Resource-Driven Project Management Software, Built Exclusively for Creative Agencies

Agencydesk is project management software made for agencies and project-based businesses that bill by the hour. Job costing, resource planning, task management, time tracking, purchase orders, reporting and invoicing all run on one connected structure. There is no custom workflow to design and no template to bend into shape. The workflow already reflects how an agency operates, because that is the only kind of business it was built for.

Most project management tools try to serve every industry, then leave you to configure them into something agency-shaped with add-ons and spreadsheets. Agencydesk starts from the way agencies actually make money: people are allocated to scopes of work at agreed rates, and time, cost and capacity decide the profit. Build around that from the start and financial clarity stops being a month-end exercise. It becomes a by-product of doing the work.

The problem Agencydesk solves

In a lot of agencies, project management lives in one place, time tracking in another, and costing and billing somewhere else again. That separation is where profit gets lost. Worked hours get absorbed instead of billed. An overrun surfaces only once the budget is already spent. One person sits at 130% while another has half a week open, because no single view shows capacity per person and department. Scope creeps in through email and hallway conversations with no amendment trail, so you deliver more than you invoice.
Most owners can feel the answer to each of those. Few can put a current number to any of them. Agencydesk exists to put the number there, while the work is happening.

Job costing is the structural core

Every job begins with a Job Costing, the financial blueprint for the project. You build it from Groups, Tasks and Costs drawn from your Rate Card, and everything downstream reads from that one structure: the cost estimate, the scheduled tasks and team, the supplier orders, the timeline, the invoice, and every report. Nothing is rebuilt at a later stage and nothing drifts out of sync, because there is only ever one source of truth per job.
That structure is what makes profit measurable at multiple levels: company-wide, per account executive, per job, and per team member, all based on real resource costs and genuine billable contribution rather than an average cost per head applied weeks after the fact.

What Agencydesk does

Job Costing & Estimates. Structure any project with grouped Tasks and Costs linked to a dynamic Rate Card, with multi-currency support built in. Estimates, invoices and scheduling all read from the same costing. Save and reuse costings as Job Templates for retainers and recurring work.

Resource Planner. Plan capacity by department with drag-and-drop scheduling and a live per-person workload. Drag time across a job and Agencydesk spreads it evenly, capped at each person's own working hours. Google Calendar and Microsoft 365 Outlook meetings overlay on the grid, and leave and public holidays are booked right there, so planning happens against real availability rather than a guess.

Task Management & Collaboration. Assign multiple people to a single task with smart time-splitting that tracks each person's share independently. Reviewers are assigned per task through a structured Send for Review flow, with briefs, files, notes and comments kept inside the job rather than scattered across tools.

Milestone & Project Management. Track milestones on the job timeline alongside tasks, costs and financial events, with each milestone linked to a real deliverable, whether a task, a task group, or a procurement cost. That link pulls through live progress, so a milestone reflects the state of the work behind it rather than sitting as a date on its own. Milestones turn overdue automatically once their date passes, surface on the assigned team members' dashboards, and roll up into a Milestones report that gives account and project managers a priority-ordered worklist across every job, grouped from overdue through to later and filterable by client, category or department.

Time Tracking & My Desk. A personal, kanban-style workspace combining scheduled tasks and synced meetings. Track time with one-click switching between tasks, parked timers, and in-task access to the brief and estimate. Timesheets carry Workload and Productivity scores so managers can see who is stretched and who has room.

Invoicing & Purchase Orders. Generate deposit, progress, milestone or final invoices straight from tracked tasks and costs, with a one-click two-way Xero sync that carries department and category metadata. Raise a supplier Purchase Order from any job cost with the buy price and the resell price on the same document. Supplier tax applies to what you pay, client tax applies to what you charge, with no manual adjustment.

