Switch Guide: Moving from Asana to Teamwork
Asana is a solid project management tool built in San Francisco, but it's designed for internal teams. Teamwork is built specifically for agencies, consultancies, and professional services firms that manage projects for external clients — with client portals, budget tracking, and billing built in from day one. Canadian agencies switching to Teamwork typically find they're paying similar prices for a product that actually fits their workflow, with data that can be hosted in Canada. For a Buy Canadian switch that also improves your workflow, this one's worth taking seriously.
What You'll Gain
- Client portals: Give clients visibility into their projects without giving them access to your entire workspace.
- Built-in time tracking: Log time directly against tasks and projects — feeds directly into invoicing.
- Budget management: Track project budgets, burn rates, and profitability in real time.
- Billing integration: Generate invoices from tracked time within the platform.
- Resource scheduling: See who's available and allocated across all your projects.
- Canadian data hosting available: Teamwork offers EU/Canadian data residency options for compliance-conscious clients.
What You Might Miss
- Asana's Goals feature: Asana's OKR and goal tracking is excellent. Teamwork is more task/project focused.
- Inbox and task follow-ups: Asana's inbox and follow-up reminders are smoother than Teamwork's notification system.
- Mobile app: Asana's mobile app is more polished than Teamwork's.
- Integrations: Both have strong integration libraries, but Asana has slightly more native integrations with marketing tools.
Migration Checklist
- Export your Asana projects — Asana supports CSV export of tasks per project. Go to Project → Export/Print → CSV.
- Map your project structure — Asana uses portfolios, projects, and tasks. Teamwork uses portfolios, projects, task lists, and tasks. Plan your mapping before importing.
- Import projects to Teamwork — Use Teamwork's import feature or the CSV importer to bring in your task data.
- Recreate your team and permissions — Set up your users, teams, and permission levels in Teamwork.
- Set up client companies — Add your clients as companies in Teamwork and configure their portal access.
- Configure integrations — Reconnect Slack, Google Drive, or other tools you use alongside your project management.
- Train your team — Run a 1-hour Teamwork orientation, focusing on time tracking (the biggest workflow change from Asana).
- Run parallel for 2 weeks — Keep Asana read-only during the transition period.
Data Export Tips from Asana
Asana's CSV export is per-project only — there's no global task dump. Export each project individually from Project → Export/Print → CSV. For attachments, Asana doesn't include files in the CSV export — you'll need to manually download files from each task or use the Asana API for a bulk export. Premium plans have access to a more complete export via the API. Also export your custom fields documentation — you'll need to recreate these in Teamwork manually.
Timeline Estimate
Most agencies complete this switch in 2–4 weeks. Setting up the core structure is quick. The time investment is in migrating active project data and training your team on time tracking. Plan your switch for the start of a new month or quarter when project loads are lower.