and keep projects moving. (We can also send reminders about task due dates to keep employees on schedule.)
   
• Monitoring open tasks and due dates to avoid going over timelines or budgets. 
  
  

Our resource management dashboard gives you a bird’s eye view of your team workload and lets you strategically schedule staff for projects — ensuring that no one is overloaded, and you make the best use of staff availability. You can create dynamic schedules and manage employee tasks by day, week, or month.

The dashboard provides a complete view of employee and freelancer availability (including time off, meetings, and other commitments). It also shows how many hours they’re currently scheduled for and how many hours are still open. 

This tool simplifies resource allocation when a manager needs to accommodate out-of-scope change requests or course-correct at-risk projects, or even when someone calls out sick, and it helps keep staff happy and prevent burnout. For example, if you need extra hands to move projects along, you can see who’s open and assign them to tasks. Or, if you notice a major imbalance in workloads, you can reassign tasks to ensure one person isn’t overworked while another is sitting with nothing to do.    

Monitoring project progress 

The Workamajig project dashboard gives managers a full view of all in-progress projects and their status. You can change the view of this dashboard to fit your preferences — some teams prefer Gantt charts or the critical-path method, while others like the Agile workflow with Kanban boards. 

After kicking off projects, you can monitor their “health” to ensure they remain on course. 

You can track projects and budgets from a high level; then, we offer filtering and drill-down options to look into specific project details. You can see estimated profits, track actuals against budgets in real time, and access budget breakdowns by item, type, task, or person. 

Our system’s customizable budget and health meter highlights at-risk projects with yellow or red warnings so they catch your eye. 

Projects with yellow warning symbols show signs of potential delays or budget issues, so you can troubleshoot these before they cause real problems. For example, you can see in the screenshot below that the “C&C website” project has a yellow warning under the project timeline column, this means there have been some delays, but it’s not too late to get schedules back on track. 

Projects highlighted in red require attention and course correcting. You can also see in the screenshot that the “MVC” project has a red warning in the financial status column, which means the project has exceeded budget, and you’re projected to spend more than you planned.  

Note: We also provide a work-focused “Today” dashboard that lists all of the projects and to-do’s that require your attention; this keeps you organized, shows you what tasks take priority, and prevents tasks from falling through the cracks.  

Delivering projects & billing 

Then, after projects are complete and delivered, you can generate and send invoices to clients from Workamajig. Invoices automatically include details like time, materials, rates, and markups, so clients can see the specifics.
  

We support various billing processes — time and materials, fixed fee, retainer, or media — so you can choose the appropriate method per project. We also have tools to automatically defer advanced billings and prevent overstated revenue, so you can always see the most accurate numbers in your reporting dashboards. 

Managing expenses and invoices in our system grants better visibility into your agency’s cash flow, but we’ll talk more about financial reporting later.  

What this looks like for employees 

Employees can securely access Workamajig via single-sign-on (SSO). Upon logging in, they can see their Today dashboard listing their scheduled tasks. Users can also look at the week and month ahead. 

The Today dashboard shows all tasks and their details, including the allotted time for tasks, so there are no questions about their to-do list. Employees can start their work immediately and easily move from one task to the next.

What differentiates our platform from traditional project management systems is the time-tracking function. This lets employees record the time they spend on each task so managers know if they’re allotting enough time for work — this is crucial to ensure profitability from in-progress projects and plan appropriately for future work.  

Our time tracking system is unique in a few ways: 

• We integrate with popular calendar systems (e.g., Outlook, GCal) to automatically enter time from scheduled calendar events.  
  
  
• We offer a timer system so users can easily record the actual time to complete tasks. They can pause timers during breaks and toggle between timers if working on multiple tasks. 
  
  
• Our platform automatically updates project schedules and labor budgets as team members complete tasks and enter time. This can show you actual start and completion dates and give a more accurate view of when you’ll wrap projects. 
  
  

After employees complete tasks, they can log their actual hours and submit the task for review so it can move to the next stage of workflow. 

As mentioned above, task cards have tools to manage reviews and proofing so employees can communicate with editors in the platform and upload file revisions. All changes and conversations are stored in our platform.  

This improves team productivity and provides an organized workflow for employees because they don’t have to work with multiple software solutions to do their jobs (Excel spreadsheets, messaging apps like Slack, etc.). 

They can see their task list and what they need to accomplish, communicate with other team members about projects and edits, submit their work, record their time, and manage their availability, all in one system. 

What this looks like for clients 

You can create unlimited client accounts (without extra fees) so clients can log in to Workamajig and request projects, track progress, collaborate with your teams, reject or approve files, and view final deliverables. This eliminates back-and-forth emails with clients where information can get lost in the shuffle. 

