01 · portals
Client portal development.
A branded home where clients track engagements, approve deliverables, download invoices, and message the team. It kills the "any update?" email in one build.
Give clients a live status view →
§
§ · agencies · software
Software for Consulting Firms & Agencies
A client portals, PSA tools, and operations engineering practice for firms that sell expertise by the hour. Built by a 115-person agency that runs its own business on software it built itself.
On this page
§ 01 · what we build
What we build for services firms.
Agency operations software is really eight build shapes, and most firms need two or three of them wired together. You already know how software fails in a services firm. The timesheet nobody fills in. The proposal that takes four days to assemble. The client emailing "any update?" because status lives in someone's head. Every engagement runs on the same six-week cadence as our B2B SaaS growth practice, with a written scope inside 48 hours of the first call.
02 · billing
Proposal & billing automation.
Scope templates that assemble into signed proposals, milestone and retainer billing that fires on schedule, and invoices that sync to accounting instead of being re-typed into it.
Cut proposal-to-cash from days to hours →03 · PSA
PSA tool development.
Professional services automation shaped to how you actually deliver: projects, budgets, burn, and margin per engagement. Alerts fire before an account goes underwater, not after the retro.
Run delivery from one system →04 · dashboards
White-label client dashboards.
Reporting under your brand, not a tool vendor's. Campaign, delivery, or financial data pulled from source systems and rendered as narratives a client executive can read in ninety seconds.
Report under your own brand →05 · CRM
Agency CRM development.
Services pipelines are referral-driven and relationship-long; generic CRMs model neither. Pipeline, referral tracking, and engagement history built around how firms actually win work.
Track relationships, not just deals →06 · capacity
Resource & capacity planning tools.
One staffing view: who is free next sprint, who is quietly at 130%, what the bench costs this month, and whether you can say yes to the deal in the pipeline.
Staff from data, not memory →07 · utilisation
Timesheet & utilisation software.
Time capture people complete because it takes seconds. It rolls up into utilisation, realization, and effective-rate numbers partners can price from.
Make utilisation visible weekly →08 · knowledge
Knowledge-base platforms.
Your methodology is the asset. Searchable internal wikis and client-facing help centers capture how the firm does the work, so expertise stops leaving when people do.
Turn expertise into a system →§ 02 · standards & integrations
Built for client-grade trust.
Agency software holds other people's data: your clients' campaigns, financials, and contracts. An honest note first. Certifications are statuses your company earns from an auditor, and no development partner can hand them to you. What we control is whether the architecture makes trust cheap: least-privilege access, audit trails, and clean back-office integrations.
operations
SOC 2-aware practices.
Audit logs, change management, and incident runbooks structured from day one. A Type II readiness project becomes a checklist, not a rebuild.
data
GDPR-aware data handling.
Data minimization, deletion workflows, and consent records aligned with EU data-protection law. That matters when one portal holds many clients' data.
identity
SSO / SAML-aware auth.
Auth designed against SAML/OIDC patterns, so enterprise client stakeholders sign in with their own identity provider. That makes SSO a configuration, not a quarter of rework.
access
Role-based access design.
Partners, leads, contractors, and clients see different slices of one system. Roles are modeled in the schema and enforced server-side, never just hidden buttons.
signatures
E-signature integrations.
Proposals and SOWs signed in-flow via DocuSign's developer platform or equivalents, filed against the engagement automatically.
integrations
QuickBooks · Xero.
Invoices, payments, and client records synced two-way against the QuickBooks Online API and Xero developer docs. Finance never re-keys what delivery recorded.
§ 03 · challenges → how we solve them
Services firms leak margin in predictable places.
Four failure patterns show up in almost every consulting firm and agency we scope for. Each one is an operations problem wearing a software costume. Each has a structural fix.
challenge 01 · tool sprawl
Nine subscriptions, zero source of truth.
A CRM here, a project tracker there, time in one tool, invoices in another. We consolidate around one operational core with integrations at the edges, so "how is this account doing?" has exactly one answer.
challenge 02 · invisible margin
Nobody knows which engagements make money.
Revenue is visible; cost per engagement is folklore. We wire time capture, staffing cost, and billing into a per-engagement margin view. The account that "feels great" but bleeds hours shows up in week two, not at year-end.
challenge 03 · the status tax
Senior people spend Fridays making decks about work instead of doing it.
Status reporting is a hidden headcount. A client portal with live engagement state, approvals, and threaded comms replaces the weekly deck. Clients check in on their own schedule, and your leads get their Fridays back.
challenge 04 · key-person risk
The process lives in people, not systems.
