Service · Software development

Custom project management software.

A dedicated project environment that fits your industry's workflow: from an hours-and-budget integration with a rate engine to variation orders in construction and gating moments in R&D. No more loose Jira tabs, just one place where planning, hours, budget and client communication come together.

Hours ↔ budgetRate engineClient portalMulti-system

We don't replace Jira — we build around it.

Most organisations already run a project management tool. Jira, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Asana, Monday, ClickUp, Trello, ProductBoard or Basecamp for general team work; Workamajig for creative agencies; NetSuite OpenAir for professional services. For the project work these tools are designed for — backlog, sprints, tasks — they work perfectly well. We only come in where those tools reach their limits, and that happens more often than you might think.

That moment usually arises in one of four areas: industry-specific workflows that standard software doesn't fit, an hours-and-budget integration that really needs to match your rate structure, several systems that need to come together in one view, or a client portal in which clients only see their own project. For these situations, we build project management software that fits seamlessly with how you work, not the other way around.

We work with agencies in consultancy, law, accountancy, IT services and marketing; with architecture firms running several long projects in parallel; with construction companies that need variation administration and complex payment schedules; with engineering and R&D teams working through stage gates and deliverable reviews; and with internal software and IT teams in larger organisations that want to plan their own projects separately from what operations or marketing run. In every case we start from your existing process, not from a framework we happen to like.

The difference also lies in ownership. You keep the codebase, the data and the hosting keys in your own hands. No vendor lock-in to a SaaS whose price doubles each year once you have more than 50 users, no feature roadmap set by someone else, and no migration pain if you want to change something fundamental three years from now. A platform of your own grows with your organisation without making you dependent on an external supplier.

Three typical custom builds.

Most custom projects we build fall into one of these three categories. We discuss which one suits your situation in the first conversation.

Compact project · fixed sprint budget

Hours-and-budget integration with a rate engine

The variant we build most often: a system that links logged hours to budget consumption in real time, calculates with your own rate structure (role, client, project, discount, tiered) and warns project managers before margin is lost. With real-time insight into margin per project, quarterly forecasting and utilisation per person, finance gets a single source of truth, with no more loose spreadsheets. Often connected to an existing time-tracking system or our own time registration software, and passed on to the invoicing module once a milestone is reached.

Rate engineBudget monitoringMargin per projectAlerts
Mid-sized project · fixed sprint budget

Sector-specific project administration

An environment that understands your industry's workflow: variation orders and deadlines for construction, case stages and authorisations for law firms, gating and deliverable reviews for R&D, campaign and retainer administration alongside project hours for marketing agencies, or permit stages and handover moments for architects. Includes the reports your industry actually uses, such as accountant's statement exports, timesheets per case phase and material costs per milestone, not just a standard Gantt export. For IT contractors, we often also connect to our contracting software for consultant deployment planning.

Industry workflowVariation ordersGatingCustom report templates
Larger project · fixed sprint budget

Multi-system project cockpit and client portal

A single view where Jira tickets, Salesforce or HubSpot deals, hours from your time-tracking system, costs from your accounts and milestones from your planning all come together. Project managers no longer need four tabs open to determine a project's status. Plus a secure client portal: your client sees only their own project, with status, open questions, deliverables and invoice milestones, in your brand rather than a generic SaaS environment. Much requested by IT staffing firms, consultancies with enterprise clients, and project organisations with multiple stakeholders per engagement.

Multi-system viewClient portalSSOReal-time sync

The modules we build with.

A custom platform is assembled from modules. Which ones you need depends on where you currently struggle; not every project needs everything at once. Together we decide what belongs in v1 and what can follow later.

Planning

Project planning and task assignment

Project setup with phases, milestones and deliverables. Task assignment by role or by person, with dependencies and deadlines. For those who want it: a Gantt view or a sprint board, synchronised with your existing Jira or Asana.

Hours and budget

Time tracking and budget monitoring

Hours entry per project and task, integrated with your time-tracking tool or ours, with real-time comparison against budget per phase. The rate engine calculates by role, client and discount; alerts trigger when the budget crosses a threshold.

Costs

Materials and cost tracking

For projects with physical costs (construction, engineering, IT hardware): register cost items, link purchase orders to a project, and automatically include them in project margin. Includes variation order administration for construction.

Customer communication

Client communication and portal

A dedicated space per client: status updates, open questions, deliverables awaiting approval, and history. This prevents endless back-and-forth emails and gives the client their own place within your brand.

Invoicing

Invoice trigger on milestone

Once a milestone is reached, or a predetermined percentage of budget has been consumed, an invoice is automatically prepared in your accounting package (Exact, AFAS, Twinfield). Project managers check, finance sends; less manual work, fewer forgotten invoices.

Reporting

KPI dashboards and reporting

Margin per project, utilisation rate per consultant, quarterly forecasting, timesheets per case phase for the accountant. Live in a dashboard or as a scheduled export to PDF or Excel. See also our page on custom KPI dashboards.

What you have at the end of an engagement.

A production-ready project management environment that fits your way of working, plus everything needed to manage and expand it yourself.

  • The project environment itselfProduction and staging environments, running in your cloud (GCP, AWS or Azure) or on our hosting. Including monitoring and alerting.
  • Integrations with your existing systemsWorking integrations with Jira, Salesforce, your time-tracking tool, accounting packages (Exact, AFAS, Twinfield) and, where relevant, your ERP system or other API sources.
  • Custom report templatesThe reports your clients and management actually want to see: margin per project, hours per role, quarterly forecast, utilisation per person. Exported to PDF, Excel or live in a KPI dashboard.
  • Codebase, documentation and runbookFull source code, architecture description, deployment instructions and a runbook for incidents. You are not left dependent on a black box.
  • Training for project managers and key usersSessions for project leads, planners and finance, plus a short video tutorial for consultants who only need to see their hours and tasks.
  • Maintenance contract (optional)Monitoring, backups, security patches and ongoing development. A fixed monthly fee, with several response-time levels depending on how critical the system is.

