It’s an unfortunate reality of running any business: Tasks do not cease. To accomplish everything that makes your projects successful and your clients happy, you’ll be faced with the challenge of managing all kinds of tasks.
When you’re starting out and have just a few clients to juggle, it may seem reasonable to let your employees handle their own tasks in a silo. As long as deliverables get done, why does it matter how they choose to organize and track their responsibilities?
You’ve no doubt discovered the answer if your service business has grown, your team has increased or you’ve experienced turnover mid-project. While you could use an old-fashioned task list on paper or on desktop sticky notes, there are far more significant benefits of incorporating a web-based solution your entire team can use.
Basic to-do lists won’t cut it when you take on many projects at once, not to mention if they’re different types of projects attached to more than one type of service. Using only traditional lists or spreadsheets as your task management tool can increase the risk of:
On the other hand, task management software can make your team more effective by:
Below, we’ll cover top platforms in several categories of task management and associated functions:
The task management software that works best for a client-based business is one that does much more than allow your team to check things off. It should show task assignments, allow you to build automated workflows and help project managers assign tasks based on workload. Furthermore, each task should be connected to a project or client record to make it easy to track billable work and generate invoices based on said work.
Thus, the best task management software is actually an end-to-end client work management platform. Let’s review how Accelo fits the bill.
Accelo is a cloud-based client work management platform designed to help professional services firms, including agencies, consulting firms and MSPs, manage client relationships from prospecting and projects through to payments and retainers. The platform can handle complex projects, as it contains a wide range of project templates and auto-assigns tasks based on quoted work.
No matter your industry, you can customize Accelo to expand internal visibility, improve collaboration and increase profits.
Starting at $24 per product per user per month, your cost will depend on your needs. You pay only for the licenses you’ll use for each product: Sales, Projects, Tickets, Retainers, Billing and Reports.
Accelo integrates with a number of popular business applications, including:
One busy accounting firm used Accelo to cut redundant tasks without missing a beat during tax season. Your business could follow suit! Start a free trial or schedule a demo to see how the platform could exceed your expectations of task management software.
If co-managing tasks is the goal, your chosen platform needs to facilitate collaboration without making things harder on your team. The three software options highlighted below include collaborative features that extend beyond the capabilities of a typical task list.
Asana is a web and mobile work management platform designed to help teams organize individual tasks, track and manage projects for various industries and purposes. The platform offers multiple task and project views, including lists, Kanban boards, calendars and timelines (similar to Gantt charts). Asana’s collaboration tools clarify team responsibilities and project hierarchy, while its advanced goal-setting and workflow features can be used to keep tabs on the bigger picture.
Asana offers a free plan, but many professional services businesses will need the Business plan, as it includes features such as goal tracking and advanced workflows.
Read more detail in our comparison: Accelo vs. Asana
Basecamp is a project and task management app known for its collaborative tools, including chats, message boards and pings. As the name suggests, it’s a singular place for teams to turn for tasks, notes, files and conversations related to a given project.
Teamwork is a project management solution built for client-based businesses. The software encourages internal and external collaboration with various task organization views and unlimited client access. It offers time tracking and schedule forecasting to help professional services teams balance their workload, plus budget management and profitability tracking tools. Add-ons are available for help desk, video chat, CRM and document management.
Teamwork offers a “Free Forever” plan for up to five users. However, client-based teams that need access to billing and invoicing, team chat, custom reports and sufficient project templates will need to sign up for the more costly Grow or Scale tier.
Each paid tier has a five-seat minimum.
Teamwork integrates with 100+ apps, including:
Discover more about Accelo vs. Teamwork
Updating and managing calendars can be a time-consuming but necessary addition to your team’s task management processes, as team availability and time management are key to efficiently distributing tasks. Many businesses choose to use an app that syncs calendar events to simplify collaboration for various teams and functions. Here are three of the most popular.
Chili Piper is a scheduling and lead conversion app that helps sales teams cut back on redundant tasks during prospecting and outreach. It simplifies the process of booking meetings, collecting essential customer data via custom forms and routing meeting types to the correct place and person.
Google Calendar is a widely used calendar application that makes integrating your team’s tasks with their schedules straightforward. Because it’s frequently used for both personal and business events and allows for multiple calendars to be shown and shared on one account, Google Calendar is a universally compatible option that can accompany your other work management software platforms — and integrate with many of them.
While Google Calendar is free for anyone with a Google account, its advanced features are reserved for those who pay to use all Google Workspace features. Plans start at $6 per user per month.
Outlook Calendar is part of Microsoft Outlook’s suite of productivity tools. Events sync between email inboxes and calendars and coworkers can see one another’s availability for booking meetings. A unified search tool makes it easy to discover reminders, calendar events and more in one place.
Pricing for Outlook Calendar is integrated with business pricing plans for all Microsoft Outlook. Plans start at $6 per user per month.
Smart task management is at the heart of effective project management. A platform that can display project and task progress in convenient dashboards can make huge task lists feel less overwhelming. The following are four such options.
Accelo is a cloud-based client work management platform designed to help professional services firms, including agencies, consulting firms and MSPs, manage client relationships from prospecting and projects through to payments and retainers. The platform can handle complex projects, as it contains a wide range of project templates and auto-assigns tasks based on quoted work.
No matter your industry, you can customize Accelo to expand internal visibility, improve collaboration and increase profits.
Starting at $24 per product per user per month, your cost will depend on your needs. You pay only for the licenses you’ll use for each product: Sales, Projects, Tickets, Retainers, Billing and Reports.