Workamajig Agency Management Suite

In addition to our project management suite, we include tools to manage agency operations. We discussed our CRM system above, but we also have very useful vendor management tools, finance and accounting features, and reporting capabilities. 

Vendor Management 

Our system lets you easily collaborate on projects with outside vendors or freelancers. We offer unlimited free logins for vendors. 

In Workamajig, you can request quotes from multiple vendors and receive bids; then you can choose who to work with and send POs with project details.  

We also include tools to manage vendor invoices, automatically reconcile invoices, and send payments to vendors. 

Finance & Accounting 

We have a full GL accounting system that can replace alternative accounting tools like QuickBooks or Xero. Our platform offers a variety of features, so you can:

• Send accurate invoices that include all line items and billable hours. 
• Receive and reconcile vendor invoices to send timely payments.
• Connect with your credit card provider to sync charges. 
• Monitor budgets and chargebacks for more transparent cost control. 
• Compile and manage expense reports. 

We also provide financial reports, so you can see: 

• Your most profitable services. 
• True client profitability — which clients are your most profitable and where you can improve your margins. 
• The account managers and team members that drive the most profit. 
• Forecasted revenue.
  
  

Agency Insights

In addition to the financial reports above, our agency insights dashboard gives you a greater look at what’s going on behind the scenes. Our reports display: 

• Total number of hours worked by client or project. 
• Total number of hours worked by service. 
• Hours worked by team members. 
• A preview of the tasks and projects your teams are working on (today, and this week). 
• And more… 
  
  

This data lets you pinpoint opportunities to improve your operations and increase agency profit. It’s common for agencies that start using Workamajig to notice that certain projects or clients are using far more resources than others, and providing little, no, or even negative profitability. 

With these insights, agencies can better allocate resources, talk to “problem clients” about limits, or otherwise fix the issue. Seeing and fixing these hidden profitability issues can have a dramatic effect on agency profitability. 

Toolbox Creative — a brand agency offering website design, lead gen strategy, identity design, content strategy, and SEO — uses Workamajig to manage projects, budgeting, scheduling, reporting, and accounting in a central hub, and create a holistic view of each project’s health and profitability. Since starting with us, they’ve increased project profitability by 937%. 

Check out the full Toolbox Creative case study here. 

Pricing

We offer three solutions — for in-house teams, agencies, and enterprises — and all-inclusive pricing, so packages contain our core Workamajig features discussed above. 

You can choose the solution that fits you and the right package for your team size. Pricing is by user and varies by package (starts at $41 for 10+ user teams, then rates lower from there based on team size). 

We offer unlimited free customer support (you can reach us over chat, phone, or email) to help during onboarding and any time you have questions.  

Schedule a free demo with us to talk about what you’re looking for in a creative project management tool and see if we’re the right fit. 

2. Scoro 

Scoro categorizes its platform as “work management software,” as it combines project management, resource management, financial forecasting, and reporting into one solution. In addition to creative agencies, Scoro also works with software developers, consultants, law firms, event management groups, architectural and engineering firms, and other professional services. 

Scoro integrates with dozens of software to supplement its core feature set, including accounting tools like QuickBooks, CRM systems like HubSpot, and even other project management tools like Asana and Trello. With that in mind, reviews suggest the platform may be lacking in certain areas; for example, customers have said the platform has inadequate accounting capabilities and does not fully replace accounting software.  

Note: Scoro, and many of the other names below, are notably different from Workamajig that offers resource planning, financial management, and time tracking as native functionalities. You don’t need to purchase a dozen systems and integrate them to work as one; our system provides that comprehensive functionality so you only have to use (and pay for) one platform. 

Features for Creative Teams  

• Project management 
• Resource planning 
• Quoting and budgeting (to create proposals and estimates) 
• Invoicing 
• Cost management 
• Retainers
• Time tracking 
• Reporting dashboards 

Pricing

Scoro offers four packages and features vary between plans. Scoro recommends the Pro plan because it gives access to all their core features and integrations with accounting software.  

Note that all packages require a minimum of five users and Scoro charges extra for custom modules and their Sage Intacct add-on. 

• The Essential plan costs $26/user/month — a minimum cost of $130/month — and offers the basics to get started, but you miss out on important features like project templates, time tracking, and Zapier integrations. 
  
  
• Standard plan costs $37/user/month — a minimum cost of $185/month — grants access to more features but is still quite limited. For example, this plan lacks budget management tools and accounting integrations. 
  
  
• The Pro plan costs $63/user/month — a minimum cost of $315/month — and provides all necessary work management tools. 
  
  
• Scoro also offers custom plans for teams with more specialized requirements; you have to contact Scoro for more information and pricing.  

