What an Autotask shop needs from a project tool
Autotask already holds the records that matter to an MSP: projects, phases, tasks, resources, contracts and time. Your invoices come out of it. So the first test for any project tool is what it does to that data.
A tool that keeps its own copy of your projects gives you two places to update and a reconciliation job that someone ends up owning. Due dates drift apart, estimates live in one system and actuals in the other, and time has to be re-keyed before it can be billed. A tool that reads Autotask and writes straight back keeps one record, and the people who work only in Autotask still see a current project.
- Does it read your projects as they are, with your phases, task statuses and resources?
- Does what it writes land on the Autotask records your billing already uses: time entries, project charges and contract milestones?
- Can you limit what it writes while you evaluate it on live data?
- Do techs who never open it still count in capacity and utilisation?
How ProjectSmith works with Autotask
You connect an Autotask API user you create and control. ProjectSmith reads projects, phases, tasks, task predecessors, resources, tickets, time entries, contracts and your picklists, syncs changes every 15 minutes and reconciles nightly to catch anything missed.
It writes back only what the work produces: a task status when a card moves, new tasks and projects, task predecessors, approved time entries, approved estimate changes, project charges and contract milestone status. Approved time, charges and milestones go in batches every few minutes. For the fields Autotask owns, Autotask wins, and ProjectSmith re-reads every record it writes.
Deletes are limited to three cases: a task dependency, an extra assignee on a task, and a task with no time logged. The full list of reads and writes is in the help centre.
What each role gets
Project managers and team leads take a Planner seat. They run each project on a Kanban board, a list and a Gantt chart, see every project on a portfolio timeline, approve time, leave, estimate changes and costs from one inbox, book people on the capacity grid, and track budgets and fixed-price milestones.
Techs and engineers take a Member seat. They see their tasks, log time on a weekly timesheet or with a timer, submit the week for approval, request leave and see their own utilisation.
Service delivery managers get utilisation for the whole team from ticket hours plus billable project hours, wherever the time was logged, with a CSV export for the monthly pack.
Rolling it out without risk to live data
Most MSPs want to judge a project tool on their real projects and people, not on sample data, without letting it loose on the PSA. The write-scope guard is for that. During onboarding you choose the companies, projects and queues ProjectSmith may write to, usually a test company and one test project. Reads stay unrestricted, so boards, capacity and reports show your real data from the first sync. Switch the guard off when you go live.
The trial runs for 14 days with every feature and no card needed to start. After that you pay for the people who sign in: US$20 a month for a Member and US$59 for a Planner. See pricing for team examples.