Completix

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Professional services

Project portfolio management software for professional services firms

Margin does not disappear at the end of an engagement, it leaks a week at a time. Completix gives consulting, advisory, legal, marketing and IT services firms one place to see what every engagement was approved at, what it is now forecast to cost, and who is committed to it next week.

Built for the practice leader who has to answer for the fee, not just the delivery plan.

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Resource allocation, advisory practice Weeks 41 to 44
ConsultantW41W42W43W44
DWD. WhitfieldENG-2214
80%80%95%95%
ARA. RasheedENG-2214 and ENG-2237
60%90%115%130%
MOM. OkonkwoENG-2190
70%70%85%85%
SVS. VillanuevaENG-2237
90%90%80%50%
A. Rasheed is committed to two engagements in weeks 43 and 44. The hatched cells show a modeled move of M. Okonkwo, not a commitment.

Every handoff in an engagement is a place where the budget quietly changes

A professional services firm sells a defined outcome at a fixed or capped fee, staffs it from a shared pool of senior people who are promised elsewhere too, and reports on it to a client who can withhold payment. Work is sold on one set of assumptions and delivered on another.

Completix is project portfolio management software built for the level above the task list. It keeps the record at each stage, so the difference is visible while there is still time to act.

1

Request and intake

New work enters through intake management as a request with its details, including budget, captured on one form instead of an email thread. Projects are created from intake requests, never by hand, so there is always a request behind the work.

What is held
The request as submitted, and every action taken on it, logged with who did it and when.
2

Staffing

Consultants are allocated by name across every active project, so resource and capacity planning shows a commitment on one account against all the others.

What is held
Each named person's allocation by week across projects, with over-allocation flagged in the Warning Center when your trigger is crossed.
3

Delivery

Actuals are recorded against the project budget and financial management calculates EAC automatically, so the gap to the approved budget is a number you can see.

What is held
Approved budget, forecast, EAC and variance on one card, with the budget locked as of a date.
4

Change and review

Fee and scope changes are raised as a change request rather than absorbed quietly, and project stage gates give a named person a review point to Approve, Reject or ask for more information.

What is held
The change request, and the outcome of each gate review as a person recorded it.
5

Close and renewal

The project closes with its final position against the approved budget and a RAID record of what was logged along the way, which is the evidence base for the next proposal to the same client.

What is held
Final EAC against the approved budget, four separate RAID logs with change history, and the posted status snapshots.

The question is not what you have spent. It is what this engagement will finish at.

Actuals tell you about last month. Completix keeps the approved budget, the recorded actuals and the current EAC on the same card. Set the approved budget to what the client agreed to pay, and the gap between that and what delivery now expects to cost is a number rather than a feeling.

  • Lock the budget as of the date the fee is agreed, so drift is measured against what was sold. Locking needs lock permission, so it is a deliberate act.
  • EAC is calculated automatically as actuals are recorded, and changes to resource allocation move the forecast, so the number in front of the practice head is current.
  • When a budget trigger you configured is crossed, the item appears in the Warning Center. Completix surfaces it, and your delivery lead decides what happens next.
  • A change to the fee or scope goes through a change request, so the movement is recorded instead of absorbed.
ENG-2214 Operating model redesignNorthwind Retail Group
TotalCurrent FY
Approved (BAC)1,240,000
Forecast1,286,000
EAC1,286,000
Variance-46,000
Actuals vs BAC742,000 of 1,240,000
EAC vs BAC103.7%

Budget locked as of 15 Jun. The variance was raised in the Warning Center on 28 Sep after the integration workstream was re-forecast.

Warning CenterAt Risk
ENG-2214, EAC is above approved budget Over by 46,000 (3.7%). Raised 28 Sep, waiting for review by the delivery lead.

Practice leaders should not have to assemble the portfolio picture by hand

The weekly rollup exists because the data lives in different places. When every engagement keeps its budget, schedule and status on its own project record, the executive dashboard reads from those records, so the view across all your clients is already there.

ProjectsLine of business: AdvisoryStatus: All
5 projects, as at 2 Oct
ProjectClientStageApproved (BAC)EACVarianceStatus
Operating model redesignENG-2214Northwind Retail GroupExecution1,240,0001,286,000-46,000At Risk
Cost reviewENG-2190Calder ManufacturingExecution385,000371,00014,000On Track
Systems selectionENG-2237Brayton HealthExecution640,000703,000-63,000Off Track
Matter workflow reviewENG-2251Harlow Legal PartnersPlanning210,000210,0000On Track
Finance transformationENG-2263Northwind Retail GroupPlanning175,000175,0000On Track
Filters narrow the list to the work you care about. The executive dashboard reads from the same project records, so there is no second set of numbers to reconcile.
ENG-2214 status report, period ending 30 SepPosted snapshot
ScheduleOn Track
BudgetAt Risk
Monthly forecast vs actuals ForecastActuals
May Jun Jul Aug Sep

Posted 30 Sep by D. Whitfield. The live status page has moved on since, the posted record has not.