When delivery method, client history, and pricing logic live in tenured heads, every departure is a small fire. Knowledge-base platforms and recorded engagement history turn the firm's memory into an asset that survives turnover.
§ 04 · the money question
How much does agency operations software cost?
Client portals, PSA tools, and agency CRMs are SaaS-shaped builds, so the honest ranges follow the same stage math. An MVP, meaning a working portal or billing pipeline your clients touch, runs $30,000 to $80,000 over 10-16 weeks. A post-PMF-grade platform with multi-tenancy and an admin panel runs $80,000 to $200,000 over 16-26 weeks. Scale-stage systems with SSO, advanced billing, RBAC, and audit logs run $200,000 to $500,000 over 24-40 weeks. Enterprise builds cross $500,000 to $1M+.
The single biggest lever is build-vs-buy. Custom auth is six weeks of engineering; buying it is a day. Buying the six commodity layers saves $150K-$410K on a typical scale-stage build. The full stage-by-stage math lives in our SaaS development cost guide.
| stage | timeline | market range |
|---|---|---|
| MVP / pre-PMF | 10-16 weeks | $30K-$80K |
| Post-PMF | 16-26 weeks | $80K-$200K |
| Scale | 24-40 weeks | $200K-$500K |
| Enterprise | 32-52 weeks | $500K-$1M+ |
Most firms start smaller than they think: one portal or one billing pipeline, shipped in a single six-week cycle, then extended. Every quote arrives in writing within 48 hours of the intro call.
§ 05 · first-party proof
Our longest-running client is us.
Not an archetype · not a composite · the actual software running this agency, in production daily
internal ERP
30+
Modules covering HR, projects, CRM, and finance.
daily users
115
People who run their working day inside it.
coordination
5
Offices coordinated through one operational core.
tenure
since 2017
The engagement that never ended: our own.
Every capability on this page runs our own business first. Digital Heroes operates on an internal ERP we built ourselves: 30+ modules spanning HR, project delivery, CRM, and finance. Our clients track engagements through a client portal built on the same backbone, and the live chat on this site routes straight into that ERP.
No invented revenue chart, deliberately. The claim here is capability, and the proof is 115 people across five offices depending on this software every working day. For a third-party pattern of the same platform discipline, see the San Francisco B2B SaaS archetype: 7.7x ARR ($80K to $620K in 18 months), NRR at 118%, and free-to-paid activation lifted from 28% to 61%.
§ 06 · how we ship
Five steps, six-week cycles.
The cadence is the contract. Every build runs in six-week cycles with a demo every Friday. You'll recognize the rhythm, because it's how good services firms run their own delivery.
- 01
Discover.
A 30-minute call on how work flows through your firm, from first referral to final invoice. Written scope with build shapes, timeline, and a fixed fee lands inside 48 hours.
- 02
Design.
Weeks one to two: the data model for engagements, roles, and money; the integration map; and a clickable prototype of the portal or dashboard clients will touch.
- 03
Build.
Weeks two to five: a staging environment you can click from day three, with your real project data seeded early. A PSA tool demo means nothing on fake projects.
- 04
Launch.
Week six: production cutover with your team trained, client-facing surfaces soft-launched to one friendly account first, and runbooks handed over in writing.
- 05
Optimize.
The next six-week cycle is scoped from live usage, not from a wishlist: which portal views clients open, where time capture drops off, which reports partners pull.
§ 07 · the agency-ops stack
Boring where it counts, sharp where it differentiates.
Operations software has to survive a decade of Mondays. Typed languages, relational databases, and documented integrations: the same stack our own ERP runs on.
Next.js
React
TypeScript
Node.js
PostgreSQL
Supabase
QuickBooks API
Xero API
DocuSign
Stripe
Resend
Recharts
AWS
Vercel
§ 08 · why Digital Heroes
Why services firms pick us.
01 · peers
We run the same business you do.
Utilisation, bench cost, scope creep, the status tax: we price and staff a 115-person services firm every week ourselves.
02 · dogfood
The demo is our production system.
Ask on the first call and we'll walk you through our own ERP and client portal live, not a slideware concept.
03 · cadence
Six weeks, demoed every Friday.
The cadence is public and non-negotiable. You see working software weekly; a slipping build has nowhere to hide by week two.
04 · overlap
NY + Delhi, honestly remote-first.
