Does Autotask have Gantt charts?

Yes. Autotask's project module includes a Gantt-style timeline that plots phases and tasks against dates, and you can create task dependencies to sequence the work. It's a genuine project view, not a cosmetic one — but it's a PSA-native module built around billing and ticketing first, and the scheduling layer has real limits worth knowing before you rely on it for anything complex.

What the Autotask Gantt does well

Because it lives inside your PSA, the timeline is tied directly to your projects, tasks, resources, and time entries. You set start and end dates, assign resources, and see the plan on a horizontal timeline. For straightforward implementations — a firewall swap, a single-server migration, a standard onboarding — that's often enough, and there's no second system to keep in sync.

Where it runs out of road

• Task dependencies are finish-to-start only (per Autotask's documentation), so you can't cleanly model start-to-start, finish-to-finish, or lead/lag relationships.
• There's no native critical-path engine that highlights the longest dependent chain and recasts dates automatically — MSPs typically bolt on Moovila or TopLeft for that.
• Resource-capacity and PTO-aware scheduling is thin; the Gantt won't reflow around a technician's time off on its own.
• It reads more like a static picture than an interactive planning surface you drag and re-sequence.

The Current approach

Current runs alongside your PSA — Autotask, ConnectWise, or Halo PSA — rather than replacing it. Your PSA stays your billing source of truth; Current owns scheduling with an interactive Gantt, a native critical-path engine, a drag-to-connect dependency map, and PTO/availability-aware back-scheduling. Time you enter in Current still flows to your PSA for billing, so you get real project planning without breaking your invoicing.

A chart is not a scheduling engine

This is the distinction that matters, and it is easy to miss when evaluating. A Gantt chart is a visualization: bars on a timeline showing when work is planned. A scheduling engine is the thing that decides where those bars belong, given dependencies, availability, and constraints. Autotask has the chart. What it lacks is an engine underneath that recalculates when reality moves.

The tell is what happens when you drag a bar. In a charting tool, the bar moves and nothing else does, so the plan is now internally inconsistent and a human has to fix the downstream dates. In a scheduling tool, moving a bar recalculates everything that depended on it and shows you the consequence before you commit.

What to test during an evaluation

• Move a task that has three downstream dependents. Does anything else move, and are you shown what will change before it happens?
• Assign a task to someone with a week of booked leave in the middle of it. Does the task flow around the absence?
• Ask which task is currently driving the go-live date. Can the tool answer, or do you have to trace the chain yourself?
• Set a fixed go-live date and schedule backwards from it. Does the tool tell you the plan requires starting last Tuesday?

Where Current fits

Current's timeline is a view onto a live scheduling engine rather than a drawing surface. Dependencies of all four types with working-day offsets, a forward and backward pass identifying every zero-slack task, availability-aware placement, and back-scheduling from a fixed date all feed the same picture. Drag a bar and you get a preview of every downstream consequence before anything is applied.

It runs alongside Autotask rather than replacing it. Autotask remains the record for time and billing, Current owns the scheduling, and the computed dates flow back so both systems agree on when work happens.