Accelo integrates with a number of popular business applications, including:
See how one cloud consulting firm in trades and construction uses Accelo to move seamlessly from sales to project management to billing. Start a free trial or schedule a demo to see how the platform could transform the way your business approaches client work.
ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity platform. It’s a hub for teams to plan, organize and collaborate on work using tasks, documents, chat, whiteboards and more. Easily customized with just a few clicks, ClickUp lets teams of all types and sizes deliver work more effectively, boosting productivity.
The business version starts at $12 per user per month or $19 if paid monthly. There is a free version and a lower-cost plan for small teams, but they lack important capabilities such as advanced automations, dashboard features, workload management and timeline mapping.
Read more: Accelo vs. ClickUp
monday.com is a cloud-based software platform that allows businesses to build custom work management systems using a variety of apps and integrations. Teams can collaborate in monday.com’s Work OS and its four core apps to manage projects and workflows, follow up with sales leads, track bugs and more. Because monday.com is a strong project portfolio management software, it’s popular for planning, organizing and tracking projects, processes and teamwork across a broad range of industries and is designed to be used by a wide range of businesses.
monday.com offers a free business plan with limited features, but most professional services businesses will need a more premium plan like the Pro tier with advanced features, security and storage. For businesses that want advanced reporting and priority customer support, the Enterprise plan is the way to go. Like most other competitors, plans do not offer unlimited users but rather charge by seat, and there is a minimum seat size of three. The full pricing breakdown is as follows:
Find out more about Accelo vs. monday.com
Scoro is an all-in-one business management software that combines project management with time and team management, sales, billing and professional services automation. Scoro enables service professionals to streamline work, automate routine tasks and ensure their businesses run as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
Dive deeper into Accelo vs. Scoro
When your client work involves complex tasks or connecting many workflows using branching logic, you may want a more powerful platform that facilitates custom automation. See four software options below that support workflow customization and automation.
Accelo is a cloud-based client work management platform designed to help professional services firms, including agencies, consulting firms and MSPs, manage client relationships from prospecting and projects through to payments and retainers. Along with automated time tracking and task scheduling, the platform allows you to set up custom trigger automations to set up workflows that make sense for your business.
No matter your industry, you can use Accelo to expand internal visibility, improve collaboration and increase profits.
Starting at $24 per product per user per month, your cost will depend on your needs. You pay only for the licenses you’ll use for each product: Sales, Projects, Tickets, Retainers, Billing and Reports.
Accelo integrates with a number of popular business applications, including:
One MSP recovered 40 hours per month and streamlined its processes using Accelo. Discover the power of automation for your business: Start a free trial or schedule a demo to see how the end-to-end platform could make every stage of your client work more efficient.
Autotask PSA, a product of Datto, is a cloud-based professional services automation software built to meet the needs of MSPs. The platform provides a control hub to centralize operations in one system and store important business data to help small and midsized companies improve customer service, inventory management, productivity and profitability.
Autotask PSA pricing is not publicly available and must be requested.
Learn which is best for your business needs: Accelo vs. Autotask PSA
BigTime is a professional services automation (PSA) software that offers project management, time tracking, billing and more for accounting and consulting firms, creative agencies, IT providers and other professional services businesses. This platform was built to connect teams and offer company-wide visibility and detailed reporting in a modern user interface.
BigTime recently acquired another software platform called Projector PSA. BigTime reports that this acquisition will expand its consultative services and result in more frequent functional improvements on both platforms.
Businesses that primarily need time tracking can go with BigTime’s Express pricing tier, while more robust features such as invoicing and project budgeting require a Pro plan. Resource allocation and analysis is available only for Premier users.
Projector PSA offers custom quotes for two tiers:
Explore more: Accelo vs. BigTime
Kintone is a work management platform with a customizable, drag-and-drop interface. It provides data management, project management, CRM and recruitment solutions for various industries.
Streamlined task management is most effective when you can measure its effects. Connecting your team’s time logs to the tasks they complete, and whether those tasks are billable or non-billable, can help you generate useful reports that speak to your business’s profitability and help you make better operational decisions. Here are three platforms that could help you go beyond simple task management and develop true business intelligence.
AgencyAnalytics is a reporting platform built to help marketing agencies complete client reporting automatically. Its 70+ integrations and customizable widgets help agency owners pull clients’ key data into white-labeled dashboards.
Deltek WorkBook is an agency management solution built to maximize internal efficiency and make collaboration simple. It combines project and task management, resource allocation tools, business analytics, cost management and financial reporting and a CRM.
Workamajig is a project management software for agencies and creative teams. It features a variety of financial reports that tie time logs and team capacity to projects and tasks, making it a good option for agencies looking to focus on maximizing the profit potential of billable time.
Workamajig offers three pricing tiers: In-house, Agency and Enterprise. Within each tier, monthly cost per user varies by seat size. With a minimum seat size of 50, prices start at $37 per user per month. Enterprise organizations must request a custom quote.
READ NEXT: Project Task Tracking Software: Vetting and Feature Considerations
All of the above platform options can help your team keep up with specific tasks in a given area, but Accelo is the only one that can make task management feel like it’s a seamless part of each of your departmental functions.
Want to see how much better your client work could be when you’re more intentional about managing the sales funnel, project progress, client requests, retainers and more — not just tasks? Start a free trial or schedule a demo below.
*Pricing and packages are accurate as of December 2022.