Unlike general-purpose project management tools, Teamwork's data model is built around the client as the top-level entity. Every project, task, time log, budget, and invoice can be traced back to the the client. This architecture reflects how PS firms actually operate: revenue, utilisation, and profitability are all measured and managed per client, project and for the business as a whole.
Teamwork positions itself at the operational centre of a PS firm's technology stack — between the CRM (where deals are managed and won) and ERP or accounting systems (where revenue is recognised and reported) — bridging the gap that most PS firms currently manage through disconnected spreadsheets. It also integrates with key productivity and collaboration tools for files, calendars, chat, email and more.
Technology ecosystem
Teamwork occupies the resource, project, and financial management layer in a PS firm's software stack. It integrates upstream with CRM systems — capturing won deals and pipeline data — and downstream with financial and ERP systems, syncing invoices and time-based revenue data. A native quoting & estimating module is also available to help maximise margin and pricing on potential projects.
- Upstream — CRM & sales: HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive, or Teamwork's native quoting.
- Core — Teamwork: resource management, project & task delivery, financial management, time tracking, client portals, and ticketing (Desk).
- Downstream — financial / ERP: QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage, and other ERPs.
- Productivity: Google Workspace, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office & Outlook, SharePoint, Jira, Dropbox, Box, Zapier.
Data model — product hierarchy
Teamwork's information hierarchy is client-centric. The Client (also called Company) is the outermost container, and every object within Teamwork — projects, tasks, time logs, budgets, invoices — belongs to a client. The canonical hierarchy, from outermost to innermost:
| Level | What it is | PS use case |
|---|---|---|
| Client | The top-level entity representing a customer organisation. All work, revenue, and profitability roll up to client level. Called "Company" in some Teamwork views. A single client can have multiple concurrent projects. | Client P&L reporting, cross-project capacity visibility, relationship management. |
| Project | A discrete body of work for a client. Contains all tasks, milestones, resources, time logs, and financials for a particular engagement. Tracks status, owner, dates, health, and budget consumption. Projects can be set to Tentative (pre-win) or Active (confirmed). | Individual engagements: a website build, a retainer, a consulting project. Multiple projects may run simultaneously for a single client. |
| Task List | A grouping of tasks within a project. Tasks must belong to a task list — they cannot exist at the project root. Multiple task lists represent phases, workstreams, or service lines. Task lists can be associated with milestones to mark delivery gates. | Project phases (Discovery → Design → Build → QA) or functional workstreams (Dev, Design, Content, PM). |
| Task | The core unit of work. Each task carries an assignee, time estimate, due date, comments, attachments, tags, and custom fields. Tasks are where time is logged and actual effort is tracked against estimates. | Specific deliverables: "Develop login page", "Conduct stakeholder interview", "Write proposal section 3". |
| Subtask | A child task used to break work down further. Subtasks can have their own assignees and estimates. They do not appear in all views by default but roll up to the parent task. | Checklist items within a deliverable; sub-components that belong to different team members. |
| Allocations | Planned resource assignments on a project for a specific person over a defined time period. Allocations sit in the resource planner and are separate from task assignments. They represent capacity blocked for a project, whether or not specific tasks have been assigned yet, enabling resource planning before full scope is defined. | Blocking a senior designer for 4 days on a project before tasks are scoped; tentative capacity planning during pre-sales. |
| Time Logs | Records of time spent against tasks, task lists, or directly against projects. Each time log carries a billable/non-billable flag, a billing rate, and a date. Time logs are the primary mechanism for revenue recognition under time-and-materials billing and feed directly into invoicing. | Tracking billable hours, validating estimates vs. actuals, generating invoice line items, measuring utilisation. |
| Budget | The financial envelope for a project. Can be defined as a fixed fee, time-and-materials (with optional cap), or retainer. The budget module tracks planned vs. actual spend and alerts when thresholds are approached. Supports financial, time-based, and task-based budget types. | Fixed-fee projects, monthly retainers, T&M with a cap, NRE budgets, milestone-gated spend. |
| Invoice | Generated from time logs and/or milestone triggers. Invoices can be created within Teamwork and synced to connected accounting or ERP systems (QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage). Supports time-based, milestone-based, and fixed-fee instalment billing. | Raising client invoices from logged time, milestone billing, retainer drawdowns, syncing to accounting to avoid double entry. |
Official help doc: Hierarchy of Information in Teamwork — Teamwork Support
End-to-end process — from pipeline to profit
Teamwork is designed to support the complete PS lifecycle, across three major phases — Forecasting & Planning, Delivery & Execution, and Reporting & Optimisation — each with distinct activities per user persona.
A key design principle is the ability to create tentative projects early in the sales pipeline. Resource plans and financial forecasts can be built before a deal is won, so that the moment a deal closes, delivery can begin with resources already in place. The deal probability (tracked in a connected CRM) gates when work transitions from tentative planning to confirmed execution.
