The Professional Services Delivery Lifecycle in CrmLeaf
All editions, most directly the Worksuite edition. Several stages depend on paid add-on modules, noted stage by stage below.
Availability: All editions, most directly the Worksuite edition. Several stages depend on paid add-on modules, noted stage by stage below.
Overview
A professional services business runs one long chain: win the work, staff it, deliver it, record the effort, bill it, and find out whether it made money. CrmLeaf holds every stage of that chain, but it does not present it as a single guided pipeline. This article maps the lifecycle onto the capabilities that actually exist, so a service organisation can see where each stage lives, and - importantly - which handovers the platform performs and which the organisation operates as practice.
How It Works
Read the chain as a conceptual framework rather than an automated workflow.
CRM → Client → Project → Resourcing → Delivery → Time → Expenses → Billing → Reporting
The Lifecycle, Stage by Stage
| Stage | CrmLeaf capability | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Demand Enquiry to qualified opportunity |
Lead contacts under lead companies; configurable pipelines and the lead board; deals with value, close date and history; follow-ups surfaced as open, won, needs attention and overdue; web-to-lead capture | How to Create and Work Deals |
| 2. Scope and agree Proposal to signed agreement |
Estimates with templates and rate lines; design-led proposals with e-signature; contracts signed by both parties, with renewals | How to Create and Send Estimates |
| 3. Client Won work becomes an account |
Client records with contacts, documents and categories; a client is a real user account with portal access to their invoices, estimates, proposals and contracts | How to Manage Clients and the Client Portal |
| 4. Engagement The delivery container |
Projects with members, an attached client, milestones, statuses and a client rating; reusable project templates, including shipped templates for IT Services, Marketing Agency, Creative Agency and Legal Services; Excel work-breakdown import | How to Create and Manage Projects |
| 5. Resourcing Who does the work |
Employee records with skills, designation and department; Resource Availability and Asset Availability; the Resource Utilization module's Availability, Capacity, Workload and Timeline lenses (paid module) | How to Use Resource Utilization Views |
| 6. Delivery Doing and tracking the work |
Tasks with a billable flag, estimates, assignees and dependencies; the taskboard with an approval column; milestones; Gantt; the Project Roadmap module (paid); discussions and files against the work | How to Create and Assign Tasks |
| 7. Effort Recording what was spent |
Timers and manual entries against project, task and user; breaks excluded; billable earnings from an hourly rate; weekly timesheets submitted and approved or rejected with a reason | How to Submit and Approve Weekly Timesheets |
| 8. Cost Money spent delivering |
Expenses with approval, receipts, project and task allocation, and a billable flag; vendor bills and payments for subcontracted work, which create expenses automatically (Purchase module) | How to Manage Expenses and Reimbursements |
| 9. Billing Turning delivery into cash |
Invoices raised manually, from an accepted estimate, or from billable time logs and expenses; recurring invoices for retainers; milestone invoicing for deliverable-based billing; credit notes; payments through gateways or offline | How to Invoice a Completed Project Milestone |
| 10. Control and review Was it delivered well and profitably |
Project budgets with actuals derived live and full earned value analysis (Budget module); Time Log Report splitting billable and non-billable hours by person, project and period; Task, Finance, Income vs Expense, Expense, Deal and Sales reports; the weekly digest | How to Read Budget vs Actual and EVM Analytics |
What the Platform Connects, and What You Operate
This distinction prevents disappointment during an implementation. The following handovers are documented product behaviour:
- Accepting an estimate on its public link creates an unpaid invoice, once only.
- Billable time logs and billable expenses can be billed directly onto an invoice.
- A completed milestone can be invoiced from its approved, unbilled billable time logs and material requisitions, and the source records are stamped so nothing is billed twice.
- Budget actuals derive live from the project's expenses, approved time log earnings, purchase orders and bills, and invoices - there is no separate actuals entry.
- Recording a vendor payment creates a corresponding expense.
- A hired candidate is converted into an employee, which is the entry into the resource pool.
Everything else in the chain is a practice your organisation runs, supported by the platform rather than automated by it. A won deal leading to a project is a documented relationship, not a silent automation. Staffing decisions are made by your resourcing manager from the availability views, not generated. Approval steps happen because you configured who approves what.
Measures a Service Organisation Should Expect to Derive
Be clear-eyed about this before you promise a metric to a partner group. CrmLeaf holds the inputs for the classic services measures, but several of them are not stored figures or shipped reports:
| Measure | Status in CrmLeaf |
|---|---|
| Billable and non-billable hours by person, project and period | Shipped, in the Time Log Report |
| Availability, capacity, workload and timeline views | Shipped, in the Resource Utilization module |
| Budget versus actual, variance, burn rate and earned value by project | Shipped, in the Budget module |
| A utilisation percentage as a stored figure, and a utilisation target | Not a stored figure or setting. The inputs exist; firms derive the ratio from exported report data |
| Employee cost rate per hour for project costing | Not a stored field. Salary is held through Payroll, which is not a costing rate |
| Project or engagement margin and profitability | Not a shipped report, because there is no stored cost rate to build it from |
| Backlog - committed but not yet invoiced value | Not a stored object or metric |
| Billing type per project, such as fixed fee against time and materials | Unconfirmed |
Earned value analysis in the Budget module gives cost and schedule performance against the plan. That is not the same as profitability, and it should not be presented internally as though it were.
Expected Result
You can place each stage of your firm's delivery lifecycle against a specific CrmLeaf capability, know which add-on modules that requires, and know which measures you will need to derive outside the product.
Important Notes
- Menu names and their position can differ between product editions and can be customised for your account, so your sidebar may not match these paths exactly. Use Search or your Quick Access items if you cannot find a screen.
- Four of the ten stages lean on paid add-on modules - Resource Utilization, Project Roadmap, Budget and Purchase. Confirm what your plan includes before designing a process around them.
- Report figures obey the ownership-scoped permission model, so a consultant, a delivery lead and a partner can legitimately see different totals for the same period. See Understanding Roles, Permissions and Record Visibility.
- The Solar, Construction and Manufacturing editions run their own delivery lifecycles over the same engine. A service organisation can borrow their milestone billing and payment schedule patterns.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is PSA a separate product I can buy?
No. PSA describes CrmLeaf capabilities used together for service delivery. What you buy is an edition and a plan, and some stages of the lifecycle require specific add-on modules.
Does a won deal automatically create a project?
The relationship from a won deal to a project is documented as a workflow connection. Treat it as the intended path rather than assuming a silent automation, and confirm the behaviour in your own account.
Can I see utilisation for my team?
You can see availability, capacity, workload and timeline in the Resource Utilization module, and billable against non-billable hours in the Time Log Report. A single stored utilisation percentage measured against a target is not a shipped figure.
How do I get engagement profitability?
Revenue is available from invoices, and delivery cost partly from expenses and vendor bills. A per-engagement margin needs a loaded cost per hour for each person, which CrmLeaf does not store, so this is currently derived outside the product.
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