You bought five tools to run one agency. This is the one.
Ancor plans your work, tracks the time, watches the margin, and handles the invoicing. It also does the thing no other tool does: it flags the projects losing money, and the deliverables marked "approved" that your client never actually signed off on. One system, built for agencies that bill for their time.
Projects drift quietly. You'll see it the week it starts.
Most tools track tasks. Ancor tracks the business behind them. Every project watches its own budget and flags the risk early, so you don't reach the last week and realize you gave the work away.
- ✓Kanban and list views, switch freely per project
- ✓Budget burn against estimated hours, in real time
- ✓Risk flags the moment a project drifts off track
- ✓Project health you can read at a glance
Nobody remembers Thursday on Friday. So the timer lives in the task.
No separate app. No end-of-day guessing at what you did. There's a timer on every task. Start it, pause it, resume it, and watch budget-vs-actual move as you go.
- ✓One-click timers on any task, in any view
- ✓Forgot to start it? Add the time by hand
- ✓Timesheets per person and per team
- ✓Budget vs actual hours on every project
- ✓Margin per project and per client
Who has room next week? One screen, not four phone calls.
Team Pulse gives you a live read on the whole team's workload. See who's maxed out, who has room, and what's booked for the next four weeks, without pinging anyone to ask.
- ✓Capacity by department and by person
- ✓Utilization per person and per team
- ✓A four-week rolling forecast of the load
- ✓Match the right skills to the work
- ✓Burnout warnings before someone goes under
Mobile App Redesign - 78% of budget used, 55% complete. At this pace you'll overrun by about 12 hours.
Q2 Campaign - client feedback has been sitting unactioned for three days.
Most AI is a chatbot in the corner. This one drafts the plan.
Two AI tools, built in. The AI Planner reads the projects you've already finished and drafts a plan for new work, with the timing and budget worked out from what similar jobs really took. The Assistant is a chat that proposes real actions in your workspace - you approve, edit, or dismiss each one.
- ✓Estimates drafted from your real past projects
- ✓Assignment suggestions that know who's busy
- ✓Tell the Assistant what to do, it makes the tasks
- ✓Ask it what's at risk, behind, or blocked
You learn the margin when you invoice. That is three months too late.
Margin and capacity sit side by side, moving as your team logs hours. Take a rebrand quoted at 120 hours. Without Ancor, you deliver it on time and only spot the overrun at invoicing, when a healthy margin has already turned into a loss. With Ancor, the margin starts slipping the moment the burn runs ahead of the plan, so you can move work, trim scope, or call the client while there's still time to act. Those same hours feed capacity, so you also see whether the person absorbing the overrun has room or is already maxed out. Profit and workload stop being two spreadsheets you reconcile after the fact.
- ✓Live margin by project, client, and department
- ✓Burn and capacity from the same logged hours
- ✓A warning before the overrun eats the margin
Nothing here is an add-on. It is all just included.
Every core feature is there on the trial and on every paid plan. A few limits change by plan and workspace settings.
Kanban and list views
Switch between board and list, per project
Task timers
One-click timers on every task, in every view
Capacity planning
See utilization and forecast upcoming load
Budget tracking
Budget burn against tracked hours, live
Profitability
Margin by project, client, and department
PDF client reports
One-click reports in your branding
AI Planner
Drafts plans and margin from finished work
AI Assistant
Chat that acts in your workspace, with your approval
Role-based access
Owner, admin, ops, and member permissions
Multi-currency
INR, USD, GBP, EUR, AUD, CAD
Skill matching
Tag skills, match the right people to work
Team Pulse
Catch burnout risk before someone goes under
The Workroom
Clients review and approve through a link, no login
Departments
Organize teams with separate views
Generic tools fit any team. Which means they fit yours badly.
Asana, ClickUp, Notion, and Zoho are built for any team in any business. Ancor is built for one kind of business: agencies that bill for their time.
| Capability | Asana | ClickUp | Notion | Zoho | Ancor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project timeline visibility | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Predicts margin risk | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Spots burnout before it hits | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Client approvals, no client login | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Built for billable work | Basic | Basic | – | ✓ | Core |
| Estimates from your past projects | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
Based on each vendor's standard published plans, 2026. These change often, so check their sites for the latest.