Features

Everything your agency needs.
Nothing it doesn't.

Take a complete walkthrough of how client work flows through Managello — from the first request to the final payment.

Follow one client project, start to finish ↓

01 · A request comes in

Stop losing work before it becomes a project.

Whether it arrives through the portal, by email, or you add it by hand, every ask lands in one triage queue. Convert the real ones into projects — nothing slips through a thread.

🌐 Portal ✉️ Email ✍️ Manual
📥 Request 📁 Project
02 · The work happens

Every moving part of a project, in one place.

Start blank or from a reusable project template, then keep tasks, milestones, files, internal notes, logged time and deliverables together — so the whole team works from the same source of truth.

Assign the project team, and control whether staff see every project or only the work they're assigned to.

TemplatesMilestonesTasks Project teamsFilesInternal notes Time trackingDeliverables
02b · Project templates

Repeat your best process without forcing every project into it.

Build reusable milestone-and-task templates, save a successful project as a template, or let AI draft a starting structure for you to review. New projects still default to blank, so one-off work stays fast.

🧩
Reusable structures
Milestones and tasks you can apply to any new project — duplicate or archive them as your process changes.
📅
Dates that move with the work
Templates store relative offsets, not fixed dates. Applying one calculates the schedule from the new project's own timeline.
AI can draft the first pass
Describe the engagement and AI proposes milestones and tasks. You pick what to keep — nothing is created until you say so.
03 · Review & approve

No more “Which version?”

Pin comments straight onto images and PDFs. Comments stay attached to the right version, carry forward through revisions, and end in a clean approval.

Returning clients can stay signed in on a trusted device, while approvals and other decisions of record can still require fresh identity confirmation.

ImagesPDFsPins Version compareApprovals
🖼️ homepage-hero.png
v1 Rejected v2
1
2
1
SRSara Reid2hOpen

Shift the logo 12px left to line up with the nav baseline.

2
AFAtlas Freight1hResolved

Looks great now — approved on our side.

04 · The client stays in the loop

A real client workspace — not just a status page.

Clients sign in with a magic link — no password — to review work, find shared documents, submit requests, follow tickets, see reports and pay invoices in one branded portal. New versions, approvals and invoices arrive as notifications, so nobody chases a status.

A designated client owner can invite their own teammates, while you control who may approve work and who may see billing.

Magic-link accessShared files Client teamsApprovals ReportsInvoices Notifications
Explore the client portal →
NS
Northlight Studio
Client portal
Atlas Freight
Update Homepage v2 · ready for review
Your designer shared a new version
Website redesign68%
🔗 Signed in with a magic link — no password to remember.
05 · Get paid

From estimate to paid, in one flow.

Send a branded estimate, capture acceptance and an optional e-signature, collect a fixed or percentage deposit, convert the accepted work into a project and invoice the remainder later. Clients can pay by Stripe, follow your own payment link or use manual instructions, and issued invoices can sync to QuickBooks Online.

Retainer clients don't need re-invoicing by hand. Set an invoice to recur — weekly, monthly, whatever the agreement is — and Managello auto-issues and auto-emails each one on schedule, with a manual "Generate now" whenever you want it early. It's scheduled invoicing, not off-session card charging, so the client still pays each invoice the usual way.

📝
Estimate
Branded, numbered and frozen the moment it's sent.
$7,000branded & frozen when sent
✍️
Accept & sign
Client accepts in the portal, with an optional typed or drawn signature and a downloadable acceptance certificate.
Signedcertificate on record
💰
Deposit
A fixed or percentage deposit invoice is raised automatically at acceptance — and a failed payment never undoes the acceptance.
$2,10030% raised at acceptance
🛠️
Project
Accepted scope converts into a project — no re-entry — and hours log as the team works.
14.3hlogged this week
🧾
Invoice
Built from billable work or a recurring template, using your own labels, fields, terms and design.
INV-0231your labels, your layout
💳
Payment & accounting
Stripe checkout, your own payment link or a manual record — then the receipt sends itself and the invoice can sync to QuickBooks Online.
Paidsynced to QuickBooks
06 · See the whole picture

Know where your agency stands — and which clients are worth your time.

