PSA for a small consultancy
Professional services automation for a firm under thirty people should cost what the spreadsheet costs to replace, and do the four things the spreadsheet does at month end: join the hours to the rates, the rates to the client, the client to the deal, and all of it to a margin figure a partner trusts.
Most tools in this category are priced and implemented for fifty seats and up, which is why the firms that need it most are the ones still running on a workbook.
Who actually has PSA, by firm size
Share of professional services firms using a commercial PSA tool, from SPI Research’s 2025 benchmark of 403 firms. The small end is the open end.
Source: SPI Research, 2025 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark, Table 66 (2024 data), via Certinia’s analysis of the 2026 edition. Billable utilization across all firms fell to 66.4% in 2025, the lowest SPI has recorded.
Where the spreadsheet breaks
The breakpoint is usually somewhere between eight and fifteen active clients or consultants. It arrives as one of these four.
Time is in one place and rates are in another
Hours live in a timesheet app or a tab, rates live in a partner's head, and the two meet in a spreadsheet at month end. Whoever builds that spreadsheet is the only person who can answer whether last month was profitable.
Quotes and delivery disagree
The quote said 120 hours. The project plan, made a week later, says 160. Nobody re-priced, so the difference is margin that was given away before anyone logged a day.
Retainers hide over-servicing
A retainer looks fine every month because the invoice is the same. The hours underneath it are not, and without included hours per period on the record, nobody sees the drift until renewal.
The client asks for a status and gets a call
A partner spends the afternoon assembling an update from three tools. The client wanted one page.
What Onplana Services does for a firm this size
Everything Onplana does for delivery, schedules, timesheets, capacity and earned value, plus the commercial record around it. Each line below is built and running.
- Clients and contacts, with every deal, project and hour hanging off the client
- A pipeline with a billing model per deal: hourly, fixed fee, retainer or milestones
- Quotes from priced lines, accepted by the client on a private link, carried onto the project
- Hours on tasks with approval, priced at a cost rate and a billable rate from a ladder that knows the client and the project
- Margin per client, per project and per person, with the change since last period split into rate, volume and mix
- Rebillable and absorbed expenses, and a client portal scoped to each client
- Guests log time and expenses on the projects they are invited to, free within the plan's guest allowance
Not on the list: invoicing and posting to your ledger. Those still happen in your accounting system, and the connections to it are being built.
What it should cost at this size
$24 per seat a month, $19 billed annually, no seat minimum and no onboarding package. A twelve-person firm pays for the twelve people who sell, plan and approve; the contractor who logs eight hours a week is a guest and does not need a seat.
The comparison that matters is not against other software. It is against the partner afternoon that rebuilds the month-end workbook, priced at that partner’s rate, twelve times a year.
Questions small firms ask
What is professional services automation, for a small consultancy?
One system holding the deal, the project, the approved hours and the margin, instead of a CRM, a timesheet tool and a spreadsheet that meet once a month. For a firm under thirty people the test is whether it replaces the spreadsheet a partner rebuilds every month, not whether it has every module a large firm buys.
When does a consultancy need PSA instead of a spreadsheet?
Usually somewhere between eight and fifteen active clients or consultants, which is where the month-end spreadsheet stops being maintainable by one person. PSA adoption is 43.5% in firms under ten staff and 63.8% at ten to thirty, so most firms at that size are still deciding.
What does Onplana Services cost?
$24 per seat a month, or $19 per seat a month billed annually, with no seat minimum. Occasional people log time and expenses as guests without a seat, free within the plan's guest allowance. It is not yet on sale; the page ends in a waitlist.
Does it invoice or connect to my accounting system?
Not today. It works out what each engagement earned and cost, and marks expenses rebillable or absorbed, but the invoice and the ledger posting still happen in your accounting system. Accounting connections are being built and are not available yet.
Do we have to leave Microsoft Project or our current schedule tool?
Onplana imports .mpp and Project Online schedules with dependencies, custom fields, baselines and costs, and runs them as the delivery side of the same record. Onplana Services sits on top of that; you do not run two schedulers.
Can an AI agent work in it?
Yes. Clients, deals, quotes, time and expenses are reachable over the API and the MCP connector, so an agent connected from Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot can read the pipeline and, with the right role, create deals and quotes or log time on your behalf.
Built, running, opening soon
Join the waitlist and we come to you when Onplana Services opens. The delivery side is Onplana itself and is available now, on a free plan that already carries rate cards.
Choosing between a CRM and this? Read a CRM for consultants.