PSA for Salesforce: how to run delivery when your CRM is Salesforce

TL;DR

Salesforce wins the work. It does not tell you who will deliver it, whether those people are free, or what the project will earn. To answer that you add a professional services tool, and you have two honest options.

Connect a specialist to Salesforce. A newer generation of tools, Operating among them, sits alongside Salesforce and syncs with it. You give up having everything on one platform. You get something that is running in a few weeks, that costs $13 to $23 per person per month, and that your resourcing lead can run without a Salesforce project. This suits firms from a few hundred people up to a few thousand, whose main problem is getting a streamlined system from resource planning to invoicing. Nothing stops a larger firm using it, and plenty do.

Build on Salesforce. Certinia, which used to be called FinancialForce, runs on the Salesforce platform. Your delivery data lives in the same place as your sales data. This is the right answer when Salesforce is the platform you build everything on, when your billing and revenue rules are complicated, and when you have Salesforce administrators to look after it. However, Certinia is a very complex piece of software, for better and worse, so take that into account.

Both are real answers to "PSA for Salesforce". The rest of this page is how to tell which one you are.

Why firms on Salesforce go looking for this

Salesforce is very good at the part before the contract. It holds the account, the opportunity, the value, the stage, and the close date. Then the deal closes and the questions change.

Who is going to do this work? Are they free in March? Do we have anyone with that skill? If we take it, what does it earn us? Salesforce does not hold the answers, because it was never asked to.

So most firms fill the gap by hand. Someone keeps a staffing spreadsheet. Someone else keeps a time tracking tool. Finance works out margin a month later, once the invoices are out. It works until the firm gets big enough that no single person can hold it all in their head. That is usually somewhere around 50 people.

Your two options, side by side

Neither column is the winner. They are answers to different situations, and the honest way to choose is to work out which situation you are in.

When the Salesforce-native platform is right

Certinia is the established option here, and it is a serious product. Pick it when any of these are true.

• You have very specific delivery rules that must go into the software exactly as they are. Some firms have spent years writing down how work is approved, priced, billed, and reported, down to the individual rule. If those rules have to be reproduced one to one rather than adjusted to fit a product, you need a platform you can build on. That is what Salesforce is, and Certinia is built on it.
• You have many thousands of people. At that size the number of exceptions, entities, and regional rules grows past what a standard product covers, and the ability to configure everything stops being a luxury.
• Salesforce is a strategic decision rather than just a CRM. If your firm has decided that everything runs on Salesforce, adding another platform works against that.
• Your finance rules are genuinely complex. Revenue recognition, multiple entities, project accounting tied to the general ledger. This is what a Salesforce-native platform is built for.
• You already run Certinia and it works. Replacing a system that is doing its job usually destroys more value than it creates.

Be honest with yourself about the first two. The power to codify every rule is worth a great deal at ten thousand people. At five hundred it is usually a cost, because someone has to decide each rule, build it, and then maintain it.

One thing to plan for: Certinia does not publish list prices. The cost includes the Professional Services Cloud licences, any financial or billing products you add, your Salesforce licences underneath, and then implementation, data migration, and administration. Ask for the whole figure early.

If you have already narrowed your choice to Certinia and Operating, we wrote that comparison in full: Certinia vs Operating. It covers pricing, resource management, AI, and where each one wins, in more detail than this page does.

When a connected specialist is right

This is the newer way to solve it, and it comes from a simple change. Ten years ago, joining two business systems meant an integration project. Today a good tool connects to Salesforce out of the box, so you no longer have to put everything on one platform to get one view.

This suits firms from a few hundred people up to a few thousand. That is the best fit rather than a limit. Firms well past a thousand people run this way, and the deciding question is the one above: do your delivery rules have to be built into the software exactly as written, or can they follow a standard product? Pick a connected specialist when these describe you.

• Your biggest gap is matching supply to demand. You know what you have sold. What you do not know is whether you have the right people free to deliver it, and that is costing you money every quarter.
• You cannot see your margins clearly enough. You find out what a project earned after it finished. You want to see it while you can still do something about it.
• You want one straightforward path from resourcing to invoicing. Plan the people, log the time, approve it, bill it, and send the result to your accounting system. Simple to use, but solid enough to run the business on.
• Your finance system already works. If your accounting is settled in QuickBooks, Xero, or elsewhere, you need something that connects to it rather than something that replaces it.
• You want people to actually use it. Delivery leads and consultants have to enter time and update plans. If the tool is heavy, they will not, and the data goes stale.
• You want your own systems and AI assistants to reach the data. A full REST API for your data team, and an MCP server so Claude or ChatGPT can query and update directly. Both are covered below.

What a tool has to do to count as a PSA for Salesforce

Whichever option you pick, these are the jobs. Use them as a checklist when you take demos.

Bring opportunities across from Salesforce on its own. Nobody should retype a deal. You should be able to choose which deal stages flow through, so early opportunities do not clutter your plan.

Turn a deal into the people it will need. An opportunity should become a possible project with roles on it, before it closes, so you can see what you would have to staff.

Show who is genuinely free. Not headcount. Spare hours by role and skill, in the months the work would start, after current projects and holidays.

Compare what you planned against what happened. Logged time against planned time. Without it, next quarter's forecast repeats this quarter's mistakes.

