Your Firm Sells Time. Stop Wasting It on Admin.
Opus gives professional services firms one platform for billable utilisation tracking, client lifecycle management, proposal-to-invoice workflows, and Xero-synced billing. Replaces WorkflowMax + your CRM at a lower total cost.
Free plan at $0/month · No credit card required · Xero integration included
What Professional Services Firms Struggle With
Your firm delivers expert advice. But the operational infrastructure behind that delivery often relies on disconnected tools and manual processes that leak revenue and waste partner time.
Billable Utilisation Below Target
Your consultants are busy, but are they billing? Between internal meetings, admin, proposal writing, and training, the gap between available hours and billed hours is wider than most firms realise. Every 5% drop in utilisation costs a 20-person firm over $200K per year in lost revenue.
Disconnected Client Relationships
Client notes live in email. Proposals are in Word documents. Project data is in a spreadsheet. Invoices are in Xero. Nobody has a full picture of the client relationship, and when a partner asks "what is the status with ABC Corp?", three people need to check three different systems.
Xero Reconciliation Headaches
Your bookkeeper spends hours each month matching timesheets to invoices to Xero entries. Time is logged in one system, invoices are generated manually, and the accounting data never quite matches the project management data. Every reconciliation cycle is painful.
Proposal to Invoice Gap
You win a new engagement, but the proposal details do not flow through to the project setup. The budget gets re-entered manually, the scope gets summarised differently, and by the time you invoice, the numbers do not match what was agreed. The gap between winning the work and billing it wastes time and creates disputes.
WorkflowMax is Being Retired
Xero has confirmed WorkflowMax will be retired. If your firm relies on it for time tracking and job management, you need a replacement that handles everything WorkflowMax did and more, without losing your Xero integration or forcing a painful data migration.
How Opus Solves It for Professional Services
One platform that connects proposals, projects, timesheets, billing, and client relationships. Built for the way professional services firms actually operate.
Billable Utilisation Tracking and Targets
Set utilisation targets per team member and track actual performance in real time. Opus shows the split between billable, non-billable, and internal time for every person. Partners and managers see firm-wide utilisation on a single dashboard, broken down by team, seniority, or client.
Client Relationship Management (CRM)
Every client interaction, proposal, engagement, invoice, and communication lives in one timeline. When a partner needs the full picture on a client, it is one click away. Track relationship health, engagement history, revenue by client, and upcoming opportunities all in context.
Two-Way Xero Integration for Billing
Timesheets generate invoices. Invoices sync to Xero with full line items and GST. Payments received in Xero sync back. Your bookkeeper stops doing manual reconciliation because the data matches from the start. Works with hourly billing, fixed-fee engagements, and hybrid models.
Proposal to Invoice Pipeline
Write the proposal in Opus with a defined scope, fee structure, and deliverables. When the client accepts, the proposal converts to an active engagement with the budget, milestones, and billing terms already set. No re-entering data, no mismatched numbers.
Engagement Profitability and WIP Tracking
See the financial health of every engagement in real time. Track work-in-progress, budget burn, and margin trajectory as the project progresses. Identify engagements heading for write-offs early enough to course-correct through scope management or additional billing.
AI-Powered Firm Analytics
Ask plain-English questions about your firm. "What is our average utilisation this quarter?" "Which practice areas are most profitable?" "Show me all engagements over budget." Opus analyses your live data and returns answers without digging through reports or waiting for management accounts.
The Engagement Lifecycle in Opus
From the first client conversation to ongoing relationship management, Opus handles every stage of your professional services delivery.
Opportunity
A prospective client reaches out or a partner identifies an opportunity. Opus captures the lead in the CRM with context on the need, potential value, and the responsible partner.
Proposal and Scoping
Build a proposal with a defined scope, fee structure, team allocation, and timeline. Send it to the client for review. Track proposal status through the pipeline.
Active Engagement
Client signs the engagement letter. The proposal converts to an active project with budgets, milestones, and team assignments already populated. Time logging begins immediately.
Delivery and Billing
Your team works, logs time, and delivers. Progress billing or milestone invoices are generated from actual data and synced to Xero. WIP balances update in real time.
