We already run Asana and monday. Isn't this what those tools do?

Partly, and where they do, use them. Both have rules engines that handle status changes, assignment, and due-date nudges inside their own walls. They stop at the boundary. Nothing in Asana pushes a completed milestone into QuickBooks, mirrors a field into your client's Jira instance, or pauses a project because an invoice went overdue. That crossing is what we get hired for. If your whole wish list stays inside one tool, cancel the call.

What does one of these cost, and how long until it's running?

Every item shows its band because the rate is published: $150 an hour, and the tier is just hours times rate. Starter builds are $900 to $1,800 and land in one to two weeks. Workflow builds, which is most project delivery work, run $2,400 to $6,000 over two to four weeks. Orchestration is $6,000 to $13,500 across four to eight weeks. Project minimum is $2,500, so a single Starter item usually gets paired with a second.

Which automation should we build first?

Whatever you redo by hand on every single engagement. For most agencies that's Project Kickoff Orchestrator, since setup repeats almost identically and you pay for it again with every new client. If your problem is margin rather than speed, start with Budget Burn Tracker and Scope-Change Detection. Those two catch the projects quietly going underwater, which is a bigger number than the hours you save at kickoff.

What happens when an automation breaks?

It will. APIs change, someone renames a status, a client's IT turns on SSO enforcement over a weekend. Every build gets error handling, a failure notification into a channel you name, and a retry path where retrying is safe. Silent failure is the real risk in delivery automation: a billing trigger that quietly stops firing costs you more than one that loudly breaks. We build for the loud version.

Our clients use different PM tools than we do. Can you connect them?

Usually. Multi-PM Tool Consolidation mirrors status, dates, and owner fields across Jira, Asana, and monday so each side keeps the tool it likes. The honest caveat is that two-way sync is harder than it sounds, and every field you add multiplies the conflict cases. We scope it as one-way mirroring of a short field list unless you have a specific reason for bidirectional, which pushes the build into the Orchestration tier.

Project Delivery Ops

Project management automation for firms that bill by the hour

20 automations, $900 to $13,500 depending on scope. Every range is hours multiplied by our published $150/hour rate.

Request a call Browse all categories

The deal closes Thursday. Somebody makes the Slack channel Tuesday, the Drive folder Wednesday, and the Jira project doesn't exist until the first standup, where the PM finds out the SOW is a PDF buried in a sales rep's inbox. Week one gets spent on setup instead of work, and the client watches you do it. That's the gap client onboarding automation actually fills. A Project Kickoff Orchestrator fires on the closed-won record and stands up the channel, the folder, the project, the task template, and the kickoff email in one pass, with the signed scope attached where delivery will look for it. Boring. Also the single best first build for most agencies.

The expensive failures come later. Two of them, mostly: scope nobody logged and milestones nobody billed. Scope-Change Detection watches estimated hours against the signed baseline and trips a change-request approval when the delta crosses whatever threshold you set, which moves the awkward client conversation from invoice day to the day the creep happens. Milestone → Billing Trigger takes a completion event in Jira or Asana and pushes it into QuickBooks or Stripe, so cash stops depending on whether a PM remembered to tell finance. Budget Burn Tracker is the early warning for both. Fixed-fee shops should start there instead.

On the client side, the recurring hole is silence. An approval sits with a stakeholder who's traveling, the schedule slips, and the slip lands in your utilization rather than theirs. Client Approval Chase reminds after three idle business days and escalates to the account manager. Client Status Report Generator drafts the weekly from real project data and hands it to a human to edit before it goes out, which is deliberate: nobody wants a bot emailing a client the wrong burn number. On-Hold Project Freezer is the blunt one. Overdue invoice pauses the project, freezes notifications, and posts internal instructions so a well-meaning senior consultant doesn't keep working for free.

We build these because we needed them. Ops Automators runs its own delivery and billing on software we wrote ourselves, including retainer balances that carry overage forward month to month, which is the thing every off-the-shelf option we tried either got wrong or gated behind a bigger plan. The same honesty applies in reverse. Timesheet Compliance Bot is a nudge, and Harvest and Clockify both ship reminders that may already cover you. monday and Asana have rules engines good enough for simple status-triggered work. If the tool you already pay for does the job, we'll say so on the call and you keep the money. Custom earns its cost when the workflow crosses systems that were never going to talk to each other: Multi-PM Tool Consolidation exists because your client lives in Jira and your team lives in Asana, and no vendor is going to fix that for you.

Prices sit on every item, no call required to see them. Everything is $150 an hour and the tiers are just hours. Starter is $900 to $1,800 (six to twelve hours, one to two weeks) for a single trigger with one integration, something like Post-Project Survey Sender. Workflow at $2,400 to $6,000 over two to four weeks covers most of this category. Orchestration runs $6,000 to $13,500 across four to eight weeks when a build chains kickoff through billing over four or five systems and needs real error handling. Project minimum is $2,500. n8n is the default build target, but we'll work in Make or Zapier if your team is already standardized there and the workflow fits inside it.

The project delivery plays.

