Last updated October 25th, 2023
PSA Integrations for Professional Services
A technology stack incorporating PSA integrations is essential for facilitating the proper attention toward high-priority, revenue-generating tasks. Isolated point solutions often result in professional services organizations devoting too much time to manually compiling reporting and tactical implementations that provide minimal ongoing value.
PSA software sits as a conduit between the “front office” (customer-facing operations) and the “back office” (administrative duties, such as accounting). This connectivity ensures that project managers have a comprehensive perspective of their project pipeline and can make the necessary adjustments to their budgeting and resource plans.
BigTime software is an open-architecture, tech-agnostic, SaaS application that integrates across your team’s technology stack, including CRM, collaboration, project management, and resource management systems, minimizing resource investment for integration and enabling faster onboarding.
This post will serve as an overview of how BigTime’s professional services-specific PSA platform and PSA integrations work together with the most popular CRM, project management, and accounting applications, to drive substantial improvements in profit margins and client satisfaction.
PSA CRM Integrations: CRM Software for Professional Services
PSA and HubSpot Integration
HubSpot, one of the fastest-growing CRM platforms in the market, is trusted by hundreds of thousands of companies around the world as the most efficient and comprehensive tool for winning new business. BigTime’s streamlined HubSpot integration for professional services allows users to bridge the gap between their sales and delivery. The HubSpot connector facilitates the import and customization of sales pipeline data into BigTime so users can easily access it to understand demand and delivery capacity. At the same time, centralization of that information eliminates redundant admin work.
There are key advantages to BigTime’s HubSpot integration including shorter time to staff new work, a better understanding of projected utilization and skills requirements for specific deals, and clarity around estimated revenue as opportunities move further down the sales pipeline.
Firms can take advantage of the increased accuracy of proposals and a more realistic pipeline view by being able to choose specific stages associated with your imported pipeline report. They also have the option to drill down and choose a specific stage to understand the impact, or for example, those opportunities in the “Contract Signing” stage only. The resulting visibility allows professional services organizations using HubSpot to improve their capacity and demand planning, define expectations earlier in the sales cycle, and ultimately enhance the customer experience – which, of course, leads to more wins.
Salesforce PSA Integration for Professional Services
BigTime Software provides a robust connection with Salesforce, the globally recognized leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that is entrusted by businesses of all sizes to manage their sales and contact pipelines. BigTime enriches opportunity information provided by Salesforce and leverages its full set of modules to maximize the value derived from new business opportunities. The result? Salesforce professional services automation.
The built-in, bi-directional connector seamlessly transmits account, opportunity, and projection data from Salesforce into BigTime and allows for updates made to project data in BigTime to enrich corresponding opportunities in Salesforce. BigTime’s Salesforce integration automatically updates client and project status, and controls business rules and triggers that define when Salesforce opportunities appear in BigTime and how they’re modeled. Providing the ability to enter data once and have it populate both systems reduces the risk of double entries while keeping sales and project teams in sync.
BigTime customers also benefit from the ability to pull Salesforce-sourced data directly from the application, providing a consolidated view of booked and potential revenue, utilization, and staffing needs from both systems. As opportunities become more certain, resource allocation can be optimized to align seamlessly with revenue and profit forecasts.
Detailed Salesforce reports leveraging imported BigTime project data empower client-facing teams with real-time details of client projects.
PSA Project Management Software Integrations
Jira Integration with PSA Software
Among the primary benefits of a PSA tool is the ability to link time entry data directly to projects, resource scheduling, accounting, and invoicing. BigTime’s Jira integration is easy to implement for companies using Jira either for time entry for service management or for project management. BigTime allows users to either leverage projects built in Jira and import them into BigTime, or projects can be exported from BigTime into Jira to avoid duplications. This Jira integration provides all the benefits of PSA software, like past and forecasted utilization and time reporting, while retaining your Jira time tracker system and mitigating the risk of double data entry.
Once data is synchronized between the two systems, users can take advantage of BigTime’s reporting capabilities to monitor project tasks and staff realization as soon as time data has been input, providing real-time insights into project status.
PSA Integrations With Accounting and General Ledger Tools
Sage Intacct Integration with PSA Software
BigTime’s long-standing integration with Sage Intacct has benefitted many of the fastest-growing professional services firms that are quickly adding scale and complexity to their operations. This deep connectivity provides robust control over the accounting transactions necessary to sustain the business while providing management with unprecedented visibility over the full scope of a professional services firm’s operations.
Sage Intacct connectivity enables BigTime to translate operational activities like timesheets and expense reports into accounting transactions and instantly push them to Sage Intacct electronically. This feature empowers users to continue to manage their general ledger and AR with Sage Intacct, with the benefit of far more automation and extends the life of Sage’s platform as an organization scales upward.
