Why it exists
We were running a studio out of six tools that did not know about each other.
A board for tasks. A spreadsheet for time. A folder for briefs. A separate tool for invoices. A chat thread per client. Every Friday somebody spent an afternoon copying numbers between them so a status update could be written by hand.
None of those tools was bad. The cost was in the gaps between them - the hours spent moving the same fact from one place to another, and the decisions made on a figure that was already three days old.
SyncHQ is what we built instead. One system where the intake becomes the scope, the scope becomes the tasks, the tasks become the timesheet, and the timesheet becomes the invoice - without anyone retyping anything.
End to end
Four things a studio does over and over. SyncHQ joins them up.
Intake that actually finds out what the client wants
You send a link. The client answers in their own time, and an assistant asks the follow-ups a good project manager would - what happens at the edges, which systems this has to agree with, who signs it off. What comes back is a structured brief, not a paragraph in an email.
- A shareable link per client - no account for them to create
- The assistant digs where an answer is thin, instead of accepting it
- Output is a scope document, not a transcript
- Save it as a template and reuse it for the next enquiry
Delivery that stays honest without a status meeting
The scope becomes tasks. Tasks carry an owner, an estimate and the hours actually spent, so the board is also the timesheet. Nobody assembles a progress report, because the board already is one.
- Projects, sprints and a board that reflects real state
- Estimates against actuals, per task and per project
- Specs, tests and decisions attached to the work, not a folder
- Goals and calendar so the quarter is visible, not just the week
A client portal that removes the Friday update
Clients get a read-only view of the same records your team works in - progress, what is blocked, what needs them. It is white-labelled, it needs no login, and it replaces the weekly summary somebody used to write by hand.
- Live status, not a document that is stale on arrival
- Blockers and slipped dates shown, because hiding them costs trust
- Feedback and approvals in context, against the thing being discussed
- Your brand on it, not ours
Money that comes out of the work, not a spreadsheet
Tracked hours and project milestones assemble the invoice. Expenses, income and outstanding balances sit in the same place, so the question of whether a project is actually profitable has an answer you can look at rather than derive.
- Invoices generated from real project data
- Expenses and income against the project that caused them
- Profitability per project and per client, live
- Proposals and pipeline in the same system as the delivery
The loop
One record, followed from the first email to the paid invoice.
Nothing here is re-entered. Each step reads what the last one produced, which is the whole reason the numbers agree with each other.
Enquiry arrives
A lead lands in the CRM from a form, an email or a link you sent. Nothing is typed twice from here on.
Intake session
You send the client a link. The guided session produces a structured brief and a scope you can price.
Proposal and scope
The brief becomes a proposal. Accepted, it becomes a project with its tasks already outlined.
The work
Team, board, estimates, time. The client watches the same records through the portal.
Invoice
Hours and milestones assemble the invoice. It goes out, and payment reconciles against the project.
What you learned
Estimated against actual, quoted against earned. The next proposal is priced on evidence.
What is in it
The whole surface, in plain terms.
AI client intake
Guided sessions, shareable links, reusable templates and a structured brief at the end.
Projects and tasks
Boards, sprints, estimates, dependencies, specs and tests attached to the work.
Client portal
White-labelled, read-only, no account required, always showing current state.
CRM and pipeline
Contacts, leads, pipelines, sequences and proposals in the same place as delivery.
Finance
Invoices from real data, expenses, income, outstanding balances and per-project margin.
Time and capacity
Timesheets that come from the board, plus who is over-committed next week.
Teams and access
Role-based access for founders, leads, members and clients - each sees their own surface.
Docs and wiki
Decisions, runbooks and reference material beside the projects they belong to.
Goals and reports
Quarterly goals, a health view worth opening on a Monday, and reports that build themselves.
Requests and inbox
Client requests and internal asks in one queue instead of four chat threads.
Integrations
Connect the tools you already run so the record stays single rather than duplicated.
Compliance and audit
An access log and a record of who changed what, for the clients who ask.
We use it ourselves
Shunya runs on SyncHQ. Every project on this site was delivered through it.
That is the only endorsement we can honestly give a product this young, and it is the one we would want. When something in it is annoying, we feel it on a Tuesday like everybody else, and it gets fixed.
- Runs on it
- Every project
- Replaces
- 6 tools
- Status reports
- 0 written
- Stage
- Early access
Every case study on this site was delivered through SyncHQ.
Board, sheet, docs, invoicing, chat and a separate CRM.
The portal replaced the weekly summary entirely.
In production daily, onboarding studios in small batches.
Where it is not right
It is built for studios that deliver client work. If that is not you, it will feel like the wrong shape.
- A product team with no clients will not use half of it. The intake, the portal and the invoicing all assume somebody on the other side is paying you.
- A team of one or two can probably hold all of this in their head, and a lighter tool will annoy them less.
- An agency past a hundred people has procurement requirements we do not meet yet. Ask, and we will tell you honestly whether we are there.
It is in active use and still early. We onboard studios in small batches so that the next structural mistake gets found by eight teams rather than eight hundred.
SyncHQ
Questions
worth asking
The things studios ask before they move their operations into something new.
An operating system for agencies and studios that deliver client work. It covers client intake, project delivery, a white-labelled client portal, time tracking and invoicing in one system, so the same record carries from the first enquiry through to the paid invoice.