| Persona | Forecasting & Planning (0–90% → Verbal Yes 90–100%) | Delivery & Execution (Closed Won → Active Project) | Reporting & Optimisation (Finished Project → Review) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales & Client Mgt | Manage deal pipeline; generate quotes; link tentative project to service line in Teamwork. | SoW/PO confirmed; project activated ("Closed Won" → "Active Project"). | Review: on time? On budget? Client satisfied? |
| Client Mgt / PM | Scope & price; build tentative project by role with rates; Quote → Tentative Resource Plan. | Set up project tasks, estimated time, budget, and invoicing schedule from confirmed SoW/PO. | Quality check: delivered on time and budget? Lessons learned. |
| Resource Manager | Tentative project by roles and rates; assign named resources at verbal yes; forecast revenues and resource needs. | Confirmed job with named resources and estimated time; manage project capacity by task. | Analysis: resource estimate vs. actual delivery; utilisation reporting. |
| Operations | Forecast revenues and resources needed; tentative project linked to service line for pipeline reporting. | Ensure confirmed capacity matches resource forecast; track confirmed projects with named task assignments. | Recycle: what % of pipeline converted? Revenue vs. estimates? Optimise future forecasting. |
Capacity & resourcing
Resource management in Teamwork operates at two levels: Allocations (planned blocks of time for a person on a project) and Task Assignments (specific tasks assigned to individuals). This separation allows resourcing to happen before full project scoping (similar to soft & hard bookings) — critical for PS firms that need to block capacity while a deal is still closing.
Tentative vs. confirmed planning. Resources can be allocated to tentative (pre-win) projects. When a deal closes, the project is confirmed and those allocations become firm. This means resource plans are in place from day one of delivery, eliminating the gap between "deal won" and "team briefed" that costs PS firms significant time and profitability.
The resource planner gives Resource Managers a view across all projects for all team members, showing utilisation, over-allocation warnings, and available capacity. The core goal is to maximise billable utilisation — the percentage of available hours that are billable to clients — while maintaining delivery quality and avoiding burnout.
Allocations are defined by role, person, project, time period or billing rate. They flow directly into capacity forecasting and inform budget projections. When actual time logs deviate from allocations, managers can see the variance immediately and replan accordingly.
Three key resource views: Individual utilisation (who is over- or under-loaded), Project capacity (is the project resourced relative to scope?), and Pipeline view (what resource demand is implied by deals in the CRM at each probability tier?).
Financials & profitability — from time to revenue
Teamwork handles the complete financial lifecycle of a PS engagement: scoping and budgeting, time capture against billable work, invoice generation, and profitability reporting. The goal is to give client-facing firms a single system for measuring whether individual projects — and entire client relationships — are profitable.
Budget types. Teamwork supports multiple budget models to match how PS firms price their work: fixed-fee (capped total), time-and-materials with optional cap, retainer (recurring monthly allowance), and milestone-based. Each budget type determines how time logs, rates, and invoices interact.
Rates and cost vs. revenue. Every time log can carry a billing rate (defined at the team member, role, project, or company level) and a billable/non-billable flag. This enables accurate revenue recognition and allows firms to separate cost (at internal cost rate) from revenue (at client billing rate) — the foundation of project profitability reporting.
Invoicing and ERP sync. Invoices can be generated within Teamwork from logged time and/or milestone triggers, then synced to connected accounting systems. Alternatively the labour costs and expenses can be synced with ERP, and used for creating invoices in Financial system. This eliminates double-entry and keeps financial records consistent between project delivery and bookkeeping. Supported ERP/accounting integrations: QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage can be synced 2 ways.
Profitability reporting. At project and client level, Teamwork compares estimated vs. actual time, budget consumption, and revenue. This allows Operations and leadership to identify which engagements are profitable and which are not — and to feed those insights back into future scoping, pricing, and resource planning decisions.
Integration ecosystem
Teamwork connects to the major systems PS firms already use. Integrations fall into three categories:
CRM & sales — pipeline to project
Connects deal stages in your CRM to project creation and resource planning in Teamwork. Enables tentative project setup before a deal is won. Native quoting covers firms that manage sales inside Teamwork. Systems: HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive, and native quoting (built-in).
Financial / ERP — revenue recognition
Syncs billable time, expenses & invoices and financial data from Teamwork into accounting and ERP systems both ways. Eliminates duplicate entry and ensures delivery records and the books stay in sync. Systems: QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage.
Productivity — collaboration stack
Keeps Teamwork connected to where teams already work, reducing context-switching and keeping project data current without manual updates. Systems: Slack / Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, Microsoft Office & Outlook, SharePoint, Jira, Dropbox / Box, Zapier.
User personas — who uses Teamwork
Teamwork serves four primary personas within a professional services organisation, each with distinct responsibilities and a distinct view of the platform.
Sales & Client Management
Owns the client relationship and deal pipeline. Uses Teamwork to connect CRM pipeline to resource planning and to monitor project health from a client perspective: manage deal pipeline and probability stages; generate quotes and scope documents; activate confirmed deals as projects; monitor client-level revenue and satisfaction.
Client Mgt / Project Manager
Runs day-to-day project delivery. Responsible for scope, tasks, timelines, budgets, and client communication throughout execution: scope projects and build task structures; assign tasks and manage due dates; track budget health vs. actuals; generate and issue invoices.
Resource Manager
Owns capacity planning and utilisation. Plans who works on what, across current active projects and upcoming confirmed and tentative pipeline: allocate people to projects (tentative & confirmed); monitor utilisation across the team; forecast capacity demand from pipeline; replan when actuals deviate from estimates.
Operations
Provides financial and operational oversight. Ensures the business runs profitably and that data is accurate across the pipeline-to-delivery cycle: revenue and resource forecasting; profitability reporting at project & client level; pipeline-to-delivery conversion analysis; system configuration and data governance.
References & help docs
- Hierarchy of Information in Teamwork — official support article on how Teamwork structures data from company level down to subtasks.
- Teamwork Support — full help documentation library covering all product areas.
- Teamwork.com — main product site, feature overview, and pricing.