Dashboards, reports, activity and the Client Value Lens turn day-to-day work into the numbers you actually run on — revenue and effective-rate ranking per client, team capacity, project financial status, and which work is invoice-ready.

A live view of everything in motion.
Your effective rate on every client.
07 · Built to keep running

Reliable enough to run your whole agency on.

Ships as Docker, updates in one click, and rolls back safely if anything looks off — with an audit trail and health checks watching the whole time.

🐳
Docker install
One command, any standard VPS.
⬆️
One-click updates
Stay current without downtime.
↩️
Safe rollback
Snapshots before every change.
🕵️
Audit trail
Know who changed what.
🗄️
Off-server backups
Send encrypted backups to an S3 or SFTP destination you control, independently of the application server.
❤️
Health checks
Know when queues, scheduler, storage or mail need attention.
08 · Operate with confidence New

Trust controls, optional AI, and fewer noisy emails.

The work system should not just move tasks forward — it should help admins see risk, control sensitive settings, and keep communication manageable.

Trust & Compliance

  • Trust & Compliance hub
  • Readiness dashboard
  • GDPR-style erasure workflow
  • Subject-access data export
  • Audit & access log search
  • Legal transparency pages
  • Secret health checks

Manage privacy requests, retention windows, audit trails and security posture from one admin hub — and publish branded Privacy Policy, DPA and Retention Policy pages from editable starter templates. It helps agencies answer client data questions clearly without pretending the software alone makes them compliant.

AI Assist — Bring Your Own Key

  • Anthropic and OpenAI supported
  • Encrypted write-only keys
  • Draft ticket replies
  • Summarize ticket threads
  • Draft estimate line items
  • Draft project templates
  • Semantic search
  • Spend cap and usage panel

Use AI where it saves time, not everywhere. Staff can draft replies, summarize long threads, generate estimate suggestions, draft a project template and search by meaning. Nothing is generated until someone clicks, and usage bills to the agency's own provider account.

Email digests

  • Daily / weekly / monthly digests
  • Staff summaries
  • Client summaries
  • Admin-configured cadence and audience
  • Per-user opt-out
  • One-click digest unsubscribe

Reduce email noise with digest summaries. Staff see overdue work, mentions and tickets needing replies; clients see approvals, deliverables, invoices and open items waiting on them.

Credentials Vault

  • Per-project scope
  • Encrypted at rest
  • Hidden by default — even from admins
  • Timed unlock, auto re-lock
  • Full reveal audit trail
  • No client access, on any plan

Store each client's hosting, CMS, DNS, database and API credentials scoped to the exact project they belong to — encrypted at rest and hidden by default, even from admins. A quick, self-expiring unlock reveals them only when you need them, and every reveal is logged. Clients have zero access to it, on any plan.

And the details

Plus the small things you'd expect.

🧩Project templates
👷Project teams
👁️Per-role project visibility
🗃️Shared client files
👥Client-managed teams
Client approval permissions
🔒Billing visibility permissions
🔐Credentials vault
💰Estimate deposits
✍️E-signatures
📑Acceptance certificates
🧾Custom invoice templates
🔗External payment links
🔁QuickBooks Online sync
💬Slack
📥CSV import
Global search
🌓Dark mode
⌨️Keyboard shortcuts
🔗Magic links
🔔Notifications
📄PDF export
🗂️Linked files
📚Version history
🩺Health monitor
🗄️Off-server backup
📜Audit trail
🔌API / webhooks
🔄System updates
🛡️Role permissions
⚖️Trust & Compliance
📤Subject data export
📃Legal pages
AI Assist
🔑BYO AI key
🧠AI template drafting
📬Email digests
Still deciding?

Missing something important?

If one workflow is stopping you from switching, tell us. We review early feature requests directly.

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