Job Recon. See what a job actually earned. Tracked time is costed at each person's real resource cost, supplier spend is subtracted, and the hours your team spent in meetings are priced in at each attendee's rate. What is left is true nett profit. A profit allocation view shows whether the money came from studio hours or from marked-up production, which are different businesses that should be quoted differently.

Reporting & Financial Insight. Active Jobs for daily stand-ups, Work Distribution to expose bottlenecks and spare capacity, Forecasting for what is still to invoice, User and Manager Time Recon for estimation accuracy and coaching, and a Financial Summary tracking turnover against target. Multi-Job Recon consolidates many jobs to answer whether a client, a service line, or a whole quarter of work actually made money.

Structure & Integrations. Departments map users, task types and cost types to how your agency is really organised, which drives task assignment, reporting accuracy and financial mapping. Two-way Xero sync handles clients, invoices and GL codes. Google and Microsoft 365 calendars feed availability. Role-based permissions across User, Manager, Finance, Admin and Owner give each person exactly the access they should have.

An MCP server that multiplies your account and project managers

Agencydesk connects to a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, so AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, DeepSeek and Grok can work directly with your live agency data. For an account manager or project manager, this multiplies what they already do. Instead of opening reports and reading numbers off a screen, they can ask questions of the work in plain language: which jobs are running over, who has capacity on Thursday, what is still left to invoice this month, which client looks busy but is thin on profit. The answers come from the same connected structure that runs costing, scheduling and billing, so the data is current rather than compiled after the fact.

Configured to your agency, not the other way around

With personalised onboarding, you configure your rate cards, cost types, currencies, departments, and even naming conventions to reflect how your business actually runs. From staff structures to invoicing logic, every detail is set to support how you work:

• Currency, tax and rate setup
• Document naming conventions and prefixes
• Rate cards, departments, task types and cost types
• Company-specific terms and job templates
• Xero accounting, Google Calendar and Microsoft 365 Outlook Calendar integration
• MCP server connection for Claude, ChatGPT, DeepSeek and Grok

Onboarding is guided by a dedicated account manager, and most teams are operational within a week or two. As Marli from Cheymaxim Creative put it, they were able to set Agencydesk up to work like their agency, rather than reshaping the agency to fit the software.

Who Agencydesk is built for

Agencydesk suits resource-driven, service-based businesses where revenue comes from time, expertise and structured delivery: creative agencies, design studios, branding and digital agencies, marketing agencies, specialist consultancies that outsource delivery, and other project-based businesses that bill by the hour. These teams typically run many client jobs at once, spread work across designers, developers, strategists and account managers, and depend on accurate time tracking for billing and profit control.

It works best for teams of roughly five or more, where resource coordination and cost visibility start to materially affect profitability. Solo freelancers will usually find it more powerful than they need.

What agencies say about us

"Having our Outlook calendar integrated on top of the Resource Planner means we can see meetings and studio time together, and work is planned much more accurately. The Job Recon report is the one we keep coming back to, because it tells us how a job actually ended."
— Thinus Brink, Just Design

"Agencydesk has completely streamlined how we run our agency, from estimates to invoices, everything flows seamlessly. It feels like it was built by people who actually understand agency life."
— Jamie, Founder, Minux Digital

"What I love most is how Agencydesk thinks like an agency. The way it splits task time between team members, keeps briefs attached to each task, and lets us plan workloads visually, it's like it was built by someone who's lived this chaos before."
— Marli, Cheymaxim

Headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, Agencydesk helps agencies plan capacity accurately, control costs, and see exactly what each job earned. Project managers plan without chasing updates, teams know what matters today, and owners work from profit truth rather than a feeling.

Book a demo

The best way to see whether Agencydesk fits is to walk through it against your own structure. Book a demo and we will set it up against your departments, your rate card, and the way you actually run jobs.

Explore further

For step-by-step detail on any part of the platform, the Agencydesk help centre at help.agencydesk.io covers it in depth, including Job Costing, the Resource Planner, Job Recon, Purchase Orders, the full Reports suite, and Integrations.