Project management software for small business

The key facts

• Two different tools share the name: task/Gantt project tools (plans and deadlines) and the job record (stock, assets, invoicing).
• What jobs actually need in trade and installation: reserve stock without consuming it, consume on invoice approval, and keep the asset's lifetime history.
• BSimple projects do the job record — grouped under the customer, on the same dataset as inventory, portal and invoicing. No Gantt charts.
• From $180/month (AUD), with the accounting handoff to Xero or MYOB and a free trial.

"Project management" means two things

The first meaning is planning: task lists, boards, timelines, dependencies — software for coordinating people and deadlines. For knowledge work and marketing teams, that is the right tool, and the market is full of good ones.

The second meaning is the job record: what a job promised, what stock it consumed, what it installed, what it invoiced, and what service history it created. Trade and installation businesses run on this record — and a task board cannot hold it, because the hard parts (reserved stock, consumed items, the invoice, the asset's lifetime) live in the inventory dataset, not the calendar. The failure of using the wrong one is familiar: the plan looks organised while the job's stock and invoice live in three other places.

How BSimple projects work

We build BSimple, so weigh that. A project groups a job under the customer, on the same record as everything else:

• Reserve without consuming. Items the job needs are reserved against the project while they are still on the shelf — availability stays honest for everyone else, and nothing is deducted twice or too early.
• Consume on approval. When the job is approved and invoiced, reserved items are consumed in one transaction — stock, job and invoice agree by construction, and the invoice pushes to Xero or MYOB with payment status mirrored back.
• Remember for years. The project keeps its lifetime record: what was installed, which batches, warranty and maintenance events, service history per asset. A boom-gate or HVAC install asks questions for a decade; the record answers them.

There are no Gantt charts here, deliberately — scheduling crews is field-service software's job, and we do not claim it. The job management guide covers the day-to-day job flow, the features overview shows how projects sit with the rest, and the inventory management guide is the record underneath.

Choosing by what the project consumes

The selection test is one question: does your project consume stock and create assets? If it is pure tasks and deadlines, buy the task tool — it is cheaper and better at that job. If the project is an installation, a fitout, a service job — anything where stock leaves the shelf and an asset stays on site — then the job record and the inventory record need to be the same record, which is the thing BSimple runs from $180/month (AUD). Run one real job from reservation to invoice in the trial; the fit is obvious in an afternoon. For the budget path, free project management for small business gets the same audit treatment.