Custom software for consulting firms, accounting and audit practices, law firms, engineering consultancies, and architecture firms that need systems built around how professional services actually work, not generic SaaS that almost fits.
Project billing and time tracking built around how your practice bills, milestone, retainer, hourly, or blended
Client portals where clients see project status, access documents, and communicate without flooding your team with emails
CRM for professional services, opportunity tracking, relationship management, and referral attribution
AI document tools that draft proposals, review contracts, and extract data from client documents
The problem
Tracking billable hours across multiple projects still happening in spreadsheets?
Client deliverables shared over email with no version control and no audit trail?
Partners needing manual collation to see project profitability by client or practice area?
Short answer
RaftLabs builds professional services project management software for consulting, accounting, audit, law, and engineering firms: project billing and time tracking, client portals, resource and utilisation management, CRM, and AI document tools. A focused first module launches as a validated v1 in 10 to 14 weeks. Fixed cost, agreed before development starts.
01 Diagnosis
Project and engagement tracking spread across email, shared drives, and spreadsheets nobody keeps current
Partners and engagement managers piece together project status from email threads, shared drives, and dashboard spreadsheets that nobody keeps fully up to date. Clients ask for status updates because they have no other way to get them. Each update request takes time from a fee earner, and that time isn't billable. We build engagement management platforms where project status, milestones, and deliverable progress are visible to the right people without manual reporting.
Utilisation rates invisible until month-end because timesheets are filled from memory on Friday afternoon
Timesheets completed on Friday afternoon from memory undercount billable hours by 10 to 20 percent in most professional services firms. The work was done but the time wasn't captured at the moment, so billing write-offs appear at month end when the numbers are reconciled. According to Service Performance Insight's 2024 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark (surveying 403 firms globally), average billable utilisation across professional services fell to 68.9% in 2024, the lowest in five years and below the 75% threshold firms need to reach target profitability. You can't manage utilisation rates you can't see. We build time capture tools that record billable time against the right project and client as work happens, not reconstructed after the fact.
Billing accuracy suffers when time data and invoice generation live in separate systems
Retainer clients expect accurate invoices on time. When time data sits in separate systems from billing, monthly reconciliation becomes a manual task: matching time entries to retainer budgets, checking whether fixed fees have been exceeded, calculating any overage billing. Errors slip through and clients notice. We connect time tracking to billing so retainer reconciliation runs automatically and invoice generation is triggered by the data rather than a manual calculation.
Proposal and SOW generation taking two to four hours of senior fee-earner time per opportunity
Senior fee earners spend two to four hours adapting a standard proposal template for each new opportunity: pulling in scope language from past deliverables, adjusting rate cards, and reformatting for the client. That time isn't billable. We build proposal and SOW generation tools that pull from your template library and past proposals to produce a first draft in minutes, with the customisation steps reduced to a structured input form.
02 What we ship
Time capture tools that record billable and non-billable hours against the right project and client as work happens, not reconstructed at month end. Milestone billing workflows that trigger invoices automatically when deliverables are signed off. Blended rate calculation for projects with mixed seniority levels. Profitability dashboards that show revenue, cost, and margin by project, client, and practice area without manual reporting. Partners see current utilisation rates, not last month's numbers.
Secure portals where clients track project status, access deliverables, review and approve documents, and communicate with their engagement team without calling or emailing for every update. Version-controlled document sharing replaces email attachments. Approval workflows replace informal sign-offs. Clients with visibility are easier to manage than clients kept in the dark, and your team stops fielding status calls.
Relationship and opportunity management built for professional services, not repurposed from a product sales CRM. Tracks contacts across client organisations, manages opportunities through qualification and proposal stages, records referral sources and introducer relationships, and surfaces which client relationships need attention. Integrated with your billing data so every client record shows revenue history alongside relationship health.
Searchable knowledge bases that capture methodology, templates, past deliverables, and institutional knowledge so expertise doesn't walk out the door with a departing partner. Document assembly tools generate proposals, engagement letters, and reports from structured inputs, taking a two-hour drafting task down to minutes. Template libraries maintained centrally so every document produced by the firm meets the same quality and branding standards.
