A PSA runs delivery. It does not run the firm's forward profit.
Most firms that arrive here have looked at a full services platform and decided the step was too big. The instinct is sound. The reason usually stops one step early. For a firm that sells fewer, longer engagements, the trouble with a full platform is not that it does too much. On the firm's own finances it does too little.
Right category, and one question short.
You looked at a full-workflow services platform, what the market calls professional services automation. It runs the operational workflow end to end, from pipeline and quoting through tasks, time and scheduling to invoicing. For a firm that reallocates people across dozens of short projects every week, that depth is the point. For a firm that sells projects and programmes running for months, staffed against a plan, it is a lot of machinery for a question you do not have.
So the evaluation ends on size. A platform's profit view is strongest at the project and the client. How far it carries overhead, the bench and unfilled roles into a forward figure for company profit varies by product and by plan. What the firm went looking for, without quite naming it, was that figure. The platform was not too big. On firm finance it was incomplete.
Without that figure the consequences land on the firm, not on the tool. The hire against next quarter's work is made on the project view, because that is the view there is. An unfilled role is a blank row in the plan until it is a surprise in the month-end pack. And overhead is the line that does not move when the contracted book runs off, and the last one anyone sees.
In category terms Profitdrive is professional services automation as well. It is built for the firm that sells projects and programmes running for months, and it starts from the finance question rather than the allocation one.
Four things a delivery tool does not carry.
Profitdrive is designed from operating experience inside services firms at scale, and these four are what that experience says a firm's finance needs from a forward view.
The outlook. Not one number. A forward P&L for the firm, month by month, in three cumulative views: contracted work, with the extensions and change requests delivery expects added, and with the pipeline added at full value. Each runs from revenue through delivery cost and contribution, through Non-Billable Production Cost (the bench, internal-project and leave-related cost that does not attach to client delivery) and SG&A, down to Operating Income. Every figure opens to the project, the deal, and the person and the rate that applied that month.
SG&A in the same view. Overhead is where project margin and firm margin part company. The overheads are a maintained list, each item with a category, a supplier, a monthly amount and the months it runs, and the total rolls into the SG&A line of the forward P&L in every view. When contracted work runs off across the coming months and the overhead does not, that is visible before the close explains it.
Staff cost as first-class. People cost is the largest controllable variance in services delivery, and a utilisation percentage does not carry it. Every person has a daily cost resolved from grade, salary and on-costs, dated, so a rise counts from the month it applies and past months keep the cost they were booked at. An open role carries the firm's target cost for that grade while it is unfilled, so a staffing gap is a cost you can see. Bench, internal projects and leave are separated rather than lumped, and SG&A headcount is shown apart from delivery staff.
Fixed price and fixed fee reflected correctly. On this work revenue is not aligned to effort. Profitdrive models time and materials, fixed price and fixed fee phases each with their own revenue logic, and every mode stays connected to the forward profit outlook. A fixed price phase is reconciled against what its resourced lines would earn, and the difference is shown as contingency, so a phase resourced beyond its price is visible before the deal is signed rather than after delivery has eroded it. Revenue recognition for the statutory accounts stays with your accounting system.
Connected operations, so nobody rebuilds the outlook.
Each opportunity carries a priced and staffed delivery shape, not just a value and a percentage. When the deal is won, that deal model becomes the project plan, with the same roles, people and days, and extensions and change requests are planned the same way. People carry their dated cost. Where Timecards is switched on, a person's week opens with their assignments already as rows, and accepted time lands as delivered cost on the project, cost only, never revenue. Finance holds SG&A, the budget and the targets, and the actuals you import sit beside the outlook for comparison without replacing it.
From those the forward P&L follows. When a deal slips, a project extends or a grade changes, the outlook moves that day. Today a 40-plus person IT services firm already runs on Profitdrive, Timecards included.
It is not the books, and it is not a task board.
It is not your accounting system. Xero, MYOB or whatever you run keeps the books, and the general ledger, tax and statutory reporting stay there. Xero is the first accounting system connected; the connection is read-only, synced when your finance lead chooses, and it does not write the outlook. Profitdrive does not issue invoices; accepted time and fixed fees can be exported as Xero-compatible invoice lines for your controller to review and issue in Xero. It is not a CRM. And it does not run tasks. If your delivery team needs task boards, weekly scheduling and invoicing in every form inside one system, a full platform is the better tool.
Which brings the exclusion. If a full services platform already runs your firm's week, evaluate carefully. Profitdrive is not a replacement for it. The evaluation guide says where each is stronger and which three questions decide it.
Do you know, today, where company profit lands six months from now, and which decision in front of you would move it most?
If the tool you already run answers that, keep it. If it answers where every project stands and goes quiet on the firm, that is the gap this page is about. The demo runs on a firm where that answer is visible. It is free and ready to use.