How to Explore Operating.app: A practical guide for testing a PSA platform

Modern consulting leaders know that effective resource planning and time tracking are essential for profitable projects. If you’re the chief operating officer of a consulting firm evaluating new professional services automation software, it’s helpful to try a platform with realistic test data before committing. This guide walks through a trial of Operating.app, showing how to configure the basics, create a sample project, plan resources and analyse utilisation without risk. By following these steps you’ll see whether the tool helps reduce revenue leakage and improve your team’s utilisation rate.

Step 1: Set Up Your Trial Account

Start by creating a trial workspace. Choose a workspace name and invite colleagues who will help evaluate the system. They don’t need to enter real client details yet; the goal is to explore the workflows. Once logged in, you’ll see two key timelines:

• People timeline: shows each consultant’s planned workload day by day. At first it will be empty, because you haven’t assigned anyone to projects.
• Project timeline: shows projects and their staffing needs. This is where you create and manage resource allocations.

The navigation also includes Settings for configuring your organisation, Directory for people, Reports for utilisation dashboards and Time Sheets for entering hours.

Step 2: Generate Test Data with Operating’s AI Setup

Instead of adding mock data manually, let the Operating team generate a meaningful AI-driven test data setup that mirrors your company’s structure. This ensures you can explore features in a realistic environment without starting from scratch. The setup can include:

• Sites: Locations that resemble your offices or teams (e.g. United Kingdom, Finland). National holidays are included so capacity calculations respect local calendars.
• Groups: Departments or business units such as Development, Strategy and External Consultants.
• Roles and seniority: Core roles like Software Developer or Strategist, with senior, middle and junior levels for accurate rate and cost calculations.
• Skills: Tags such as HTML, PowerPoint or German language proficiency, which can be assigned to people and used for staffing searches.
• Project and client tags: Labels such as “Strategy Project” or “FMCG” to categorise work by offering and industry.

The AI setup also creates sample employees with realistic profiles, including start dates, sites, groups, roles, seniority and skills. For example:

• Lauri, a Junior Software Developer in the Development group at the Finland site, skilled in HTML and German.
• Jane Doe, a Senior Strategist in the Strategy group at the UK site, skilled in PowerPoint.

With this AI-generated environment, staffing and financial modules calculate availability, rates and costs correctly from the start.

Additionally, you have the option to start fresh and add a couple of projects, or ask the Operating team to import your own company's data to the system. Let us know which method you'd prefer by sending a message to hello@operating.app.

Step 3: Connect Your CRM (Optional)

If you use a customer relationship management system like HubSpot, you can connect it to your Operating workspace. This isn’t required for a trial, but it eliminates duplicate entry when you move to real projects. The integration syncs project metadata such as client names, start and end dates, owners and billing types. For example, when a deal is won in HubSpot, the project and client details appear in Operating.app automatically, saving you time and ensuring data consistency.

Step 4: Start Planning Resources

With your AI-generated setup in place, create a sample project and explore how resource allocation works.

Create a sample project or choose from existing ones
Choose a project you want to work with. Choose a site, owner and billing type (time-and-materials or fixed price) if they're not already prefilled.

Draw a resource need on the timeline by selecting dates and specifying the role. For instance, create a need for a Junior Software Developer at 50 % utilisation for two weeks. You can leave the individual unassigned or select a site requirement if relevant.

Analyse capacity and assign staff
In Reports > Capacity, you’ll see tentative allocations against your team’s total capacity. Because you added a 50 % need for a developer and have two people, the capacity report shows that half of the team’s hours are tentatively allocated.

Navigate to Pipeline Projects, which display upcoming projects and open positions. This view is designed for staffing and sales teams: it surfaces unfilled resource needs from your project pipeline. Each position lists the required role, skills, dates and utilisation.

On the positions tab, click "suggest" to see matching consultants for the role. The system uses role, seniority, skills and availability to suggest candidates. Assign the best fit with one click. Once assigned, the position disappears from the horizon and appears as a confirmed booking on the people and project timelines.

Repeat this process for additional roles. For example, add a need for a Strategist and assign Jane. When you confirm the project, tentative allocations become confirmed and the horizon list clears. The People timeline now shows each consultant’s workload, including confirmed and tentative bookings.

Step 5: Track Time and Invoicing

Operating.app offers built‑in financial tools so you can simulate revenue and cost calculations during your trial.

