Project management is a major requirement for most professional service firms including advertising and marketing agencies, business consulting, engineering firms, software and technology companies, research organizations, and other industry segments that bill customers for time against projects.

Intuit QuickBooks has some decent in-product functionality to manage projects as jobs. The job cost functionality in the product can be used for some types of project-driven businesses. With that said, it’s more often than not used in a construction environment for managing installation, service, and other types of jobs or projects as opposed to a professional service environment. This is primarily due to the unique nature of the time and billing differences between the two industries.

As such, there are several nice add-on products available for Intuit QuickBooks that professional service firms should investigate. Some of these are full suites of products designed for professional services or field service operations while others are specialized for things like time capture, estimating, reporting, and other related activities.

Some of the top project management suites available include BigTime and BillQuick for professional services; Corecon and Knowify for construction project management; Breezeworks for field service; Jetpack Workflow for accountants; and many others.

Specialized applications include ClockShark for mobile time entry and employee scheduling; MinuteDock for professional time keeping; Hour Timesheet for time tracking with special DCAA features for government contractors; and other applications for these and other industry segments.

There are also many other applications available that are not listed on the Intuit Apps.com website. Contact your local QuickBooks ProAdvisor for assistance finding other business applications or for recommendations. And consider Sage Intacct cloud accounting when you outgrow QuickBooks. Sage Intacct is the most popular next-step for QuickBooks graduates with embedded modules for project accounting and project management, a more robust accounting application, and easy deployment via the cloud making it affordable and easy to use.For many finance professionals, revenue management is among the top challenges today. Read our whitepaper to learn how to master these challenges.