1
Daily-fresh engagement view
Plan-vs-actual, effort, remaining budget and margin per engagement in real time. No quarter-end discussion about whether the engagement is still on plan. Threshold alerts flag margin risk early.
Software for your IT consulting firm: engagements, utilisation and billing on one cloud.
With teamspace, IT consulting firms run technical client engagements, consultant utilisation and fee invoicing on a single cloud platform. From pitch to paid invoice, one data foundation, one steering basis. No tool sprawl, no Excel bridges, daily-fresh visibility on engagement economics.
What IT consulting firms gain with teamspace
Three properties that distinguish teamspace from a classic mix of Excel, Jira and a finance tool.
2
Skill-based capacity planning
Senior architects, cloud engineers, data specialists and externals in one pool. Skill matching, availability and conflicts across all engagements rather than Excel sheets per practice.
3
Fee invoice from the data
Recorded and approved hours, flat rates and travel expenses turn into a fee invoice in one click. ZUGFeRD and XRechnung are standard, DATEV handover runs without CSV exports.
From first contact to follow-on engagement
Six steps, one continuous consulting process, all data tied to the same client across the lifecycle.
- 1
Lead and pitch in CRM
Inbound enquiries from referrals, website or events land directly in CRM. Pipeline with stages, weighted forecast, pitch material on the lead. A won pitch becomes an engagement with budget, phases and team.
- 2
Set up and staff the engagement
From the quote, create a consulting engagement with phases, effort budget, travel pot and rates per role. Skill matching suggests the right team, externals and subcontractors live in the same pool.
- 3
Engagement steering and alignment
Tasks, milestones and status reports on the engagement. Task management with clear ownership rather than loose chat threads. Client status views are exportable or available in the customer portal.
- 4
Time tracking on mobile and desktop
Consultants log hours on the laptop, in the browser or on mobile, with activity, engagement and task. Travel and expenses with receipt photos. Weekly approval by team leads.
- 5
Plan-vs-actual and margin live
Effort per engagement, remaining budget, plan-vs-actual and margin daily-fresh. Drill-down to the individual booking. Threshold alerts on margin and utilisation. Rolling forecast to quarter-end.
- 6
Billing and follow-on
Period close: approved hours turn into a fee invoice, flat rates and travel are listed separately. Activity record as PDF or XRechnung. Follow-on engagements are created from the existing CRM data.
Which IT consulting firms benefit most
Software for IT consulting sounds generic but is not. teamspace fits particularly well if you recognise one of these constellations:
Cloud and platform consultancies
AWS, Azure and Google Cloud consultancies with project-based delivery, day rates and hourly rates per senior and junior role, travel reimbursement and client reporting.
SAP and ERP consultancies
Multi-year implementation and roll-out engagements, engagement structure across groups, activity records per subsidiary, HOAI-style phase logic.
Data and AI consultancies
Data engineering and ML engagements, sprint delivery, fixed price and time and materials side by side, consultant profiles with skills and certifications.
IT security and compliance advisors
Audit-proof time tracking, gap-free documentation, pen-test and compliance reports as deliverables, ISO 27001 as a customer requirement.
DevOps and platform engineering
Site-reliability engagements with on-call and response times in parallel with classical architecture engagements and migration sprints.
Growing IT consulting firms from five upwards
From a three-person Excel start-up to structured steering, without having to swap systems again at 50 employees.
Excel and tool mix vs teamspace for IT consulting
A comparison for IT consulting firms running today on Excel timesheets, Jira for tasks, a standalone CRM and a finance tool, considering whether the move is worth it.
| Feature | Excel + Jira + standalone tools | teamspace |
|---|---|---|
| Daily-fresh engagement margin | - | ✓ |
| Skill-based capacity planning | manual | ✓ |
| Mobile time tracking | add-on | ✓ |
| Activity record per engagement | manual | ✓ |
| Travel expenses on the engagement | separate | ✓ |
| Fee invoice from hours | export | ✓ |
| ZUGFeRD and XRechnung | - | ✓ |
| Engagement structure across groups | - | ✓ |
| Audit trail and compliance | weak | ✓ |
| DATEV handover without CSV | - | ✓ |
| Hosting in Frankfurt am Main | varies | ✓ |
| ISO 27001, GDPR, GoBD | varies | ✓ |
Capabilities for IT consulting firms at a glance
Most relevant capabilities, grouped by area. Fully included in every edition, no module surcharge.