Governance record

A status report the client can trust is one you did not rebuild from memory

Project status reports in Completix are live first. When you post a period, that version is kept as an immutable snapshot, so the report you sent in September is still exactly as sent after the numbers move.

  • The report starts from the live project data, instead of a separate deck rebuilt each period.
  • Posted periods cannot be edited after the fact, which is what makes the reporting history worth something in a fee dispute.
  • Risks, assumptions, issues and decisions are logged as you go, each in its own log with a history of who changed what and when.
  • Documents sit with the project they belong to, with versions kept, so they do not live in one person's inbox.

The rest of the platform behind each engagement

Beyond budget, staffing and status, a few more parts of the platform sit behind every engagement.

Priority scoring

Record a priority score as a custom field on a request or an engagement, so the reasoning for chasing one account over another sits next to the record. The score is entered by a person and does not rank or approve anything by itself.

Portfolio prioritization

Engagement schedules

Each engagement gets its own schedule with an automatically calculated critical path. Schedule history keeps restore points, and MS Project files can be imported and exported as MPP files.

Project schedule

Engagement budgets

Costs are recorded against the engagement budget, and EAC is calculated automatically as actuals are entered. Fiscal-year budgets can also be set at the portfolio level and at the line-of-business level.

Project budget

Documents and deliverables

Files stay with the engagement they belong to, with versions kept, and they inherit the permissions of that project.

Subcontractors and partners

Subcontractors and partners are added as ordinary users by email, and roles control which projects and areas each person can open.

Completix across other sectors

Your clients come from many industries, and each one changes the portfolio problem. These pages are written for the buyer in that sector.

IT services and softwareRelated if your engagements are software or systems delivery EngineeringRelated if you sell engineering and multi-discipline consulting ManufacturingRelated if your clients run capital and plant projects Banking and financialRelated if your clients are banks, insurers or asset managers Government and public sectorRelated if you serve public-sector clients with audit requirements DefenseRelated if you deliver for defense and aerospace programs EducationRelated if your clients are universities or school systems MarketingRelated if you run campaign and creative portfolios

Professional services PPM, common questions

What is project portfolio management software for professional services?
It is software that manages the layer above individual client projects: which engagements the firm has committed to, what each one was approved at, who is staffed on it, how it is tracking against that budget, and what the client is being told. A task tool manages the work inside one engagement. A project portfolio management platform manages the book of engagements as a whole, which is the level a practice leader is judged at.
Yes. Each engagement is a project, and the project list shows them together with stage, approved budget and many other columns, plus several filters to narrow the view. The executive dashboard reads from the same project records, so there is no second set of numbers to reconcile before a partner meeting.
No. Completix is a portfolio management platform, not a billing system. It records actuals against each project budget and calculates EAC automatically as they are entered, but it does not raise invoices or replace your finance or accounting system. If invoicing, revenue recognition or margin reporting are hard requirements, raise them explicitly in the demo rather than assuming.
Three things do the work. The approved budget is locked as of a date, so drift is measured against what was agreed. A change to the fee or scope is raised as a change request, so it is recorded instead of absorbed quietly. EAC recalculates automatically as actuals come in, so the effect shows up early. A person decides on every change request, nothing is approved automatically, and the system does not release any funds.
Yes, if you give them access. Completix has no separate external user type, so a client contact, subcontractor or partner is added as an ordinary user by email, and roles control which projects and areas they can open. You can also share the posted status report, which is an immutable snapshot of exactly what was reported at that point. Every record is scoped to your organization, with logical separation between tenants. If you need a specific client access arrangement, walk through it in the demo.
Allocation is held per named individual across every project that person is on, so a double booking shows up even though the conflict never appears inside a single engagement plan. The Warning Center can flag over-allocation when a trigger you configured is crossed. Before you promise a start date to a new client, what-if scenario planning lets you model a change, shown clearly as modeled, and nothing touches live commitments until someone applies it.
Work management tools are built for coordinating tasks inside an engagement, and Completix does not try to replace them for that. The questions they typically do not answer are the portfolio ones: approved budget against EAC, named-person capacity across a book of work, and a record of change requests and gate decisions. Completix sits at that level. The work management alternative comparison lays out where each type of tool stops.
Typical deployments go live in weeks, and Completix works with you on implementation and configuration. The exact timeline depends on how much configuration your governance model needs and how many engagements you are migrating, so it is scoped during discovery rather than quoted from a brochure.

Bring one engagement that is drifting, and we will build the demo around it

Send us the data from a real engagement, its budget, its staffing and its forecast, and we will show you where the variance would have appeared in the Warning Center and what your team would have seen.

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Typical deployments go live in weeks.