ERP for Professional Services & Project Business
ERP in professional services manages projects, time tracking, resource planning and billing rather than inventory and production.
ERP for Professional Services & Project Business: Requirements
- Time tracking
- Recording working time against projects, clients, activities and staff, ideally at the point of delivery rather than reconstructed afterwards. Accuracy here determines billability and whether work in progress gets invoiced at all.
- Project billing
- Billing by time and material, fixed fee or milestones within the same system, including partial invoices for work already started but not yet billed. Switching a mandate from time and material to a fixed fee should not require rebuilding the time entries.
- Resource planning
- Making staff utilisation visible across current and planned projects, including a forward view of over- or under-utilisation in the coming weeks rather than only a backward-looking report.
- Project profitability
- Comparing billable against non-billable hours and evaluating the contribution margin per project, client and staff member, so unprofitable mandates surface early instead of at year-end closing.
- Client and engagement management
- For trustees, law firms and consultancies, running several engagements per client with their own billing terms, deadlines and responsible staff, kept separate in reporting rather than blended into a single client view.
- Foreign currency and VAT for international engagements
- Consulting, engineering and IT service firms with clients abroad need invoicing in foreign currency plus correct application of the place-of-supply rule for VAT on cross-border services, which differs from the rule for goods.
ERP for Professional Services & Project Business: Common problems
- Hours are recorded late, work in progress remains invisible in reporting
- Billability only becomes visible at month end, too late to steer against
- Utilisation is planned in spreadsheets, bottlenecks only show up once work is already overdue
- Project margin cannot be broken down by client, engagement or type of service
- Traditional ERP systems are built for stock levels and unit counts, not for sold time
- Invoices to foreign clients need manual rework because the system has no provision for foreign currency or VAT special cases
ERP for Professional Services & Project Business: Matching systems
- Abacus
- Strong project and time tracking with integrated accounting, widely used across Swiss trust and consulting firms.
- Odoo
- Project, time tracking and billing modules can be adopted individually, suited to agencies and smaller consultancies.
- Vertec
- A dedicated professional-services system with no inventory overhead: combines CRM, project control, time tracking and invoicing in one product, built for consultancies, agencies, engineering and law firms.
Service companies sell time rather than goods, which fundamentally changes ERP requirements: no inventory, but time tracking, utilisation and billability at the centre instead. The sector carries substantial weight in the Swiss economy: according to the Federal Statistical Office, services accounted for around 73.4 percent of total gross value added in 2025, and about 77.8 percent of all employed persons worked in the sector in 2024. The range spans large banks and insurers down to small consulting, trust and IT firms. Around 99.7 percent of Swiss companies are SMEs, a large share of them in services, often with few staff and correspondingly tight IT budgets. For these smaller providers, the sheer size of the ERP system matters less than its fit with project-based service delivery: a firm selling consulting hours, trust mandates or IT projects needs an unbroken chain from time tracking through billing to project margin, not a system built primarily around the movement of goods.
ERP for Professional Services & Project Business: Frequently asked questions
Which ERP suits consultancies and agencies?
Time tracking matters more than inventory. The system needs to book time against projects, evaluate billability and support flexible billing models.
What is the difference between ERP and project management software?
Project software plans tasks and schedules. ERP links time tracking with billing, accounting and reporting, so recorded time turns directly into an invoice and a result.
How does ERP handle invoices to international clients for Swiss service providers?
It needs to support invoicing in foreign currency and the correct place-of-supply rule for VAT on cross-border services, sometimes across several legal entities or clients. A plain Swiss SME accounting package without foreign currency support runs into limits here.