Sales and CRM
- Pipeline with pitch stages and weighted forecast
- Engagement structure across groups with key contacts
- Pitch material and quotes on the lead
- Email and Microsoft 365 integration
- Cross-sell view across existing engagements
- Lead → engagement in one click
Engagement and steering
- Engagements with phases, packages, tasks and milestones
- Plan-vs-actual and rolling forecast
- Earned value analysis for fixed-price engagements
- Multi-project management and conflict resolution
- Task management with clear ownership
- Status reports and client reporting
Consultant time and utilisation
- Mobile and desktop time tracking
- Skill matching and capacity planning
- Utilisation view per person, practice, location
- Travel and expenses on the engagement
- Activity record per engagement as PDF or XRechnung
- Weekly approval and correction workflow
Fees and billing
- Fee invoice from approved hours
- Fixed price, time and materials and flat rates in parallel
- ZUGFeRD and XRechnung e-invoicing
- Down payment and final invoices
- Automated dunning with escalation
- DATEV, Lexware and Sage handover
Knowledge and reuse
- Company wiki for methods and templates
- Engagement history as a reference for pitches
- Calculation templates per engagement type
- File management with versioning
- Microsoft Teams integration
- Audit trail across all changes
Security and compliance
- Hosting in Frankfurt am Main, EU-only processing
- Operated in an ISO 27001 certified data centre
- GDPR compliant with standard data processing agreement
- with activatable GoBD mode accounting and retention
- Need-to-know permission model
- Two-factor authentication optional
Case Study
Typical migration scenario from practice
Hypothetical practice example for illustration. Concrete values depend on starting point, industry and execution and are not guaranteed. A typical migration scenario from the customer base: a cloud consultancy with 22 employees, AWS and Azure engagements, three tools (Excel for hours, HubSpot for CRM, Lexware for invoicing).
Starting point
Hours lived in Excel per engagement, consultants reconstructed Wednesday on Saturday morning. Travel expenses arrived monthly with delay. Plan-vs-actual was systematically two to three weeks behind. Engagement margin became visible only at close-out, not during delivery. On two large engagements, actual margin landed below plan without anyone steering early. Utilisation lived in a separate workbook nobody trusted.
Solution
With teamspace, CRM, engagement steering, time tracking and invoicing were brought together on one platform. Migration from HubSpot and Lexware delivered at fixed price. Consultants log hours on mobile on the day of delivery. Plan-vs-actual is daily-fresh, threshold alerts on margin. Utilisation per skill straight from the system.
+8 pts
engagement margin after 9 months
daily-fresh
instead of 2-3 weeks behind
−2 FTE
effort on hours and invoice reconciliation
What software for IT consulting firms has to deliver
IT consulting firms live by selling consultant time. Every hour that is not captured is forgone revenue. Every hour that is not approved or not billed is a liquidity gap. Software for IT consulting therefore has to bring three things together that typically fall apart in a classic tool mix: hour, engagement, invoice.
teamspace solves this with a cloud platform on which engagement steering, time tracking, capacity planning and fee invoicing run on one data foundation. The hour a cloud architect logs Thursday afternoon on an AWS migration engagement flows into the engagement plan-vs-actual, into the practice utilisation view and into the fee invoice at the end of the month. With no Excel bridge, no CSV export, with nobody maintaining the data twice.