Project Management & Delivery
Automatic RAID Log Updates
Risk-tagged comments append to central RAID register.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Budget Burn Tracker
Flags projects consuming budget faster than scope would predict.
Time tracking + PM tool → Slack and dashboard
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Client Approval Chase
Approval tasks idle >3 business days auto-remind client and escalate to AM.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Client Status Report Generator
Weekly auto-generated status reports pulled from project management data, ready for PM review.
Jira/Asana/monday → Google Docs or email
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Deliverable Packaging Workflow
Compiles files, generates share link, notifies client when marked Ready.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Delivery Checklist Enforcement
Blocks 'Start delivery' status unless required checklist items complete.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Escalation Ladder Automation
Task blocked >48 hours notifies next-level leader and creates escalation record.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Milestone → Billing Trigger
Syncs Jira milestone completion back to CRM/billing for milestone-based invoicing.
Jira/Asana → QuickBooks or Stripe
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Multi-PM Tool Consolidation
Mirrors key status fields across Jira/Asana/monday when teams use different tools.
Jira ↔ Asana ↔ monday
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
On-Hold Project Freezer
Overdue payment auto-pauses project, freezes notifications, posts internal instructions.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Post-Project Survey Sender
Sends CSAT surveys after project completion and feeds responses into the account record.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Project Health Score Calculation
Computes schedule + scope + budget health score, updates dashboard nightly.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Project Kickoff Orchestrator
Triggers on new engagement: creates Slack channel, Google Drive folder, Jira project, Notion page, and sends kickoff email.
CRM → Slack, Google Drive, Jira, Notion
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
QA Handoff Automation
Status change to 'Ready for QA' creates QA checklist items and assigns tester.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Resource Allocation Signal
Build phase entry auto-creates staffing request and notifies resource manager.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Resource Capacity Dashboard
Live view of consultant allocation, utilization, and bench time.
Harvest/Clockify + PM tool → dashboard
$6,000–$13,500
Orchestration · 4–8 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Scope-Change Detection
Estimated hours up >X% vs baseline triggers CR approval workflow.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
SLA Breach Alerter
Flags projects, tickets, or tasks breaching SLA before they go red.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Subcontractor Limited-Access Provisioning
Creates restricted accounts and sends onboarding email.
$2,400–$6,000
Workflow · 2–4 weeks
Project Management & Delivery
Timesheet Compliance Bot
Reminds team members to log time and escalates missing entries to managers.
$900–$1,800
Starter · 1–2 weeks

Starter items fall below our $2,500 project minimum, so they ship bundled with others. Orchestration and Platform builds are scoped on a call before any payment.

Questions

Before you book.

We already run Asana and monday. Isn't this what those tools do?: Partly, and where they do, use them. Both have rules engines that handle status changes, assignment, and due-date nudges inside their own walls. They stop at the boundary. Nothing in Asana pushes a completed milestone into QuickBooks, mirrors a field into your client's Jira instance, or pauses a project because an invoice went overdue. That crossing is what we get hired for. If your whole wish list stays inside one tool, cancel the call.
What does one of these cost, and how long until it's running?: Every item shows its band because the rate is published: $150 an hour, and the tier is just hours times rate. Starter builds are $900 to $1,800 and land in one to two weeks. Workflow builds, which is most project delivery work, run $2,400 to $6,000 over two to four weeks. Orchestration is $6,000 to $13,500 across four to eight weeks. Project minimum is $2,500, so a single Starter item usually gets paired with a second.
Which automation should we build first?: Whatever you redo by hand on every single engagement. For most agencies that's Project Kickoff Orchestrator, since setup repeats almost identically and you pay for it again with every new client. If your problem is margin rather than speed, start with Budget Burn Tracker and Scope-Change Detection. Those two catch the projects quietly going underwater, which is a bigger number than the hours you save at kickoff.
What happens when an automation breaks?: It will. APIs change, someone renames a status, a client's IT turns on SSO enforcement over a weekend. Every build gets error handling, a failure notification into a channel you name, and a retry path where retrying is safe. Silent failure is the real risk in delivery automation: a billing trigger that quietly stops firing costs you more than one that loudly breaks. We build for the loud version.
Our clients use different PM tools than we do. Can you connect them?: Usually. Multi-PM Tool Consolidation mirrors status, dates, and owner fields across Jira, Asana, and monday so each side keeps the tool it likes. The honest caveat is that two-way sync is harder than it sounds, and every field you add multiplies the conflict cases. We scope it as one-way mirroring of a short field list unless you have a specific reason for bidirectional, which pushes the build into the Orchestration tier.

Go deeper

Other functions we automate.

Going deeper: Business process automation guide

Which of these is costing you most?

Tell us what your team is doing by hand and we'll tell you what it would take to stop, including the ones you'd be better off buying off the shelf.

Request a call

Project management automation for firms that bill by the hour

The project delivery plays.

Automatic RAID Log Updates

Budget Burn Tracker

Client Approval Chase

Client Status Report Generator

Deliverable Packaging Workflow

Delivery Checklist Enforcement

Escalation Ladder Automation

Milestone → Billing Trigger

Multi-PM Tool Consolidation

On-Hold Project Freezer

Post-Project Survey Sender

Project Health Score Calculation

Project Kickoff Orchestrator

QA Handoff Automation

Resource Allocation Signal

Resource Capacity Dashboard

Scope-Change Detection

SLA Breach Alerter

Subcontractor Limited-Access Provisioning

Timesheet Compliance Bot

Before you book.

Related reading from the blog.

Other functions we automate.

Which of these is costing you most?