Staff allocation tools that show who is available, who is overloaded, and what skills each engagement needs. Utilisation reporting tracks billable versus non-billable time at team and individual level. Forward planning views show capacity against confirmed and probable work, so resourcing decisions are made on real data rather than gut feel and phone calls.
AI document analysis that reads client contracts and extracts key terms, obligations, and deadlines. Proposal drafting tools that pull from your template library and past proposals to generate a first draft. Contract review assistance that flags non-standard clauses against your standard positions. Time narrative generation that takes brief time entries and produces detailed billing descriptions. Each tool is scoped around a specific manual task that takes too long.
The professional services software question is really about whether your billing and delivery model is unusual enough to need custom systems.
Buy or rent
Practice management SaaS, for standard workflows
Off-the-shelf tools cover time tracking and billing when your model is simple.
Wait, while processes are still forming
Rent until your team agrees on how work is scoped and billed.
Build custom
When billing spans hourly, retainer, and milestone in one engagement
Generic tools stop working where your billing complexity starts.
When clients need a portal on your data
Status, documents, and invoices live where your team already works.
When AI tools must know your documents
Proposal and contract tools trained on your templates and standards.
Bottom line
Stay on the platform while one billing model and one tool cover the work. Build when complexity starts costing you billable hours.
04 How we work
Trusted by
05 Track record
06 Case studies
Two shifts are changing what firms expect from their systems. First, revenue recognition is moving out of spreadsheets. ASC 606 and IFRS 15 push firms toward percentage-of-completion recognition calculated from live project data, not reconstructed at quarter-end, so software that tracks delivery against budget produces WIP and recognition schedules as a by-product. Second, AI is moving from drafting to doing. The proposal generators and contract reviewers of the last two years are becoming agents that draft time narratives from calendar and document activity, flag scope creep before it hits margin, and prepare billing runs for a human to approve.
The pressure behind both is utilisation. With average billable utilisation at a five-year low (Service Performance Insight, 2024), firms cannot grow margin by billing more hours, so they grow it by capturing the hours they already work and cutting the non-billable admin around them. We build for that: capture time as work happens, connect it straight to billing, and let AI absorb the drafting and reconciliation that fee earners should not be doing.
08 Why us
09 Questions
Professional services firms bill time and deliverables, not products. The software needs to handle multiple billing models, hourly, milestone, retainer, fixed fee, and blended, and connect time tracking directly to invoice generation and project profitability. Generic project management tools track tasks. Professional services software tracks revenue, utilisation, margin, and client relationship health alongside tasks. It also handles the compliance requirements specific to legal, audit, and engineering firms: conflict checks, engagement letter management, regulatory reporting, and client confidentiality controls.
Yes. Most professional services software projects include an integration with the firm's accounting system: Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, or an ERP like SAP or NetSuite. The integration typically handles invoice export, payment reconciliation, and nominal coding. For firms with time-tracking data in legacy systems, we build import pipelines that pull historical data into the new platform without requiring manual re-entry. We scope the integration during discovery because the complexity varies significantly depending on what your existing system supports.
Client documents and communications are sensitive by default in professional services. We design platforms with role-based access controls so users only see the clients and projects they're assigned to. Documents are stored with encryption at rest and in transit. Access logs record every view, download, and change. For legal and audit firms with specific data protection requirements, we build information barriers that enforce confidentiality rules in the software. We document the architecture for your risk and compliance team to review before the platform goes live.
A focused first product, for example a client portal for a consulting firm, a time tracking and billing system for an accounting practice, or a proposal automation tool, launches as a validated v1 in 10 to 14 weeks. A full practice management platform with CRM, billing, resource management, and client portal integration is more complex as it grows. The cost depends on scope, number of users, integrations required, and whether you're building for one practice group or the whole firm. We scope every project before pricing it. Fixed cost, agreed before development starts.
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Tell us which process costs your team the most time. We'll tell you what we'd build to fix it.
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