Top 12 Project Cost Management Software Picks for 2025

With effective project cost management software, you’ll be able to get full financial control. Even if your projects go over budget, you’ll know exactly why, when, and how this impacts your profitability.

Without further ado, here’s our selection of the most effective cost control software with time tracking, budgeting, forecasting, and expense management features.

Productive’s PSA software addresses the real struggles that professional services businesses face—from disconnected data, limited visibility into profitability, to inefficient project tracking.

With Productive, you can get comprehensive budget management with real-time insights into billable hours and project costs.

Customizable dashboards provide clear financial insights at every stage, from pipeline forecasting to revenue recognition and profitability metrics.

Additionally, with Productive’s forecasting and scenario planning features, you can also predict cost overruns before they happen and try out different project plans to find the best financial outcome.

Overall, Productive’s integrated platform deemphasizes the role of manual work and spreadsheets in your workflows, while providing reliable financial reporting for better decision-making.

Project costing involves tracking every dollar throughout your project’s lifecycle. This process can be time consuming and manual without the right cost management systems.

Productive’s Budgeting features help eliminate many of these headaches. Manage diverse budget types, from time & materials, hourly, to retainer models with recurring data management.

With Productive’s accurate forecasting, you’ll see future project revenue, budget burn, and profit margin in real-time as your project progresses. When you adjust resource scheduling or timelines, your financial metrics update instantly, giving you that crucial visibility into project health.

Productive’s overhead calculations provide true profitability insights by factoring in all your costs beyond just billable hours.

Submit, review, and track expenses directly in the system, clearly identifying which need reimbursement and their current status—without relying on manual reconciliation that drains your finance team’s time.

Good management of billable and non-billable hours is a staple for efficient project budgeting. That’s why it’s important that it’s both: as simple as possible to encourage employees, and robust enough to enable advanced analytics.

Productive offers multiple flexible tracking methods to fit your workflow—create entries manually, use the integrated timer, or try out the desktop app for Windows and Mac.

For businesses that struggle with enforcing the best time tracking practices, Productive provides an alternative—project managers can generate time entries automatically based on resource scheduling data.

The Google Calendar integration further simplifies tracking by converting calendar events directly into time entries linked to specific projects and services.

With Productive, you’ll be able to measure real project profitability, while improving the part of your workflows that take up your administrative time.

Instead of spending hours on manual invoicing, use Productive to automatically pull in your budget data, tracked hours, and remaining amounts to be billed, making invoice creation quick and accurate.

If you’re struggling with complex projects and invoicing across different billing types, Productive has you covered.

Bill for partial budget amounts, combine different projects and services to invoice multiple budgets simultaneously, or create invoices for specific budgets.

There’s also invoicing customization, from appearance (logo and brand colors) to which invoicing data to include.

With the QuickBooks and Xero integrations, you can also transfer invoice data from Productive to the other accounting software without manual effort.

Learn more about the importance of business accounting.

Productive provides a single source of truth for managing financial data. Instead of having to balance multiple data sources and sheets to scrap together a report, Productive gives you critical metrics at your fingertips.

You can browse and use one of the many templates Productive provides, such as:

Reports can also be customized extensively, from adding specific data fields, to even creating your own formulas to manipulate data in unique ways.

Create unique data dashboards and add the reports you need to review daily, from team performance to project budgets and business financial items.

Productive also includes automated sharing (to Slack or email), so you don’t have to think about sending reports to clients day after day.

Productive offers a 14-day free trial, so check it out to see what the platform can do for your business.

Toggl Track is a timesheet software for creative agencies, design teams, lawyers, and consultancies.

Key features:

Users of Toggl Track find it to be a streamlined and easy-to-use tool. There’s a free plan for up to five users with essential time-tracking features, but for advanced project cost management, you’ll need to invest in the premium plan. While Toggl Track is a great free option, there are comparable platforms that can offer more bang for your buck. The reporting and collaboration features, for example, are limited.

Harvest is a management software designed to help teams manage multiple projects in client services businesses.