Configure rates and costs

1. Enable financials in Settings and set a Global Default Rate. This is used when no specific rate is defined.
2. Create a Rate card to define charge rates by role, seniority and site. For example, you might charge more for consultants in the UK than in Finland and assign different rates to juniors and seniors.
3. Create a Cost card to define internal cost rates by role and site. This reflects what your firm pays each consultant and is used to calculate margin.

Set project budgets

Open your sample project and choose the rate card and cost card. Then set a budget amount and date range (e.g. €180,000 for May). The system calculates how much of the budget is consumed based on the planned hours and rates. If you allocate more hours than the budget allows, the burn bar will turn red, indicating overspend. Adjust either the budget or staffing plan to bring the project back within budget.

Enter timesheets and generate invoices

Consultants can record their hours in Time Sheets. The page automatically shows the projects each person is planned on and the number of hours expected. They can enter hours per day and add notes. Timesheets can be exported as CSV or used to generate invoices. Because rates and budgets are defined at the project level, the system can calculate revenue and compare it to costs and budgets to highlight margins and prevent revenue leakage.

Step 6: Test Time Entry Approvals

Before generating invoices, it’s important to test how approval flows work so you can mirror your firm’s governance process. Operating.app lets you require that certain time entries be reviewed before they can be invoiced.

1. Go to Settings > Approvals and create an approval flow. For example, require approval for time entries where the client is not internal. Assign the approval role to the project owner or another manager.
2. In your sample project, add a few mock time entries for consultants. These entries will appear in the approvals queue for the project owner.
3. As the project owner, approve or reject the entries. Approved hours will be flagged as ready for invoicing, while unapproved hours will remain pending.

When you later view the Invoicing tab, the system highlights which hours are approved and which are not, so you can invoice only confirmed time.

Step 7: Generate Mock Invoices

With time tracked and approvals tested, you can experiment with the invoicing module.

1. Open any project and go to the Invoicing tab.
2. Add an invoice owner and choose a billing cycle, such as monthly. This determines who is responsible for the invoice and how often it is generated.
3. The page lists upcoming invoices, even if no time entries have been recorded. You can see how much is billable, the billing type (e.g. time‑and‑materials or fixed price), the invoice schedule and whether there is an invoice due this month.
4. Create a mock invoice. The system pulls approved time entries and calculates charges based on your rate card. Review the draft invoice, then save it to see how it looks.

These steps let you verify the invoicing workflow end‑to‑end, from capturing time to approving entries and issuing an invoice.

Step 8: Review Reporting and Utilisation

After entering mock allocations and timesheets, explore the reporting dashboards. These give you real‑time insights into utilisation, capacity and financial performance.

• Revenue forecast: shows expected revenue by month based on your project timelines and rate cards. It distinguishes confirmed and tentative work.
• Capacity forecast: compares your team’s total capacity to planned hours. It highlights overutilisation or available hours so you can adjust staffing.
• People utilisation: provides planned vs. actual hours for each consultant. You can drill down by day, week or month to see who is overbooked or underused.
• Project profitability: displays gross margin per project by comparing revenue (rate × hours) to costs (cost card rates × hours). For fixed‑price projects the system compares budget amount to cost.

These reports help COOs identify underutilised consultants, anticipate hiring needs and track whether projects remain profitable.

Next Steps: Moving from Mock to Real Data

Once you’re comfortable with the workflows, you can transition from testing to real implementation:

1. Import real client and project data: either manually or via the CRM integration. Double‑check that rate and cost cards reflect your actual pricing.
2. Set governance: define approval processes for budgets, rate card changes and resource assignments. Decide who can confirm projects and who must review timesheets.
3. Train your team: run a pilot with a small project, asking consultants to record time and managers to review reports. Gather feedback on usability before full rollout.
4. Customize roles and skills: refine your organisational structure, add more detailed skills and create advanced tags to support real resource planning.

A phased approach ensures a smooth rollout and allows you to align Operating.app with your existing processes and financial controls.

Conclusion

Testing Operating.app with mock data lets you experience its resource planning, budgeting and time‑tracking capabilities without risk. In a few hours you can configure your organisation, add sample employees and projects, assign resources, track planned versus actual hours, and review profitability reports. These steps mirror real‑world workflows, giving you confidence that the platform can reduce revenue leakage, improve utilisation and support data‑driven staffing decisions.

When you’re ready to take the next step, import your real clients and projects, refine your rate and cost cards, and establish governance rules. Operating.app’s integrated approach to resource allocation and time tracking helps consulting teams plan smarter and deliver projects profitably.

‍