It’s also worth mentioning that Scoro may charge fees to cancel your membership. Reviewers say that you have to request a cancellation 30 days before your subscription renews to avoid charges. 

To learn more about Scoro, check out their site.

3. Productive

Productive offers a specialized project management system for creative agencies; in addition to core project and task management features, the platform also offers resource and budget management, time tracking, a native CRM, and collaboration tools. Notably, this platform does not include a full accounting tool set, but instead, integrates with accounting systems to streamline those workflows. 

The platform boasts integrations with dozens of business applications; it connects with the various tools in your tech stack to serve as a single source of truth. 

Their team will meet with you before onboarding to discuss your specific areas of improvement, help you choose a package, and configure the software to your needs. Customers also say Productive offers responsive customer support. 

That said, reviewers also warn about the complexity of this software and the long implementation times. This project management tool can take a long time to get off the ground because of its many integrated capabilities; connecting it with your software and adjusting processes can call for a “rough set-up.” Customers also note a learning curve with the software and say training employees can be challenging.   

Features for Creative Teams

• Project management
• Budgeting 
• Billing 
• Sales 
• Resource planning 
• Time tracking 
• Reporting 
• Documents (to create docs and collaborate with teammates) 
• Open API to integrate with any software
• Mobile apps for iOS and Android

Pricing

Productive offers tiered packages, with different features and levels of support. The Productive team can recommend a package, but reviewers also include recommendations in their feedback, saying you’re best to start at the Ultimate plan to access all critical features. 

• The Essential plan costs $11/month — this includes access to the project management suite and basic tools to manage resources and budgets. 
  
  
• The Professional costs $28/month — this plan is noted as the “best value” on their site. It contains all the Essential plan features plus more advanced resource and budget management tools.  
  
  
• The Ultimate — the recommended plan (by both reviewers and the Productive website) — includes all features from the Professional plan, plus important tools like revenue forecasting, advanced time tracking, HubSpot integrations, and more. You must contact Productive for a custom quote. 
  
  
• The Enterprise plan is for agencies with 50+ employees — you must also contact Productive for more information on pricing here. 

Note: Reviews and pricing suggest this tool might be best suited for smaller agencies. 

You can learn more about Productive on their site. 

4. Teamwork

Teamwork offers operations management software for creative agencies, marketers, SEOs, product designers, architects, IT teams, and other professional services. They have experience working with over 20K brands, including household names like Disney, Netflix, HP, and Panasonic. 

Like Scoro and Productive above, this platform offers a plethora of tools to support different areas of operations; beyond task management, this includes time tracking, resource management, cost management, features to create estimates and invoices, internal proofing tools, and more. 

However, also like those platforms, this system relies on integrations with your other tools to streamline workflows and isn’t a full replacement for certain systems (users note dissatisfaction with the CRM and say you still need an external accounting software). 

Reviewers note that Teamwork offers a lot of ways to customize the software to support specific requirements and that the Teamwork support team is available to help through implementation. However, they also report expensive onboarding and training costs to get running.  

Features for Creative Teams  

• Resource & workload management 
• Project intake forms 
• Project management, including tasks and subtask management 
• Project templates & automation tools 
• Client management 
• Customizable dashboards (choose the view you like best, lists, Kanban, Gantt chart — see your work or zoom out and look at all agency projects)   
• Time tracking 
• Budgets
• Invoicing 
• Retainers 
• Expense management 
• Collaborative tools, including proofs, annotations, file sharing 
• Reporting dashboards 
• Integrations 
• Mobile apps for iOS & Android 

Pricing

Teamwork offers tiered pricing and recommends their Grow plan because it includes all the features most teams need to get started (resource planning, company timesheets, and project budget management tools). 

Reviewers also recommend the Grow plan to access all the necessary features, and because lower plans limit the number of proofs and projects you can work on at one time. Reviewers also warn Teamwork can become pricey as you add user seats and extra modules. 

Here’s a quick look at their packages: 

• The Free plan is a very limited package that grants access to the platform and key integrations, it lets you see a high-level view of how the platform works.  
  
  
• The Starter plan costs $8.99/user/month and has “all the basics to get started.” This plan requires a minimum of 3 users (and has a minimum monthly cost of $26.97). 
  
  
• The Deliver plan costs $13.99/user/month and offers “more robust project management.” This plan also requires a minimum of 3 users (and has a minimum monthly cost of $41.97).  
  
  
• The Grow plan costs $25.99/user/month — as mentioned above, this is the recommended plan with all necessary features to manage operations. This plan requires a minimum of five users (and has a minimum monthly cost of $129.95). 
  
  
• Teamwork also offers custom packages for enterprise teams.
  
  

To learn more about Teamwork, check out their site.