Steering engagements rather than administering them
The difference between mere administration and true steering of consulting engagements lies in the freshness of the data. Classic setup: timesheets at the weekend, travel expenses at month end, plan-vs-actual at quarter close. That is steering with three weeks of lag, often too late to course-correct.
teamspace shifts the picture to daily-fresh steering:
- Hours on the day of delivery, captured on mobile or desktop
- Plan-vs-actual daily-fresh rather than monthly
- Margin per engagement live, with threshold alerts on risks
- Forecast to quarter-end, rolling from active engagements and pipeline
- Utilisation per person, skill, practice and location in one view
That is the precondition for leadership and practice leads to react before the margin problem, not after.
Skill-based capacity planning
IT consulting differs from classical management consulting in that skills are granular and very different. An AWS Solution Architect, a SAP S/4 senior and a data engineer are not freely interchangeable, even if their day rates are similar. teamspace addresses this with:
- Skill profiles per person, with certifications and years of experience
- Skill matching during planning, the system suggests suitable people
- Conflict detection across engagements, no double-booking of a single person
- Externals and subcontractors in the same pool, with separate rates for margin
- Utilisation view filtered by skill, practice or location
This replaces the familiar central Excel workbook in which an office manager maintains availability for everyone.
Fee invoicing without an Excel bridge
Fee invoicing in an IT consulting firm is less trivial than it sounds. Often it has to combine:
- Day rates per role (senior, lead, junior)
- Fixed-price components for concept phases
- Time-and-materials components for implementation
- Flat rates for cloud operations or maintenance
- Travel and expenses with their own reimbursement rules
- Activity records per engagement, often required as XRechnung attachment
teamspace runs all of this in one logic. Approved hours, flat rates and travel turn into a fee invoice in one click. ZUGFeRD and XRechnung are standard, relevant for B2B from 2025 and required for many sectors from 2027/2028. DATEV handover runs without CSV exports. More on Invoicing software and E-invoicing.
Activity records and audit-proofness
Many IT consulting firms deliver to regulated sectors: financial services, public sector, healthcare, energy. Activity records and audit-proofness are then contractual, not nice-to-have. teamspace is:
- Hosted in an ISO-27001-certified data centre in Frankfurt am Main (the data centre is certified, not teamspace itself)
- GDPR compliant with standard data processing agreement
- with activatable GoBD mode for the retention of accounting-relevant data
- Operated exclusively in Frankfurt am Main, in certified EU data centres
- Audit trail records every correction, closed periods can be locked
Activity records per engagement as PDF or XRechnung attachment, depending on the client’s preference, with no monthly Excel exercise.
Reuse instead of cold calculation
Experienced IT consulting firms do not calculate new engagements from scratch. They draw on experience from past engagements: how many days did a comparable AWS migration take, what margin was achieved at close-out, where were change orders. teamspace makes this reuse systematic:
- Engagement history as a reference for new pitches
- Calculation templates per engagement type
- Method library in the company wiki, no need to email Word files around
- Microsoft Teams integration for engagement calls
- File management with versioning, pitch material on the lead, deliverables on the engagement
This is a particular lever for growing consultancies: knowledge gets systematised rather than disappearing into individual senior consultants’ heads.
Combination with other modules
Software for IT consulting benefits especially from the integrated platform logic. Typical setups in our customer base:
- Engagement plus service desk: for consultancies transitioning into a maintenance phase after the project, with tickets and SLA. More on Service desk.
- Engagement plus HR: for consultancies with their own team, leave and sickness management, payroll preparation. More on HR software.
- Engagement plus CRM: for consultancies running active pipeline management, weighted forecast, cross-sell. More on CRM software.
- Engagement plus project controlling: for fixed-price engagements, earned value analysis, margin forecast. More on Project controlling software.
The individual modules are included in every edition, no module surcharge.
Software for your IT consulting firm in the requirements check
Wondering whether teamspace is the right software for your IT consulting firm? Instead of an unguided 30-day trial we offer a 15 to 30-minute requirements check with the 5 POINT AG customer success team. Together we evaluate whether teamspace fits your engagement logic, your utilisation steering and your integrations, and you see the relevant modules live on a sample engagement.
More about the platform on SME business software, Solutions and Features.