When custom project management is the right choice.

For standard project work, a SaaS tool is usually the smarter option. In these four situations, the business case tips towards a custom solution.

Hours and budget

Off-the-shelf tools don't account for your rates

You work with role rates, client rates, project discounts or tiered rates. Jira and Asana don't handle those, and the spreadsheet link for budget monitoring is the weak point. A custom rate engine solves that structurally.

Sector-specific workflows

Your industry has its own way of working

Construction with additional and reduced work and payment milestones. Law firms with case stages and authorisations. R&D with stage gates and deliverable reviews. Agencies with retainer and project hours mixed together. Standard tools force you into their model; custom software follows yours.

Multi-system

Information is spread across five tools at once

Tickets in Jira, deals in Salesforce, hours in a separate tool, costs in the accounts package, planning in Smartsheet. Project managers currently gather status updates by hand. A single project cockpit pulls that information together in real time and keeps everything in sync.

Customer experience

Clients want to see progress for themselves

Your clients ask for visibility: how is the project going, which questions are still open, when is the next invoice due? A custom client portal within your own brand gives them that, without access to your internal Jira board.

How an engagement with us works.

1

Introduction and intake

A conversation of an hour or two in which we learn which projects you run, how the hours, budget and invoicing flow works today, which tools you use, and where it hurts. We ask a lot of questions and listen more than we talk.

2

Scope workshop and process mapping

A workshop with your project managers, finance and, if needed, an IT architect. We map the current workflow, identify the pain points and determine which modules are genuinely needed for v1 (planning, hours integration, budget, material costs, client communication, invoice triggers, KPI reporting) and which can follow later.

3

Building in sprints with live feedback

Every sprint delivers a working build. Your project managers test along the way in a staging environment, finance checks the rate engine against real figures, and key users assess the UX. A first working core is in place after a few sprints, and the scope grows from there.

4

Rollout and ongoing management

Phased rollout: start with one team or one client, then extend step by step to the rest of the organisation. Training for project managers and finance, a runbook for your IT team, and monitoring and alerting on the production environment. After that, ongoing support and development under a maintenance agreement: new modules when a client or sector needs them, new reports for the board, new integrations when a system is added. The platform grows without you having to invest in a full replacement each time.

Frequently asked questions.

The questions clients usually ask before we start.

Will you replace our Jira / Microsoft Project / Asana?
No, almost never. For standard project work (backlog, sprints, tasks), Jira, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Asana, Monday, ClickUp, Trello, ProductBoard and Basecamp work well. We leave those in place and build the specific layer that is missing around them: a rate engine, a sector-specific workflow, a multi-system view or a client portal. Often through API integrations, so that a single source of truth remains.
How does the integration between hours worked and budget consumption work?
We set a budget per project (and optionally per role or phase). Hours worked come in through the time-tracking tool: our own time registration software, an existing solution, or an integration with a timesheet system. The rate engine converts them into budget consumption based on your rate structure (role, client, discount, tiers). Project managers get real-time insight plus alerts when a project is heading towards an overrun, so you can adjust course before the margin is gone. For IT contractors, we often also integrate with contractor management software.
Can you bring multiple systems together in one view?
Yes, this is one of the most frequently requested variants. We build a project cockpit that pulls real-time data from Jira (tickets and sprint progress), Salesforce or HubSpot (deal status), your timesheet system, the accounts system (costs and invoices) and, if needed, a PM tool such as Smartsheet. Synchronisation runs through APIs and webhooks, so the status is always up to date. See also our page on smart API integrations for how we approach this.
How does a client portal work, and is it secure?
A client portal is a protected part of the environment where your client sees only their own project: status, open questions, milestones, invoicing moments. Sign-in works via SSO (Microsoft 365, Google, or a magic link for clients without SSO), with role-based access and an audit log. Encryption in transit and at rest, GDPR-compliant. For sectors with additional requirements (healthcare, finance), we carry out a DPIA and a penetration test in the final sprint.
What determines the cost of a custom project?
Three factors weigh most heavily: the scope of v1 (only the rate engine, or also the client portal and multi-system view), the number of integrations with existing systems, and the complexity of your sector-specific workflow (for example, variation-order administration in construction is fundamentally about one and a half times the work of a straightforward time-and-budget project). In the scope workshop we make this concrete and compare it against a SaaS stack, so the business case is honest.
Which sectors do you build for most often?
Agencies in consultancy, legal services, accountancy, IT services, marketing and architecture, often with the hours-to-budget integration at the core. Construction firms for project administration with variation orders. Engineering and R&D organisations that work with stage gates and deliverable reviews. And internal software and IT teams in larger organisations that want to plan their own projects separately from what marketing or operations use.
How long does a project take?
A first working core, for example the hours-to-budget integration with basic reporting, can be in place within a few sprints. A fully fledged multi-system cockpit with a client portal and several integrations is a programme of several further sprints. We build iteratively, so you have something working in hand from the first sprint, not only at the end.

Talk to us about your project management software.

A non-binding introductory conversation of half an hour. We listen to how your projects run now, where tools, timesheet administration and invoicing grind against each other, and give direction, even if the answer in the end is "stick with Jira and add one module to it". Honest advice first, build only when it makes sense.

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