115 people across two HQs and three satellites. US mornings overlap Delhi evenings, so blockers raised at standup are often resolved by the next one.
05 · receipts
Transparent numbers, published.
Cost guides print the real ranges before you book a call, and every scope arrives itemized in writing within 48 hours. Clutch 4.9, Upwork Top Rated Plus.
§ 09 · three ways to work with us
Pick the shape your firm needs.
project
Fixed-scope build
6-14 weeks
One build shape, scoped, priced, and shipped on the six-week cadence: a portal, a billing pipeline, or a utilisation dashboard.
most picked
retainer
Operations retainer
monthly cycles
A standing senior pod running successive six-week cycles. Portal, PSA, CRM, and reporting get built out module by module, the way we built our own.
extension
Team extension
3-12 months
Senior engineers embedded in your standup, your repo, and your review process. For when you have a technical lead and need shipping capacity.
Not sure which shape? Start from the stage math in the SaaS development cost guide. The ranges there map one-to-one onto these engagement shapes.
§ 10 · from the journal
Field notes for firm operators.
decisions
In-house vs outsourced engineering
The honest decision math for a services firm weighing a hire against a build partner for its internal tooling.
playbook
SaaS MVP in 90 days
The stage-gated plan we use to ship a working platform. It is the same discipline behind a first portal or PSA build.
metrics
SaaS onboarding metrics
Activation benchmarks that tell you whether clients are adopting your new portal or quietly falling back to email.
Seven answers.
How much does software for consulting firms cost?
Agency operations software follows SaaS cost stages. A working MVP , one client portal or one billing pipeline , runs $30,000 to $80,000 over 10-16 weeks. A platform with multi-tenancy and an admin panel runs $80,000 to $200,000; scale-stage systems with SSO, RBAC, and audit logs run $200,000 to $500,000; enterprise multi-region builds cross $500,000 to $1M+. Every engagement starts with a 30-minute call and a written, itemized scope inside 48 hours.
Should we build a custom PSA tool or buy one off the shelf?
Buy first if an off-the-shelf PSA matches your delivery model , the honest answer many agencies won't give. Custom wins in three situations: your delivery model is genuinely non-standard; tool sprawl means the real cost is nine subscriptions plus the human glue between them; or the client-facing surface is a differentiator you want under your own brand. Either way we build the operational core and integrate the commodities , accounting stays in QuickBooks or Xero, signatures stay in DocuSign.
How long does a client portal build take?
A first client portal , engagement status, deliverable approvals, document sharing, threaded messages , fits inside one or two six-week cycles, roughly 6-12 weeks. The variable is integration depth: a portal reading from one project system ships faster than one syncing time, billing, and accounting two-way. We soft-launch with one friendly client account before the full roster.
Can you integrate with QuickBooks or Xero?
Yes , and we treat the accounting system as the ledger of record, not something to replace. Invoices raised in your portal or PSA tool sync to QuickBooks Online or Xero; payments flow back; client records stay matched both ways. We build against the official developer APIs with webhook-driven sync and an idempotent retry layer, so a flaky connection means a delayed sync, never a duplicated invoice.
Can you white-label dashboards for our clients?
Yes. White-label client dashboards carry your brand, your domain, and your reporting narrative , the tool vendor disappears. Data pulls from the source systems you already use and gets shaped into the story your account leads would otherwise assemble by hand. Multi-tenancy is designed in from the start, so onboarding client number forty is configuration, not another build. For many firms this is the first module worth shipping, because it's the one clients see.
How do you handle roles and permissions in client-facing tools?
Server-side, structurally, and from day one. A services platform has an unusual access matrix , partners, delivery leads, contractors, and multiple clients' stakeholders in one system , and hiding buttons in the UI is not access control. We model roles in the database schema, enforce them in every server-side query, and log access to sensitive records. SSO/SAML-aware auth lets enterprise stakeholders sign in through their own identity provider , exactly what the first big client's security questionnaire will ask about.
Do you actually use the software you build?
Daily, and it's the strongest proof we can offer. Digital Heroes runs on an internal ERP we built ourselves , 30+ modules covering HR, project delivery, CRM, and finance , used by 115 people across five offices every working day. Clients track engagements in a portal built on the same backbone, and the chat on this website routes into that ERP. Ask on the first call and we'll screen-share the live system, not a mockup.
Start with an agency-ops audit.
A 30-minute call on how work flows through your firm: where the margin leaks, which module to build first, and what it costs. The written scope follows within 48 hours.
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