5. Paymo

Paymo is an agency management tool mostly recommended for small to medium-sized project-based businesses; they work with creative and marketing agencies, software and engineering firms, architecture firms, consultants, and educational institutions. Despite their popularity amongst smaller teams, they also work with some larger brands, like Adidas and Fujifilm. 

Paymo is another project management tool that combines time tracking, resource management, and budget management to help agencies improve cost control and profitability. They also integrate with accounting software, Google Apps, Slack, and other tools to automate workflows and sync calendars.  

Reviewers of the software note its ease of use and say implementation is fairly straightforward; however, some say the UX is outdated and certain features, like time tracking and accounting tools, are limited or awkward to use.   

Features for Creative Teams  

• Task management 
• Time tracking, with Pomodoro timers to improve time management 
• Resource management, including team scheduling and a leave planner 
• File management 
• Financial management 
• Invoicing and online payments 
• Profitability tracking 
• Team collaboration tools like proofing and versioning 
• Reporting dashboards 
• Customization options, multilingual features, & open API 
• Mobile apps for iOS & Android 

Pricing 

Paymo offers four plans; the features, storage space, and number of supported projects vary by plan. Here’s a look at pricing: 

• The free plan includes up to 5 clients, 10 projects, and 1 GB of storage. This plan is exclusive to project management features. 
  
  
• The Starter plan costs $9.90/user/month — it includes a few extra project management features, in-app support, and up to 5GB storage. 
  
  
• The Small Office plan costs $15.90/user/month — this is the most popular plan that includes most of the core features (though you still miss out on resource management). It supports up to 50GB of storage. 
  
  
• The Business plan costs $23.90/user/month — this includes more advanced features, like employee scheduling and workload management, and supports 500GB storage. 

Some users say that Paymo’s pricing may be prohibitively high for small businesses and that the platform becomes pricey as you grow. 

You can learn more about Paymo on their site.

6. Adobe Workfront

The last option on our list, Adobe Workfront, is a popular project management solution for creatives because it’s integrated with the entire Adobe suite (e.g., Creative Cloud, Adobe Experience Manager). It’s recommended for power users of Adobe who are already embedded in this ecosystem, but note that Adobe has limited integrations and requires you to work within their ecosystem when you want to add new tools to your tech stack. 

Adobe’s project management tool includes time tracking and resource management tools but does not support the financial components of creative project planning. That means this system does not include tools to calculate accurate estimates, send invoices, dig into expenses and revenue, or improve profitability. 

This software solution is designed and intended for enterprise agencies; Adobe works with the creative and marketing teams at organizations like T-Mobile, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Sage. Most small to mid-sized agencies are priced out of the conversation early in the sales process. 

Users say the platform offers powerful integrations with Adobe’s creative applications, which makes collaboration and proofing a breeze; you can easily push files between Adobe’s project management tool and the native editor and track all changes between versions. However, users say this software can be tricky to implement, and Adobe only offers self-guided training videos. 

Features for Creative Teams  

• Work management tools, with features to assign tasks and track time. 
• Demand management, with project intake forms, auto-routing, and automated approvals.  
• Strategic portfolio planning 
• Resource management, including team, project, and global resource scheduling. 
• Collaborative tools, like proofing and review and approval capabilities.
• Customizable project management dashboards, supporting Waterfall, Agile Scrum, and Agile Kanban views. 
• Integrations with Creative Cloud, Adobe Experience Manager, productivity tools, and document storage systems (specifically, these include: Slack, Jira, Salesforce, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint, One Drive, and Outlook). 

Adobe also offers add-ons, including: 

• Workfront Fusion, with workflow automation tools to save time on daily tasks.
• Scenario Planner, that can guide decision-making and problem-solving to avoid issues with projects and achieve big-picture goals. 
• Workfront Goals, to support your overall business strategy and determine how to improve operations and drive progress. 

Pricing 

Adobe offers three packages — Pro Body, Business, and Enterprise — that vary in features, but they do not disclose pricing on their site.

To learn more about Adobe Workfront, check out their site. 

Alternative Project Management Solutions 

In addition to the names above, you might also see some of the more “universal” project management tools like Monday and Trello when researching these software solutions. 

While these popular software brands receive good reviews, these tools aren’t the best project management software for creative teams because they do not support all aspects of creative project planning. You don’t have tools to manage staff availability, strategically assign team members to projects, or track employee time, and they offer no visibility into finances or profitability.  

If you only need a simple solution to oversee project timelines, plan out tasks, and track progress, then you might consider one of the names below. 

• Monday.com — read reviews here 
• Wrike — read reviews here 
• Asana — read reviews here  
• Trello — read reviews here  
• Kantata — read reviews here  

Want to learn more about Workamajig? Schedule a free demo with our team to explore our creative agency project management software.