Completion and Review
Engagement wraps up. Opus calculates the final margin, compares it to the proposal estimate, and stores the outcome for benchmarking future pricing.
Ongoing Relationship
The client stays in your CRM. Future opportunities are tracked, recurring work is scheduled, and the full relationship history informs every interaction.
Financial Visibility Built for Partners
Partners and practice leaders need real-time visibility into utilisation, WIP, and engagement profitability. Opus delivers that without waiting for monthly management accounts.
Firm-Wide Utilisation
See the utilisation rate for every team member, practice area, and office. Compare actual performance against targets and identify where capacity is being lost to non-billable work.
Work-In-Progress Tracking
Know your unbilled WIP balance at all times. Opus tracks time logged but not yet invoiced, so you can keep billing cycles tight and avoid month-end WIP blow-outs.
Engagement Profitability
See the true margin on every engagement after factoring in all time, expenses, and overheads. Identify which types of work deliver the best returns and which consistently erode margins.
Xero-Synced Billing
Invoices generated from time logs or milestones sync to Xero with full detail. Payments and credit notes sync back. Your finance team stops reconciling between two systems because the data is always consistent.
Stop Waiting for Month-End to Know How the Firm is Performing
Most professional services firms only get visibility into utilisation and profitability when management accounts are prepared, often weeks after month-end. Opus gives partners and practice leaders live dashboards showing team utilisation, WIP balances, engagement margins, and revenue pipeline. You can make decisions about pricing, staffing, and client selection today, not after the numbers are already locked in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions from consulting, legal, and accounting firms evaluating Opus as their management platform.
Is Opus a replacement for WorkflowMax?
Yes. Opus handles everything WorkflowMax does: time tracking, job management, invoicing, and Xero integration. It also adds full CRM, utilisation analytics, proposal management, AI-powered insights, and multi-team coordination that WorkflowMax never offered. For firms migrating from WorkflowMax, Opus provides a more complete solution without losing the Xero connectivity your accounting team depends on.
How does the two-way Xero integration work?
Opus connects to Xero via the official API. Invoices created in Opus (from time logs, milestones, or manual entry) sync to Xero with full line items, GST, and client references. Payments received in Xero sync back to Opus so your project managers can see payment status without logging into Xero. Client contacts also sync bidirectionally, eliminating duplicate data entry.
Can Opus handle both time-based and fixed-fee billing?
Yes. Each engagement in Opus can be configured with its own billing model. Hourly engagements bill based on logged time at agreed rates. Fixed-fee engagements bill against milestones or a payment schedule. Hybrid models (e.g. fixed fee with overage billing) are also supported. All models roll up into the same financial reporting and Xero sync.
How does utilisation tracking work for different roles?
Each team member has a role with an expected utilisation target (e.g. senior consultants at 75%, partners at 40%). Opus tracks actual billable hours against available hours and shows the percentage. You can view utilisation by individual, role, practice area, or firm-wide. Weekly and monthly trends help you identify patterns and adjust workload distribution.
Can we track profitability by practice area or service line?
Yes. Opus lets you tag engagements by practice area, service type, or any custom category. You can then view profitability, utilisation, and revenue metrics broken down by those categories. This helps firms understand which practice areas generate the best margins and where to focus growth efforts.
How much does Opus cost for a professional services firm?
Opus starts at $0 with the Free plan for one user. Paid plans are Starter at $10/user/month, Professional at $25/user, Business at $50/user, and Enterprise at $100/user. For a 20-person firm replacing WorkflowMax ($60 to $95/month) plus a CRM subscription, Opus Professional at $25/user ($500/month total) provides far more capability at a predictable cost.
Does Opus support document management?
Opus includes built-in document management with version control and integrates with Microsoft SharePoint. Proposals, engagement letters, reports, and client correspondence can be stored against the relevant client and engagement. When a new engagement is created, Opus can generate the corresponding folder structure in SharePoint automatically.
Ready to run your firm with real-time visibility?
Join Australian professional services firms already using Opus to track utilisation, manage clients, and sync billing to Xero. Free plan available, no credit card required.
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