System to run a service company: sales, e-mail, projects and finance

Client

A dozen or so people, B2B services. Client projects are billed in three ways: fixed price, time and materials, or subscription.

Three tools and spreadsheets

The client came to us with three tools. A question about one client meant opening Pipedrive, ClickUp and the spreadsheet with revenue, invoices and billing. The correspondence with the client sat in the inbox of whoever handled them.

Whether a client had paid for a project stage, someone checked by going through the bank statement. The month close and client reports were put together by hand from several sources. On top of that, the ClickUp licenses: about PLN 12,000 a year.

Sales

The pipeline shows deals by stage, with the win probability, and flags the ones that have been stuck for too long. Contacts and activities sync with Google Calendar. The client gets the quote as a link, and the salesperson sees whether it was opened. When the quote status changes, the deal moves through the pipeline on its own.

E-mail with AI

Each person’s Gmail is connected to clients and deals. The list shows which client is waiting for a reply and since when. A thread can be turned straight into a deal, a quote or a task. AI writes the reply draft from the client’s history, and an employee sends it after reading it.

Projects and contracts

The project card holds the contract, the billing model, stages and acceptances. The project manager sets the risk alert, and the margin is calculated as you go from team hours and external costs. When a client is late with a payment, the card warns about it before the team starts the next stage.

Time tracking

People billed by the hour start a timer on the task. The rest fill in a weekly timesheet that the project manager approves. The time history from ClickUp stayed in the system as an archive, and past margins and billing did not change.

Incoming payments and billing

Every billing item has three steps: forecast, invoice and payment. The system matches the bank statement to invoices and stages, so a paid stage shows up on the project. At the end of the month the system prepares work reports for clients, and the PDF goes to the client straight from the app.