BigTime’s out-of-the-box integration with Sage Intacct reduces the labor resources devoted to project accounting and provides finance departments with all of the information they need in an automated and batch-driven process without endless manual or double entry of data. Organizations also benefit from the ability to allocate job-related responsibilities to project managers and other staff without having to grant them access to Sage Intacct.
QuickBooks Integration with PSA Software
BigTime’s direct QuickBooks integration, one of the world’s most widely used accounting tools, provides a level of financial control that goes beyond simple accounting to bolster organization-wide operational efficiency.
BigTime accumulates general ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable transactions as you use it to approve time and expenses, perform revenue recognition, approve payment vouchers, and even build and issue customized invoices. BigTime’s integration with QuickBooks ensures that you only have to enter that data once, and those accumulated transactions are sent to QuickBooks. The connector then creates the transactions in QuickBooks and links the two entries in both products. Once complete, BigTime marks the sent transactions to prevent accidental duplication.
BigTime’s QuickBooks integration allows you to build customized, branded invoices so your business stands out.
BigTime’s integrations extend the functionality of QuickBooks project management by handling the complexities of multi-currency accounting, intercompany transactions, and project-level details. These PSA software integrations also reconcile data between two applications quickly using BigTime’s pre-built reports and cross-reference numbers.
Lacerte Integration with PSA Software
For accounting firms looking to consistently manage multiple client engagements, BigTime offers a synchronization application called TaxLink that ties directly to Lacerte. Once the integration has been enabled, you continue to do all of your returns in Lacerte, and TaxLink sends those returns to BigTime. The engagement dashboard in BigTime provides a single place to review all engagements and track key project data. This allows firm’s to view return due dates by certain preparers, track overall statuses by return type, mark returns complete or view all completed returns. BigTime’s Lacerte integration ensures you have real-time visibility across all engagements, and nothing gets missed.
PSA Integration With Slack for Project Management
For professional services teams using Slack, staying in tune with your projects has never been easier. With BigTime’s Slack integration, service delivery teams are kept up-to-date with their project statuses through notification alerts. Time, expense, and milestone updates made in BigTime from project members flow to other team members via Slack, keeping the entire team aware of progress leading to more efficient project management, using the tools you use to collaborate across teams.
PSA Integrations Summary
SPI Research notes the importance of information integration in its 2023 Benchmark Survey, stating that “goals of [integrating] these technologies are operational visibility, automation efficiency, performance improvement, and goal achievement. Visibility into the data enables employees at all levels to better perform tasks.” Click here to download the Professional Services Benchmark Survey.
At BigTime, our philosophy around PSA integrations is that we will choose the path that makes the most sense for the problem that our customers are trying to solve. Whether it be a web service integration, one of our native productized integrations, or something custom-built, our goal is to approach PSA integrations in a way that provides our customers with the most value and fastest path to achieving their business objectives.
View more information about BigTime’s integrations, or contact us today if you don’t see something you need and our Solutions Consultant team will discuss possibilities for meeting the needs of your unique technology ecosystem.
Frequently Asked Questions About PSA Integrations
What is PSA integration?
PSA integration (Professional Services Automation integration) integrates information surrounding high-priority, revenue-generating tasks to provide real-time visibility throughout a services organization to efficiently achieve business objectives. By integrating a PSA platform with a service organization’s CRM, project management, and accounting applications, the organization can drive substantial improvements in profit margins and client satisfaction.
What are PSA CRM integrations?
Integrating PSA software with CRM software for professional services allows services businesses to bridge the gap between sales and delivery. Actionable project data can easily be accessed to understand demand and delivery capacity, and centralized information eliminates redundant admin work. Popular PSA CRM integrations involve connecting with HubSpot and Salesforce.
What are PSA project management software integrations?
Project management software integrations with professional services automation (PSA) software provides enhanced capabilities with resource scheduling and time tracking, automated collection of task and completion status, and valuable analytics that give insight into overall progress and profitability. Popular project management software integrations involve connecting a PSA tool like Jira.
What are PSA project accounting software integrations?
Project account software integrations with a professional services automation (PSA) tool provides robust control over A/R, A/P and G/L transactions necessary to sustain the business while providing management with real-time visibility over the full scope of a service organization’s operations. Popular project accounting software integrations involve connecting a PSA tool like BigTime software with Sage Intacct, QuickBooks, and Lacerte.
What are available PSA integrations?
True best-of-breed PSA solutions such as BigTime have the ability to integrate into the unique tech stack of a services organization, including connecting with applications for CRM, accounting, project management, workflow management, business intelligence, single sign-on, and more.
