Project management
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Total Synergy Alternative: What to Switch To When You've Outgrown It
Ben Walker
Written for Drum
In This Article
If you’re looking for a Total Synergy alternative, chances are the product hasn’t quite delivered on its promise. Total Synergy markets itself as an all-in-one platform for architecture, engineering, and construction firms. And on paper, the feature list is impressive. But there’s a recurring theme across user reviews on Capterra and G2: the system is powerful, but painfully complex. As one reviewer put it, it has a “huge learning curve and incredibly complex system which took a long time to get the hang of, even for a smaller business.”
That complexity has real costs. And for many ANZ firms, it’s enough to start exploring what else is out there.
The Total Synergy Problem Nobody Talks About
Total Synergy has been around for years and recently secured growth investment from M33 Growth and PSG to scale further. The product covers a wide range of ground: project management, time tracking, invoicing, resource planning, and document management. Its three pricing tiers run from AU$10/user/month (Professional) up to AU$49/user/month (Enterprise), with critical features like CRM, HR, and advanced reporting sold as separate add-ons.
That add-on model is where frustration builds. The base product handles basic project tracking and timesheets. But the moment you need CRM capabilities (Synergy CRM add-on), staff leave management (Synergy HR add-on), better reporting (Analytics Plus add-on), or document control (Synergy PIM add-on), costs climb quickly. A 20-person engineering firm on the Business tier with three add-ons could easily be paying AU$50-60 per user per month for what competitors include in their standard package.
Then there’s the complexity tax. Users consistently report that reports are “fiddly” and “not user friendly.” MYOB integration can be unreliable. And version upgrades have been known to break existing customisations and workflows. For a 15-person architecture practice without a dedicated IT person, that’s not a minor inconvenience. It means calling support, rebuilding configurations, and losing productive hours that should be spent on billable work.
The underlying issue is that Total Synergy was built to be configurable enough for large enterprise practices, and that flexibility comes at the expense of simplicity for the mid-market firms that make up most of the ANZ architecture and consulting engineering landscape.
What a Total Synergy Alternative Should Actually Deliver
Before jumping to another platform, it’s worth clarifying what matters. The firms we talk to who are leaving Total Synergy tend to share three priorities.
First, they want fewer systems, not more features stuffed behind paywalls. A proper PSA platform should cover the full lifecycle without nickel-and-diming you for essentials like CRM or reporting. Your sales pipeline, proposals, projects, timesheets, and invoices should live in one place and talk to each other natively. When a proposal gets accepted, the project budget should carry across automatically. When time gets logged, your financial dashboards should update in real time.
Second, they want software their team will actually use. This might sound obvious, but it’s the issue that sinks most platform migrations. If your new system takes months to learn, your team will resist it. Timesheets will be late or incomplete. Project data will be unreliable. The system becomes another administrative burden rather than the thing that removes administrative burdens. The right time tracking tool gets filled in without reminders because it takes 30 seconds, not 5 minutes.
Third, they want visibility without effort. The best operational insights shouldn’t require someone to spend half a day pulling custom reports. Budget burn, staff utilisation, project profitability, and revenue forecasting should be visible in real time, updating automatically as your team logs time and records expenses. A 2023 SPI Research benchmark found that high-performing professional service firms track project margins in real time, not monthly. That kind of cadence is only possible when your software surfaces insights passively.
How Drum Stacks Up Against Total Synergy
Drum is an Australian-built PSA platform designed specifically for professional service firms between 10 and 200 people. Rather than trying to be everything for every industry, it focuses on the workflow that architecture, engineering, and consulting firms actually follow: win work, scope it, deliver it, invoice it, and understand what was profitable.
Here’s a practical comparison of the areas where Total Synergy users most commonly feel the strain.
| Capability | Total Synergy | Drum |
|---|---|---|
| CRM & sales pipeline | Paid add-on (Synergy CRM) | Included, with AI-powered inbox |
| Proposal generation | Limited | One-click proposals with Word export and budget sync |
| Project management | Strong but complex configuration | Intuitive staged projects with templates |
| Time tracking | Available across tiers | Mobile-friendly with one-click manager approval |
| Reporting & dashboards | “Analytics Plus” add-on for advanced | Real-time dashboards included in base product |
| HR & leave management | Paid add-on (Synergy HR) | Staff availability and leave built in |
| Xero integration | Available (MYOB sync can be unreliable) | Two-way Xero sync for invoices, contacts, and payments |
| Onboarding | Self-serve with documentation | Dedicated hands-on onboarding and data migration |
| Learning curve | Steep, especially for smaller teams | Designed to be productive within days |
The pricing model is different too. Drum doesn’t gate critical features behind add-on tiers. CRM, reporting, invoicing, and time tracking are all included. You don’t discover six months in that the report you need requires an upgrade.
One thing that stands out in practice is speed. Firms switching from Total Synergy regularly comment on how much faster Drum feels in day-to-day use. Loading project dashboards, submitting timesheets, generating invoices: the interactions that happen hundreds of times a week across your team are noticeably quicker. That’s not a flashy feature, but it compounds into hours of saved time each month.
What the Transition Looks Like
Switching from Total Synergy to another platform is a meaningful decision, and it deserves honest consideration. You have years of project data, established workflows, and a team that has (eventually) learned the current system. Nobody should take that lightly.
Here’s what the move to Drum typically involves.
The Drum team starts with a discovery session to understand how your firm actually operates — not just what features you use, but how your projects flow from opportunity to final invoice. That conversation shapes how your Drum account gets configured. Rather than handing you a blank system and a knowledge base, Drum’s onboarding team sets up your project templates, invoice structures, permission tiers, and integrations before your team ever logs in.
Data migration covers your client records, active projects, and staff details. If you’ve been using Total Synergy’s document management or CRM add-ons, the Drum team will map that data across so nothing falls through the gaps. The goal is to have the system feel familiar from day one, with your real data in place rather than a demo environment. Training is structured around your firm’s actual use cases, not a generic feature tour.
Most firms are fully operational on Drum within two to three weeks of starting onboarding. The time tracking and project management workflows tend to click immediately because they’re designed around how AEC professionals actually work.
And because Drum’s support team is based in Australia, the ongoing relationship matters. When you need to adjust a workflow, add a new project template, or troubleshoot a Xero integration question, you’re talking to someone in your timezone who understands the context of running an ANZ professional service firm.
Should You Switch from Total Synergy?
Total Synergy is a capable product for firms that have the internal resources to manage its complexity. If you have a dedicated operations manager who enjoys configuring software, and if the add-on costs fit comfortably within your budget, it may continue to serve you well. Plenty of larger AEC firms run on it successfully.
But most 10-50 person firms don’t have that luxury.
But if your firm is spending more time wrestling with the system than benefiting from it — if reports take too long to pull, if your team avoids logging time because the interface is clunky, if you’re paying for add-ons that should be standard — then it’s worth seeing what a purpose-built Total Synergy alternative can do.
Drum was designed for exactly this situation: mid-market ANZ firms that need serious operational software without the enterprise complexity. One platform, fair pricing, and a team that picks up the phone when you call.
Curious what a simpler, faster Total Synergy alternative looks like?
We'll show you how Drum handles your firm's actual workflows — no generic demos.