Client Request to Paid Invoice — Ascend
For small agencies and studios

One workspace for the five workflows your agency runs every week.

Client onboarding. Project billing. Sales to deposit. Retainer reporting. Subcontractor management. All in one place, instead of stitched across five different tools.

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Six building blocks. Five workflows. One workspace.

Every client request, meeting, note, hour, and invoice in one connected record.

Intake

Forms write to the client record

Booking

Calls land beside the brief

Project record

Notes, files, tasks, and status

Client context

Share exactly what they need

Time tracking

Timer lives where work happens

Invoicing

Bills from tracked context

From the Founding Cohort

Built with — not for — early agencies.

Quotes are from teams using Ascend during early access. Names initialled at their request while we keep the founding-cohort cap small.

"We replaced Notion, Toggl, and FreshBooks with one tool. The first month our billable-hour capture went up 14% just because the timer was right there on the record."

Maya R.

Founder, 6-person creative studio

"I sent my first invoice 11 minutes after signing up. The fact that hours, projects, and the invoice all share one database is the whole game."

Jordan T.

Solo consultant

"Client sharing without per-seat fees is the unlock. We give external collaborators view access to the exact records they need — no more emailing screenshots."

Priya K.

Ops lead, dev shop

120+
Founding teams
11 min
Avg. time-to-first-invoice
3.4
Tools replaced per team
72
NPS (early access)
The Ascend Workflow

Capture the request. Book the call.
Do the work. Bill the time.

Capture the request. Book the call. Do the work. Bill the time. Most client-work stacks scatter the brief, booking, project notes, timer, and invoice across separate tools. Ascend keeps them attached to the same client record from day one.

01

Capture the request

Public intake forms and client onboarding forms write directly into your workspace database. The brief, files, source, and client details start in the place the work will happen.

No orphaned form submissions.

02

Book the call

Share a booking link from the same workspace. Confirmed calls land beside the client record with custom answers attached, so discovery details do not disappear into a separate scheduler inbox.

Bookings become usable client data.

03

Work from the record

Every database row opens into a rich page: notes, files, decisions, sub-tasks, comments, and the timer. The record is not a dead end — it becomes the operating room for the work.

Context stays where work happens.

04

Track time where the context lives

Hit play on the page or row. Hours accumulate against the right client and project automatically, while the brief, notes, and client comments stay one click away.

Fewer forgotten timers. Cleaner invoices.

05

Invoice from the data you already have

Ascend pulls the tracked hours and project details from the same record, builds a branded invoice, and sends it. No exports. No spreadsheet reconciliation. No guessing what was billable.

Record to payment in minutes.

Questions?
Why switch?

Stop stitching together forms, bookings, databases, timers, and invoices.

The brief is in a form tool. The call is in a scheduler. Notes live in a project app. Hours sit in a timer. The invoice happens somewhere else. Ascend keeps the whole loop connected.

The Usual Setup

  • Intake in one app, bookings in another, project notes in a third — nothing talks to anything
  • Open a booking confirmation → re-key the brief → manually create the project record
  • Invoicing means exporting, reformatting, and hoping the hours match the work
  • Billable time gets lost between the cracks of your tool stack every single week
The Ascend Way

Ascend

  • Every database row IS a full page — not a sidebar peek (vs. Airtable, Monday)
  • Forms write straight into your databases — no Zapier, no glue (vs. Tally, Typeform)
  • Booking links land confirmations straight into your data — no Calendly inbox to re-key (vs. Calendly, SavvyCal)
  • Clients collaborate on your records for free — no per-seat fees (vs. ClickUp, Asana, Notion guests)
  • Inbox to invoice in one system — no reconciliation between tools (vs. Notion + Toggl + FreshBooks)
Built around how agencies actually work

Five workflows your team runs every week.

Each one is normally spread across four or five tools. In Ascend they sit in one place, on one record, under one brand for your clients.

Forms · Databases · Pages · Booking · Sharing

Client onboarding

Before. A Tally form, a Calendly link, a fresh Notion doc, a new Airtable row, a shared link your client cannot open.
After. One form fills the project record. The booking link sits on it. The brief renders from the form answers. One client share link covers all of it, under your brand.
See this workflow

Pages · Time tracking · Invoicing

Project billing

Before. Hours in Toggl, project in Notion, invoice rebuilt by hand in FreshBooks every month. When the client asks what they paid for, you go digging through CSV exports.
After. Time logs against tasks on the project. The invoice generates from those logs with the task descriptions intact. The client sees what they paid for, by task.
See this workflow

Forms · Booking · Pages · Sharing · Invoicing

Discovery to deposit

Before. Tally for the inquiry. Calendly for the call. Google Docs for the proposal. DocuSign for the sign-off. FreshBooks for the deposit. Five brands, five logins, one confused client.
After. Form, booking, proposal page, accept button, deposit invoice. One URL, one brand, one signed client.
See this workflow

Databases · Time tracking · Invoicing · Pages · Sharing

Retainer management

Before. A spreadsheet of hours used, Toggl exports to reconcile, an invoice raised by hand, a status email pasted together at the end of every month.
After. The retainer balance is live. Time deducts from it as the team works. The invoice generates itself. The client report updates on its own shared page.
See this workflow

Databases · Sharing · Time tracking · Invoicing

Subcontractor management

Before. Invites to four tools. Hours logged in a shared Toggl workspace. An invoice from the freelancer to reconcile by hand. Off-boarding by clicking through four admin panels.
After. One scoped invite to the project. Hours log against it. Their invoice to you is a record on the same project. Off-boarding is one click.
See this workflow
Pricing

The agency tool tax is real.

Pricing for a 10-person agency to cover projects, time tracking, and invoicing.

Apples to apples · 10-person team · public US pricing

Tool stackMonthlyAnnual

ClickUp + Harvest + FreshBooks

Project + time + invoicing

$210/mo$2,520/yr

Monday + Toggl + QuickBooks

Project + time + accounting

$285/mo$3,420/yr

Productive.io (with invoicing)

All-in-one agency tool

$280/mo$3,360/yr

Scoro

All-in-one agency tool

$260/mo$3,120/yr

Ascend Studio

$49 Studio + 7 × $19/seat

$182/mo$1,820/yr

One workspace, not three subscriptions. Studio is $49/mo for up to 3 seats, then $19/seat. Solo is $19/mo for independent operators.

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20+Features included in every plan
$19/moSolo plan starting price
10 minFrom zero to first invoice

"You'll talk to the founders, not a support bot."

Bruce and June built Ascend after 15 years delivering enterprise projects. During early access, every support ticket gets a personal response — usually the same day.

Based in Nelson, New Zealand
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