Custom software for consulting firms, accounting and audit practices, law firms, engineering consultancies, and architecture firms that need systems built around how professional services actually work -- not generic SaaS that almost fits.
Generic platforms track time in isolation, share documents over email, and force partners to export spreadsheets to understand project profitability. We build the system that connects billing, client communication, resource allocation, and knowledge management in one place.
Project billing and time tracking built around how your practice bills -- milestone, retainer, hourly, or blended
Client portals where clients see project status, access documents, and communicate without flooding your team with emails
CRM for professional services -- opportunity tracking, relationship management, and referral attribution
AI-powered document tools that draft proposals, review contracts, and extract data from client documents
Summary
RaftLabs builds custom software for professional services firms -- consulting companies, accounting and audit practices, law firms, engineering consultancies, and management consultancies. We build project billing systems, client portals, CRM, knowledge management tools, resource management platforms, and AI-powered document tools. Most professional services products ship in 12-14 weeks at a fixed cost.
Most professional services firms run on a mix of time-tracking tools, shared drives, email threads, and spreadsheets held together by people who know where everything is. When one of those people leaves, institutional knowledge leaves with them.
The bigger problem is economics. Project profitability is invisible until month end, when someone collates timesheets, checks actuals against estimates, and produces a report that is already two weeks old. By then the project is over budget or under-scoped and there is nothing to do about it.
We build software that makes the economics of professional services visible in real time. Billable time captured as work happens. Project profitability visible at any point. Client communication traceable. Documents versioned. Partner oversight available without manual collation.
Time capture tools that record billable and non-billable hours against the right project and client as work happens -- not reconstructed at month end. Milestone billing workflows that trigger invoices automatically when deliverables are signed off. Blended rate calculation for projects with mixed seniority levels. Profitability dashboards that show revenue, cost, and margin by project, client, and practice area without manual reporting.
Secure portals where clients track project status, access deliverables, review and approve documents, and communicate with their engagement team -- without calling or emailing for every update. Version-controlled document sharing replaces email attachments. Approval workflows replace informal sign-offs. Clients with visibility are easier to manage than clients kept in the dark.
Relationship and opportunity management built for professional services -- not repurposed from a product sales CRM. Tracks contacts across client organisations, manages opportunities through qualification and proposal stages, records referral sources and introducer relationships, and surfaces which client relationships need attention. Integrated with your billing data so every client record shows revenue history alongside relationship health.
Searchable knowledge bases that capture methodology, templates, past deliverables, and institutional knowledge. Document assembly tools that generate proposals, engagement letters, and reports from structured inputs -- taking a 2-hour drafting task down to minutes. Template libraries maintained centrally so every document produced by the firm meets the same quality and branding standards.
Staff allocation tools that show who is available, who is overloaded, and what skills each engagement needs. Utilisation reporting that tracks billable versus non-billable time at team and individual level. Forward planning views that show capacity against confirmed and probable work -- so resourcing decisions are made on real data, not gut feel and phone calls.
AI document analysis that reads client contracts and extracts key terms, obligations, and deadlines. Proposal drafting tools that pull from your template library and past proposals to generate a first draft. Contract review assistance that flags non-standard clauses against your standard positions. Time narrative generation that takes brief time entries and produces detailed billing descriptions. Each tool is scoped around a specific manual task that takes too long.
Partners and engagement managers track project status across a mix of email threads, shared drives, and spreadsheet dashboards that no one keeps fully up to date. Clients ask for status updates because they have no other way to get them. Each update request takes time from a fee earner. We build engagement management platforms where project status, milestones, and deliverable progress are visible to the right people without manual reporting.
Timesheets completed on Friday afternoon from memory undercount billable hours by 10 to 20 percent in most professional services firms. The work was done but the time wasn't captured at the moment, so billing write-offs happen at month end when the numbers are reconciled. We build time capture tools that record billable time against the right project and client as work happens -- not reconstructed after the fact.
Senior fee earners spend two to four hours adapting a standard proposal template for each new opportunity -- pulling in scope language from past deliverables, adjusting rate cards, and reformatting for the client. That time is not billable. We build proposal and SOW generation tools that pull from your template library and past proposals to produce a first draft in minutes, with the customisation steps reduced to a structured input form.
Resource decisions -- who to assign to the next engagement, whether to bring in a subcontractor, when a team member will be free -- get made through phone calls and manual spreadsheet checks because utilisation data isn't available in real time. Overloaded team members and underutilised capacity exist in the same firm at the same time. We build resource management platforms that show real-time utilisation, forward capacity, and skill availability so allocation decisions are made on data.
Deliverables sent for client review generate reply-all email threads with conflicting comments, no single version of the truth, and no record of what was approved and when. When a dispute arises, nobody can find the final sign-off. We build client portal platforms with version-controlled document sharing, structured review workflows, and approval records that both the firm and the client can access.
Retainer clients expect accurate invoices on time. When time data sits in separate systems from billing, monthly reconciliation becomes a manual task -- matching time entries to retainer budgets, checking whether fixed fees have been exceeded, and calculating any overage billing. We connect time tracking to billing so retainer reconciliation runs automatically and invoice generation is triggered by the data rather than a manual calculation.
Frequently asked questions
Professional services firms bill time and deliverables, not products. The software needs to handle multiple billing models -- hourly, milestone, retainer, fixed fee, and blended -- and connect time tracking directly to invoice generation and project profitability. Generic project management tools track tasks. Professional services software tracks revenue, utilisation, margin, and client relationship health alongside tasks. It also handles the compliance requirements specific to legal, audit, and engineering firms: conflict checks, engagement letter management, regulatory reporting, and client confidentiality controls.
Yes. Most professional services software projects include an integration with the firm's accounting system -- Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, or an ERP like SAP or NetSuite. The integration typically handles invoice export, payment reconciliation, and nominal coding. For firms with time-tracking data in legacy systems, we build import pipelines that pull historical data into the new platform without requiring manual re-entry. We scope the integration during discovery because the complexity varies significantly depending on what your existing system supports.
Client documents and communications are sensitive by default in professional services. We design platforms with role-based access controls so users only see the clients and projects they are assigned to. Documents are stored with encryption at rest and in transit. Access logs record every view, download, and change. For legal and audit firms with specific data protection requirements, we build information barriers that enforce confidentiality rules in the software. We document the architecture for your risk and compliance team to review before the platform goes live.
A focused first product -- for example, a client portal for a consulting firm, a time tracking and billing system for an accounting practice, or a proposal automation tool -- typically runs $25,000--$60,000. A full practice management platform with CRM, billing, resource management, and client portal integration is more complex and typically runs $70,000--$150,000+. The cost depends on scope, number of users, integrations required, and whether you are building for one practice group or the whole firm. We scope every project before pricing it. Fixed cost, agreed before development starts.
Tell us which process costs your team the most time. We'll tell you what we'd build to fix it.