Easy Projects has launched a premium Business Intelligence module built on Microsoft's Power BI, designed for project managers in Professional Services. The package includes 60 pre-built dashboards positioned as a single hub for project, portfolio, and financial reporting.
The pitch: stop exporting spreadsheets, stop stitching screenshots into slide decks, and let every stakeholder see the same numbers in near real time. Whether that changes behaviour on a delivery team is a different question.
Quick take
- Premium add-on built on Microsoft Power BI.
- Sixty pre-built dashboards ship out of the box.
- Covers performance overviews, baseline reporting, task deadlines, resource loading by skill, portfolio status, timesheet trends, and quoted vs. Actual labor cost.
- Pulls from multiple data sources—including financial platforms, CRMs, and inventory tools outside Easy Projects.
- Currently limited to Professional Services customers.
What the dashboards actually do
A few templates stand out. **Quoted vs. Actual Labor Cost** compares financial performance against criteria like customer profitability. **Resource Loading by Skill** filters the native resource view by the built-in Skills field, making bottlenecks visible when planning timelines. **Project Selection** scores candidate projects against workload and profit potential so the right work reaches the right team. **Portfolio Status** summarises live projects across a portfolio, program, or department, filterable by PM, end date, or service type. **Timesheet Trends by Team** surfaces historical logging patterns so underperforming teams become diagnosable.
The broader feature list promises real-time visibility, an end-to-end view of the business on one screen, drill-down into specific items, and a single location for every report.
Who should care
| Audience | What they get | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Project Managers | Centralised data; drill-downs on cost, skills, and deadlines | Whether dashboards replace or just supplement existing reporting rituals |
| C-Level / Executives | Compressed portfolio view; financial and performance summaries | That "real-time" means real-time, not yesterday's export |
| Clients | Consistent status visibility; less need to chase updates | Whether data sharing creates scope or accountability tension |
| Delivery Teams | Faster access to their own performance data | That visible timesheet data is framed as insight, not surveillance |
Our analysis
BI dashboards rarely fail on the data side. They fail on the conversation side. A PM who drops a polished Power BI panel into a steering committee without first agreeing on what the numbers mean gets the same confused nodding and the same follow-up questions in a thread two days later. Reporting is a leadership act, not a visualisation act.
The "who benefits, who loses" question is real. Executives and clients love these tools because they compress context. The people doing the work can grow uneasy when every timesheet row is suddenly visible. Roll out the module as a change-management event: explain what is being measured, why, and what decisions will follow from it. Without that framing, the dashboard becomes surveillance.
Compared with the typical state of affairs in many Professional Services firms—where a senior PM rebuilds the same Excel summary every Monday morning—a shared BI layer is a genuine step up. It removes the single point of failure that is the heroic analyst. Just remember: dashboards are only as honest as the data feeding them, and timesheet data is notoriously optimistic.
A worked example
Say you run a Professional Services practice with twelve active client engagements. Before the rollout, every Friday you pull data from the project tool, the finance system, and the CRM, paste it into a spreadsheet, and email a portfolio summary to leadership. After the rollout, you point the Quoted vs. Actual Labor Cost dashboard at those same sources. In your next quarterly review, you filter to the two engagements running over margin and drill into the team view. Resource Loading by Skill shows one senior architect double-booked across both projects for the next three weeks. You rebalance, flag it in the steering committee, and open a scope conversation with one client. The dashboard did not make the call. It made the call possible to make in the room.
What to watch next
If you are evaluating this kind of tool, track three things in the first 90 days:
- Data freshness.** Do the dashboards reflect reality or yesterday's export?
- Adoption.** Does the team actually open them or still ask you for a spreadsheet?
- Decisions.** Have the numbers changed a real meeting?
If all three are yes, the module has paid for itself. If not, you have bought a very expensive screen saver.
Custom reports
Have a specific reporting need not covered by the 60 templates? Easy Projects invites customers to contact their Customer Success team to discuss custom reports built on Power BI.
Key takeaways
- BI dashboards only change meetings if the team agrees on what each metric means before anyone looks at it.
- Roll out reporting as a change-management event, not an IT install, especially when timesheets become visible.
- Measure success by decisions made from the data, not by the number of dashboards opened.
Frequently asked questions
What is Easy Projects BI Reports?
A premium reporting module built on Microsoft Power BI, currently offered for Professional Services customers, with 60 pre-built dashboards covering project, portfolio, and financial reporting.
Do the dashboards pull from systems outside the project tool?
Yes. The module is designed to connect to multiple data sources, including external systems such as financial platforms, CRMs, and inventory tools.
What kinds of reports are included?
Examples include Quoted vs. Actual Labor Cost, Resource Loading by Skill, Project Selection, Portfolio Status, and Timesheet Trends by Team, alongside baseline reporting, task deadline tracking, and general project performance overviews.
Is this module available to all Easy Projects customers?
No. The source explicitly notes that the feature is currently only offered for Professional Services.
Can a customer request a custom report?
Yes. Customers can contact the vendor's Customer Success team to discuss custom reports built on Power BI.