Workflow automation for consulting and project-based firms.
Proposals, statements of work, staffing requests, client approvals, and billing hand-offs run as flows instead of email threads. Principals keep the judgment calls, and every step lands in the PSA or ERP.
Nothing posts without a threshold, a review path, and a sample. The exception queue has a reason and an owner.
What is different in this industry
The requirements that change the work.
Scope decides the money
Statements of work, change requests, and rate cards drive the flows; a change in scope should reach the budget and the invoice without re-entry.
Judgment is the product
The flows prepare decisions for principals and project managers, and people make them. Approval points are where the firm says they are.
People are the capacity
Staffing flows work from skills, availability, and utilization targets, because the firm sells the time and expertise of its people.
The PSA is the record
Flows create and update projects, time, and billing in the PSA or ERP rather than beside it.
What we build
Workflow and business process automation, applied here.
Proposal to project
Approved proposals and signed statements of work create the project, budget, and team in the PSA.
Staffing requests
Requests for people routed by skill and availability, approved by the resource manager, and booked in the PSA.
Client approvals and changes
Deliverables and change requests sent for client approval, followed up, and recorded on the project.
Billing hand-offs
Milestones and approved time that trigger invoicing steps in the PSA or ERP.
What a first release could include.
In the first release
One flow end to end: signed statement of work to staffed project, or client approval
Client-level permissions carried through the flow
Approval points where the firm places them
An exception queue with a responsible person for each item
Records created in the PSA or ERP, not beside it
Usually later
Staffing requests routed by skill and availability
Billing hand-offs from approved milestones
AI summaries of project status for principals
Systems in play
PSA: Deltek, Kantata, BigTime, and similar
ERP and accounting: NetSuite, Sage Intacct, and similar
CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot, and similar
Document management and Microsoft Office
E-signature: DocuSign and similar
Email and calendar
Features
What the software can include.
Proposal approval routing
Draft proposals routed through pricing, contract, and principal review in order, with comments, versions, and final approval recorded before the client sees them.
Project closing workflows
Closing steps such as final invoicing, deliverable handover, lessons learned, and client feedback run as a checklist with approvals.
Client status updates
Clients receive progress updates and outstanding requests at set milestones, drafted from the project and approved by the project manager.
Staffing and assignment routing
New projects and tasks assigned by skill, workload, and availability, with the responsible principal able to adjust assignments.
Timesheet and expense checks
Missing timesheets chased, and time or expenses outside the budget or statement of work flagged for review before invoicing.
Workflow reporting for managers
Views of pending proposals, open staffing requests, stalled approvals, and unbilled milestones, so managers can see where work is waiting.
Regional consulting firm
A signed statement of work sets up the project, the staffing request, and the client kickoff in a single flow.
At a consulting firm, a signed statement of work usually sets off separate emails to finance to open the project, to resource managers to find people, and to the client to confirm the start. A first release runs that as a flow. The signature creates the project and budget in the PSA, a staffing request reaches the resource manager, and the kickoff checklist goes to the client, with anything missing queued for the project manager. Principals keep the approval points they choose. Client approval of deliverables, triggering the billing step, is a natural next flow.
Questions
Before you start.
What firms in this industry ask about this work.
How is client confidentiality handled?
Client-level permissions apply to the flows: what a person may see decides what the automation may do on their behalf. Data handling is agreed in writing.
Which steps stay with your principals and managers?
The judgment calls stay with people: pricing a proposal, accepting a change in scope, staffing a sensitive engagement, and approving an invoice. The flows prepare those decisions and record them.
Does it work with our PSA or ERP?
Flows create and update projects, time, and billing in the PSA or ERP, which stays the record. The integration method depends on the API or export options each system offers.
Where do we start?
Most firms start with the step from signed statement of work to staffed project, because it removes the most email and gives every later flow a project to attach to.
Can flows handle change requests?
Change requests can be raised by the project manager or the client, priced from the rate card, approved by both sides, and applied to the project budget in the PSA. Each step is recorded, so scope discussions at invoicing start from the same history.
Will staff need to learn a new system?
Most flows run inside the tools people already use: the PSA, Microsoft Office, email, and e-signature. Staff see new tasks, approval requests, and exception queues where they already work, a short guide covers each flow, and the firm decides who approves what.
Can AI help in these flows?
AI can help as a later step once a flow is running. It can draft status summaries from project data, check timesheets against the statement of work, or classify client documents, with uncertain results sent to a person. Data handling for any model is agreed in writing first.