Key features:

While Harvest has a solid range of solutions, its biggest downside is that it doesn’t offer task management in the traditional sense, so you’ll need to combine it with a task-oriented tool (for example, check out some of these Harvest alternatives). Additionally, Harvest’s resource scheduling and utilization are offered as part of a separate tool, Harvest Forecast. This can bloat your tech stack and lead to less unified and comprehensive data.

Hubstaff is a productivity management software solution for various industries, including professional services, e-commerce, real estate, and more.

Key features:

While Hubstaff can give real-time insights into team productivity and hours, it comes at the expense of dissatisfied employees. Many user reviews state that the tool can be disruptive to their workflows and feel invasive.

Source: G2

So, if you’re looking for a simple billable hour tracker, there are better options on this list.

Time Doctor is a workforce analytics platform for fully remote, in-office, or hybrid teams for agencies and technology providers.

Key features:

Similarly to Hubstaff, Time Doctor can provide real-time visibility into employee productivity and activity. It provides a fair bit of integrations, including Asana, ClickUp, monday.com, and more. However, users feel idle alerts and screenshots are generally too frequent. Other than this, some users reported performance issues and issues with synchronization across apps, which can lead to data loss.

Avaza is a work management software for team collaboration, productivity, and financial performance management.

Key features:

Avaza offers a solid range of tools for managing the entire project lifecycle. As for downsides, users usually mention issues with user-friendliness and design. Overall, it’s a solid choice, though you should check out some Avaza competitors to see which additional features they can offer, for example, no-code automations, Docs, sales CRM, etc.

Netsuite is one of the most popular examples of ERP accounting systems. It’s designed to support a variety of industries, from retail and manufacturing to professional services.

Key features:

Since Netsuite takes a modular approach, where users can mix and match which features they want, implementation can take longer than with an out-of-the-box tool. Additionally, the license can be pricey and tends to get even more expensive as your organization grows. If you can overlook these factors, Netsuite can be a good pick for business management and informed decisions.

Otherwise, check out some alternatives — we have a guide on QuickBooks vs Netsuite.

Everhour is a timesheet and billable hours app for teams of five or more people.

Key features:

Everhour can be a good addition to your tech stack. It provides a range of integrations with other productivity and project management software, such as Trello, ClickUp, Jira, Asana, and more. However, implementing a tool that comes with comprehensive features can be more time and cost-effective. Users particularly note a need for more robust project management and permissions controls.

Wrike is a PSA software solution that helps project managers and their teams get successful project delivery.

Key features:

Wrike does many things well, and it can be a fine choice for handling various aspects of project management. It also has a free version for unlimited users, which can be a great choice for startups and smaller teams. However, for project budget and financial management, you’ll have to get the most expensive plan. If we compare Wrike vs Productive, Productive offers budgeting within its starter plan.

Timely is an AI-powered time-tracking and appointment management software.

Key features:

Timely’s main selling point is that it tracks your time for you. However, this can also be a downside, as there are situations where this doesn’t work, for example, for calls or while sharing the screen during a meeting. As Timely offers a wide range of integrations, it can be a solid addition to your existing tech stack.

BigTime is a management software that supports project outcomes in professional services organizations.

Key features:

BigTime can be a solid option for agencies. It provides a fair range of features to ensure sustainable project finances and project success. For some downsides, users mention some issues with the billing and reporting capabilities. Additionally, the software is slightly pricier than comparable BigTime alternatives on the market.

Otherwise, check out some competitors — we have a guide on QuickBooks vs Netsuite.

Teamwork is another professional services management software for successful project delivery and team productivity.

Key features:

While Teamwork can be considered comprehensive software for real-time updates on projects and business financials, there are some features that only Teamwork alternatives can improve. For example, Teamwork doesn’t offer a sales CRM for sales revenue forecasting; it only includes a QuickBooks integration for invoicing, and many advanced features are only in the highest-paid plans.

