Features → Projects
Project management with margin you can see
Phases, tasks, time tracking, budget tracking, and live profitability reporting — wired directly into the same system that bills the customer. So when the project goes upside-down, you find out while you can still do something about it.
What you get
A project management module purpose-built for services companies. Not a Gantt-chart tool repurposed for IT work. The project tracks budget vs. actuals in real time, the tasks are billable units, and the people assigned to them are the same people running tickets and time entries elsewhere in OriginPSA — so allocation is honest.
Capabilities
Phases & Tasks
Break projects into phases (Discovery, Implementation, Cutover, Hypercare). Tasks live under phases with predecessor dependencies and per-task estimated hours. Status rollup to the phase and the project.
Budget Tracking with Change Order Stacking
Hours and dollars budgeted at the project, phase, and task level. Real-time consumption against budget. Original budget + signed change orders stack to the current budget — so the team sees the latest authorized number, not the stale original.
Signed Change Orders
Draft a change order with hours_delta + amount_delta and a billing mode (immediate, scheduled, recurring, or manual). Send for e-signature via SignNow, PandaDoc, or BoldSign. On signature, the CO applies to the project budget and dispatches billing — invoice generated immediately for immediate mode, queued for the scheduled date, or rolled into the next recurring invoice line.
Milestones with Auto-Fire Criteria
Five completion-criteria types: manual check, percent tasks complete, percent budget hours used, all-tasks-in-a-phase done, or date reached. Optional billing_trigger_amount auto-generates an invoice when the milestone fires. Daily cron sweeps for met criteria; a Preview button dry-runs a criterion against current state without firing it.
Billing Modes: T&M, Fixed-Fee, Mixed
Set the project's billing mode. T&M lets time entries flow into recurring-invoice unbilled-items pickup. Fixed-fee skips time-entry rollup — you bill via milestones and change orders. Mixed mode supports both on the same project (e.g. fixed implementation fee + T&M for change orders).
Time Against Tasks
Techs log time directly against project tasks. Persistent timers run in the background while you work. Timesheet approvals route to the project manager. Time entries flow into invoicing without re-typing.
Profitability Reporting
Live margin per project: revenue (invoiced line items tagged to the project) minus labor cost (time × user.cost_per_hour) minus materials cost (PO line items at vendor cost). Drill into the unprofitable projects to see whether the issue is scope creep, tech assignment, or estimate accuracy.
Change Request → Change Order Auto-Draft
Approving a change request that's linked to a project (with auto_create_co_on_cr_approval enabled) creates a CO draft pre-filled from the CR. Staff fills in hours/amount, sends for signature. Eliminates the manual re-typing step between approval and billing authorization.
Customer Portal Project View
Customers see a read-only project view at /portal/projects: current budget with stacked CO deltas, milestone trail, signed change orders, recent activity. Internal cost/profitability, draft COs, and pending billing-trigger amounts stay hidden.
Project Manager Assignment
Each project has a designated PM and a primary customer contact. PM-focused views for status, budget burn, and assignment. Per-event notify checkbox on Mark Met sends the contact a milestone notification only when staff opt in — silent by default.
Linked Items From Every Entity
Tickets, estimates, change requests, purchase orders, and per-line invoice items all carry an optional project_id. The project detail page surfaces the linked tabs; the source entity shows a clickable project chip. New entities created from the project page pre-link automatically.
Dispatch View
Next-7-days assignment board across projects and tickets. See who's on what, where the bottlenecks are, and reshuffle when scope changes.
Who this is for
- MSPs running fixed-fee implementations. Set a budget, log hours against tasks, watch the margin in real time. When it goes negative, you have data to negotiate scope before delivery.
- IT consulting firms billing time-and-materials. Tasks become invoice line items. Approved timesheets flow into invoicing. The customer sees a line-by-line breakdown without you assembling it manually.
- AV integrators with multi-phase installs. Site survey, design, procurement, installation, commissioning, hypercare — each phase has its own budget and its own milestone billing trigger. Inventory ties into the same project so equipment shipped is reflected in the project record.
How it compares
ConnectWise Manage and Autotask both have project modules; both are widely considered the weakest part of their respective platforms. Most MSPs run a separate tool — Smartsheet, monday.com, Asana, Microsoft Project — and live with the data sync problems forever.
OriginPSA's project module is built on the same data model as time tracking and billing, so there's no sync to maintain. Hours logged on a task are billable hours. Tasks closed are milestones met. Signed change orders apply to the budget and dispatch their own invoices. Project margin is a query, not a reconciliation.
The customer-portal project view is the part most other PSAs simply don't have. Your customer sees the current budget (with every signed change order stacked into it), the milestone trail, and recent activity — without seeing your costs, your draft COs, or your unfired billing triggers. One source of truth on both sides of the engagement.
Pricing & availability
Project management is included on Professional ($49/user/month) and above. Approval workflows for project change requests are Enterprise ($79/user/month). See the pricing page for the full matrix.