Onplana Services
Other tools show your client where things stand. Onplana Services shows you whether you are making money on it.
For consultancies and agencies of up to about thirty people: one record from the deal you win to the schedule you run, the hours you log and the margin you keep, so the thing you sold and the thing you delivered are never two spreadsheets that disagree.
The margin leaks between four records
Utilization is at a record low while pipelines are full, and the work that quietly grows past its scope is the work nobody bills. The numbers are the industry’s own.
billable utilization across services firms in 2025, the lowest SPI Research has recorded
SPI Research, 2026 benchmark
of agencies rarely or only sometimes charge for out-of-scope work
Ignition, 2025
lose $1,000 to $5,000 a month to work nobody billed
Ignition, 2025
of creative agencies over-service clients without compensation
FunctionFox, 2025
Sources: SPI Research 2026 benchmark, via Certinia · Ignition 2025 Agency Pricing and Cash Flow Report · FunctionFox 2025 Creative Industry Report.
Deal
A client, a contact, a value in one currency, and how it will bill: hourly, fixed fee, retainer or milestones. Quote it from priced lines and the client accepts on a private link.
Project
Winning the deal creates the delivery project carrying the value, the currency, the client and the billing terms. The thing you sold is the thing you deliver.
Time
Hours land against tasks and get approved. Each hour prices at the cost rate for margin and the billable rate for the client, from a ladder that knows the project and the client.
Margin
Revenue against cost per client, per project and per person, with the change since last period split into rate, volume and mix, and unbilled asks grouped where you can see them.
One record, four views. A deal that becomes a project cannot be re-keyed wrong, an hour that lands on a task cannot be lost between systems, and a margin figure that comes from those hours cannot be argued with at the month-end meeting.
The same chain, on screen
All four records above, in the order a job moves through them: the client and the deal, the project it becomes, the hours logged against it, and the margin it earned.
Delivery included
A Services workspace is Onplana, so the project side is already there. Nothing to connect and no second tool for the schedule.
- Tasks and subtasks, in list, board, grid and calendar views
- Gantt with dependencies, milestones and the critical path
- Templates, RIBA Plan of Work and AIA design phases among them
- Timesheets with an approval chain
- Capacity and utilization across every project
- Baselines, to see what moved against the plan
- Microsoft Project import (.mpp, XML) and Excel or CSV
Architecture or engineering practice? See how the RIBA and AIA stages carry a fee per sign-off.
The commercial half of a services firm
On top of the delivery, the layer that tells you whether the work pays.
Clients, not just projects
Companies and the people inside them, with every engagement, request and invoice-worthy hour hanging off the client rather than scattered across unrelated projects.
A pipeline that becomes delivery
Track deals through your own stages. Winning one creates the delivery project carrying its value, currency and client across, so the thing you sold and the thing you deliver are the same record.
Margin per engagement
Cost against revenue per client and per project, with the change since last period split into rate, volume and mix, so a bad month tells you which of the three moved.
Expenses that know who pays
Log an expense as rebillable or absorbed. A rebillable one nets to zero margin rather than inventing profit; an absorbed one reduces it. The arithmetic matches how you actually bill.
A client portal that shows one client their own rows
Publish a view and scope it to the signed-in visitor, so each client sees their engagement and nobody else’s. A row nobody owns is served to nobody.
Scope creep you can point at
Client asks are linked to the client, so the ones that quietly became work are grouped separately from the ones you renegotiated. A place to look, not an accusation.
What it costs
Or $19 per seat a month billed annually.
Occasional people do not need a seat: a guest logs time and expenses on the projects they are invited to, free within your plan's guest allowance.
- Everything in Onplana Business, plus change control and audit logs
- Clients, contacts and a pipeline that becomes delivery
- Quotes from priced lines, accepted by the client on a private link
- Margin per client and per engagement, with the drivers
- Rebillable and absorbed expenses
- A client portal scoped to each client
Not included: the Enterprise governance pipeline, SSO, SCIM and the IP allowlist.
Priced separately from Onplana’s own plans, which is why it is not a row on the Onplana pricing page.
Start with Onplana Services
Your clients, your pipeline and your margin from the first screen. Free to start, no card, and you can invite the rest of the firm whenever you are ready.
Create your workspaceAlready running projects on Onplana? Turn Services on from Billing in the workspace you have, projects included, instead of starting a second one.
What firms ask us
Is this Onplana, or something separate?
It is Onplana. A Services workspace includes Onplana’s project delivery, the schedules, timesheets, capacity and baselines, plus the commercial layer on top: clients, the pipeline, quotes, margin and expenses. One workspace and one record, so whether the work is on track and whether it is profitable are answered from the same data.
Is it a plan on the Onplana pricing page?
No, it is priced separately, with its own page. The Onplana pricing table compares one ladder of five tiers, and Services is sold on two of them at its own price, so putting it in that table would misrepresent both.
Does it do invoicing or accounting?
It works out what an engagement earned and what it cost, and it hands that to your ledger rather than replacing it. Approved time and rebillable expenses go to Xero as draft invoices, one per client, from the accounting export, with a preview that writes nothing first. QuickBooks is coming next, and a CSV download works with any system today.
When can we buy it?
Now. Start a workspace and you are on Onplana Services from the first screen, with your clients, your pipeline and your margin already there. You can begin on the free tier and move to a paid plan when your team outgrows it.
Which firm are you?
Architecture and engineering
Firms that plan and bill by phase
A design practice plans by stage and bills as the work is approved or completed. Two templates lay a building project out that way: each stage is a phase, the briefing and design stages end in a client sign-off milestone, the later stages close on award, completion or handover milestones, apart from RIBA's final Use stage, and every task carries hours. Quote each fee share as a milestone line against one of those milestones; the client accepts on a private link, and each share is recognised when its linked milestone completes.
RIBA Plan of Work 2020
Stages 0 to 7 as phases, client sign-offs closing Stages 1 to 4, 22 tasks with hours.
See the templateAIA design phases
SD, DD, CD, bidding and CA as phases, an owner approval closing SD, DD and CD, the customary 15/20/40/5/20 split.
See the templateWhat it does not do yet: the margin report groups by client, project and person, not by phase. Per-phase profitability is a comparison you make from the hours and the fee share today; the phase cut comes after one firm has run a project on these templates. How phases work in Onplana.
Not billing clients for your time?
Then the commercial layer is more than you need. Onplana on its own plans runs the same delivery: schedules, timesheets, capacity, utilization and earned value.
Onplana for professional services