Frequently asked questions about software for IT consulting firms
How does software for IT consulting differ from classic ERP?
Classic ERP comes from manufacturing and inventory and focuses on materials. Software for IT consulting focuses on what a consulting firm really has to steer: engagements, consultant utilisation, day rates, travel, fees and follow-on engagements. teamspace bundles this logic in a cloud platform and avoids using a heavyweight system for needs that do not match your business.
Are Excel and individual standard tools not enough?
With two or three consultants, often yes. Once you run several parallel engagements, multiple practices or multiple locations, you lack a consolidated view of utilisation, margin and forecast. Excel becomes a data-maintenance station rather than a steering basis. Most IT consulting firms hit this point between five and 15 employees.
How does teamspace support consultants in daily work?
Consultants log hours on mobile or desktop, see their own utilisation, tasks on the engagement and upcoming meetings. Team leads see aggregated views per practice and location. Routine work like activity records or travel expenses is built into the data foundation, not a separate add-on.
How does capacity planning work in teamspace?
teamspace runs a central resource pool with skills, availabilities and rates. When planning, the system filters by skills (e.g. AWS Solution Architect, SAP S/4 senior, data engineer) and surfaces conflicts across all engagements. Externals and subcontractors live in the same pool, with separate rates for the margin calculation.
Can we run fixed-price, time-and-materials and maintenance in parallel?
Yes. Per engagement you can run fixed-price components (e.g. concept phase), time-and-materials components (e.g. implementation) and flat rates (e.g. cloud operations) at the same time. Hours are booked on the right contract type, the period invoice combines all components.
How does fee invoicing work in teamspace?
Approved hours, flat rates and travel turn into a fee invoice in one click. ZUGFeRD and XRechnung are standard, DATEV handover runs without CSV exports. Activity records per engagement can be delivered as PDF or as XRechnung attachment, depending on what the client requires.
Does teamspace fit small IT consultancies too?
Yes. teamspace is useful from five people and scales to 250 employees per tenant. You start with the modules you need today and add more later without migration. Edition switches from light → office → enterprise are configuration steps rather than data migrations.
How long does the rollout take?
Base configuration takes a few days. Mid-market IT consultancies are typically fully live within 4 to 6 weeks. Migration from HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Toggl, Lexware or Excel is delivered at fixed price by the 5 POINT AG customer success team on request.
Can we connect teamspace with GitHub, GitLab or Azure DevOps?
Yes, through the REST API. Tickets and issues from the code repository can flow into teamspace or vice versa. For specific requirements we evaluate the integration in the requirements check and return a concrete recommendation.
What about ISO 27001 and compliance?
teamspace runs in an ISO 27001 certified data centre in Frankfurt am Main; it is the data centre that is certified, not teamspace itself. GDPR compliant with standard data processing agreement, with activatable GoBD mode and operated exclusively in certified data centres in Frankfurt am Main. The audit trail records every correction, closed periods can be locked. The contracting party is 5 POINT AG, headquartered in Darmstadt.
What does software for IT consulting cost?
teamspace is billed per active user per month. Prices are annual; shorter terms carry a surcharge (+10% half-yearly, +15% quarterly, +20% monthly). No setup fee for the licence; notice period 3 months on an annual term, 1 month on a monthly term. The right edition we discuss in the 15-minute call, depending on module needs, integrations and engagement structure. A full breakdown is on the pricing page and the feature overview.
Related topics
Modules that IT consulting firms use most.
Project management software
WBS, plan-vs-actual, forecast, earned value, kanban and scrum on one system.
Time tracking online
Hours on engagement, phase or task, mobile or desktop.
CRM software
Pipeline with weighted forecast, engagement structure, pitch material on the lead.
Capacity planning
Skill-based utilisation across engagements, practices and locations.
Software for your IT consulting firm reviewed in 15 minutes.
In the requirements check we discuss your engagement logic, utilisation steering and billing. You receive a clear first opinion whether teamspace fits, free of charge and without obligation.