Carry rates and costs, so margin is a number. If the tool knows what people cost and what you charge, margin comes out of the plan instead of out of a spreadsheet.

Reach your accounting system. Either it does the accounting, or it connects cleanly to the system that does.

A worked example

Take a 500-person consultancy that sells on Salesforce. The numbers are made up, to show the shape.

An opportunity worth €800,000 sits at 70%, starting in January. In Salesforce that is one record with a value and a date.

Connected to a resourcing tool, the same opportunity becomes four roles: a lead consultant, two senior consultants, and a data engineer, from January for seven months. The tool scales that by the 70% and puts it against who is free in January. Three of the four roles are covered. The data engineer is not.

At 500 people that shortfall is easy to miss. There are enough data engineers in the firm that everyone assumes somebody is free, and nobody checks across all the projects at once. The tool checks.

You now know something useful in October rather than in January. You can start recruiting, line up a contractor, or move someone off other work. Each of those has a different cost, and you can see the effect on the project's margin before you sign.

The useful part is the timing. You got the answer three months before you normally would.

Where Operating fits

Operating is a resource planning and professional services platform that connects to Salesforce. It is built for firms from a few hundred people up to a few thousand, who need to match people to sold work, see margins early, and run everything from resourcing to invoicing in one place.

The Salesforce connection. Operating reads your Salesforce opportunity pipeline. You choose which deal stages come through, and those opportunities create possible projects automatically. You can put placeholder roles on them to forecast the capacity you would need, and move between Salesforce and Operating without losing your place. Details are on the Salesforce integration page.

Staffing by role and skill. People have skills and levels, so "a data engineer in January" resolves to named people who could actually do it, with their free hours.

Rates and costs are built in. The staffing plan and the revenue forecast come from the same place, so margin is something you read rather than calculate.

One path from resourcing to invoicing. Plan the people, log the time, approve it, invoice from it, and pass the result to your accounting system. Native connections exist for QuickBooks, Xero, HiBob, Harvest, and Flowcase, alongside the CRM connections.

Open by design: a REST API and an MCP server. There is a full REST API, so your data team can pull availability, time, and margin into whatever else you run. There is also an MCP server, which is a standard way for an AI assistant to reach another system. It means Claude or ChatGPT can check who is free, staff a project, move assignments, and log time by instruction. This is the clearest difference between the two generations of tool. Older platforms add AI features inside the product. A modern connected tool opens the data, so the assistant your team already uses can do the work.

What it costs. Resourcing is $13 per person per month paid annually, or $15 monthly. Timesheets are $17 and $19. The full suite, which adds revenue recognition, invoicing, and accounting connections, is $21 and $23. See pricing. Setup takes a few weeks.

Where it does not fit. Operating is not a Salesforce-native platform and does not try to be. If you need project accounting inside Salesforce, tied to your general ledger, with complex revenue recognition, Certinia is built for that and Operating is not. The same goes for firms that need every delivery rule reproduced exactly as written. There is also no ready-made Fivetran, Workato, or Asana connector, though the REST API is there if your data team wants to build against one.

If your CRM is HubSpot rather than Salesforce, the same thinking applies and we covered it separately: PSA for HubSpot.

Frequently asked questions

What does PSA for Salesforce mean?

It means adding professional services software to a firm that sells on Salesforce, so that staffing, time, and project margin sit alongside the sales pipeline. It can be a platform built on Salesforce, such as Certinia, or a separate tool that connects to Salesforce, such as Operating.

Which PSA has the best Salesforce integration?

It depends what you mean by best. A platform built on Salesforce, such as Certinia, is not integrated at all in the usual sense, because the data never leaves Salesforce. That is the deepest possible connection, and it comes with Salesforce licences, longer setup, and administration. A connected tool such as Operating syncs your opportunity pipeline across, and you choose which deal stages flow through. That is enough for staffing and margin work, and it takes a few weeks to set up. So judge the options by one question: does your delivery data have to live inside Salesforce?

Do we need a PSA if we already have Salesforce?

You need one when nobody can say who is free next quarter without asking around. Salesforce holds deals, not people's availability, costs, or project margin. Below about 50 people a spreadsheet and a weekly meeting usually cope. Above that they stop coping.

Is Certinia the same as FinancialForce?

Yes. FinancialForce changed its name to Certinia in 2023. It is a professional services and financial platform built on the Salesforce platform.

Is Operating built on Salesforce?

No. Operating is a separate platform that connects to Salesforce. That is a deliberate choice. It means you do not need Salesforce licences or a Salesforce administrator for it, and setup takes a few weeks. It also means your delivery data does not live inside Salesforce, which matters to some firms and not to others.

Can an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Claude use our Salesforce and delivery data together?

It can reach your delivery data if your tool offers an MCP server, which is a standard way for an assistant to read and write in another system. Operating runs one, so an assistant can check who is free, staff a project, and log time. Salesforce data reaches assistants through its own connections. The two are separate paths today.

How much does a PSA for Salesforce cost?

A connected tool is usually published and predictable. Operating is $13 to $23 per person per month depending on what you use. A Salesforce-native platform is quoted rather than published, and the quote should include the platform licences, your Salesforce licences, implementation, data migration, and ongoing administration. Ask for the full figure rather than the licence figure.