Project costing is the process of estimating, budgeting, and controlling the financial costs associated with a specific project. It involves identifying all the expenses required to complete a project, including labor, materials, equipment, overheads, and any other relevant resources.

The main goal is to ensure that the project stays within its predefined budget while achieving its objectives.

Cost management software for project management is designed to help organizations plan, manage, and control project costs and monitor potential risks.

It’s designed to ensure successful project outcomes and sustainable business operations with a mix of features, including: budgeting, financial forecasting, overhead management, revenue recognition, and real-time reporting.

Integrations with popular cost tracking and project accounting platforms are also important for a seamless cost management process.

Once the budget is established, cost management focuses on tracking actual spending against the planned budget. This involves regular monitoring, using tools like cost tracking software, financial reports, and variance analysis to identify and address deviations from the established course early.

Effective cost management also includes implementing change control processes to handle scope changes and unforeseen expenses. Clear communication, regular financial reviews, and stakeholder involvement are key to maintaining financial control.

Construction project cost management tools are designed specifically to support the budget, forecasting, and tracking needs of construction projects.

Some popular examples of such tools include Procore, which users find overall powerful, but somewhat expensive and difficult to use.

Another option is the Autodesk Construction Cloud, which offers various products that target different project management features.

Finally, for smaller businesses and projects, some recommended tools include Buildrpro, Buildxact, Jobthread, Jobber, and Billdr Pro.

Key features of cost management tools usually include:

Another thing to consider is a system that integrates well with other essential parts of your workflows, such as the sales process and project management. Find out more about the RevOps model and how to implement it in your business.

According to a research by Wellingtone, 54% of agencies don’t have access to real-time KPIs, and 1/3 of project managers spend one or more days manually creating project reports.

Project costing systems offer several key benefits:

If you’re interested in some real-world data, here’s how Mitchell & Stones, a creative digital marketing agency, uses Productive to improve their financial planning.

For Mitchell & Stones, switching to Productive eliminated the need for scattered tools, which in turn reduced manual work and improved data accuracy.

Some of the most important financial management features include the overhead calculator and reporting dashboards. The overhead calculator provided the business with a report on overhead spread across clients, which translates to more accurate profitability reporting.

The dashboards feature helps professionals check business performance in a matter of a few clicks, without having to manually put these views together each month. Read the full story.

To find your best project cost tracking software, you’ll need to consider several factors. The first is the feature set, which should include some form of budgeting, billing, and reporting. Another is who the tool is designed for.

Some software is tailored for general use across a wide variety of features, while others are tailor-made for professional services. Additionally, consider ease of use and customer support, as this has a big impact on implementation success and adoption.

You can also check out our article of the best forecasting software.

There’s no shortage of options for software with cost-management features and expense-tracking capabilities. You can go with a time tracking or employee monitoring tool, such as Toggl or Time Doctor. Or, you can choose an enterprise resource planning solution, such as Netsuite.

Alternatively, why not invest in a comprehensive solution that marries multiple capabilities in one platform? For professional services agencies, one of the best options is Productive.

Productive provides comprehensive project management combined with budgeting, resource planning, and reporting features. Book a demo today to find out what it can do for your business.

1. How does project cost management software support budget planning and forecasting?

Project cost management software supports budget planning by allowing project managers to gather financial data, create detailed plans, and make informed business decisions. By analyzing historical data and predicting future costs, this software enhances forecasting and allows for proactive risk management. This also helps control budget overrun.

2. What types of businesses use project cost management software?

Businesses across various industries use project cost management software. This includes construction, IT, consulting, manufacturing, retail, and professional services. It’s especially useful for agencies that are working on multiple client projects.

3. What are some popular project cost management software tools?

Popular project cost management software include all-in-one professional services tools such as Productive, a billable hours tracker such as Toggl Track, or employee productivity management tools such as Hubstaff and Time Doctor.

4. What are some free project cost management software solutions?

Some project cost management tools with scaled down free versions include Time Doctor, Avaza, and Harvest. Keep in mind that their features might not be robust enough for mid-sized to larger businesses.