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Architecture firms get useful time data by connecting each entry to a project and, where relevant, a phase or activity, then marking it billable or non-billable. Managers can compare recorded hours and labor costs with project budgets and fees while work is underway. The workflow matters: in RIBA’s 2025 report, 63% of RIBA Chartered Practices said they record time spent on billable client work, while 37% said they do not (RIBA, 2025).
What architecture project time tracking should capture
A useful time entry should answer three questions: who did the work, where it belongs in the project structure, and whether the time is billable. Depending on how a practice scopes and budgets its work, the project structure may include a phase or activity as well as the project itself.
- Project: Connect each entry to the relevant client or internal project.
- Phase or activity: Use the same categories the firm uses for scopes, budgets, and reporting, rather than creating a separate taxonomy just for timesheets.
- Billable status: Make clear whether the time can be charged to the client or belongs to overhead or another non-billable category.
Non-billable time is still useful to record. Deltek identifies administration, professional development, and proposals as examples. Capturing this work alongside client time gives managers a fuller picture of labor use and the effort required to run the practice (Deltek’s architecture guidance).
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How to use time data to manage project fees and budgets
Time tracking becomes a management tool when firms compare actual effort with the project’s commercial plan. For fixed-fee work, review logged hours alongside the agreed fee and budget; where available, include labor cost, expenses, and consultant costs. Hours alone show effort, but do not by themselves show the project’s financial position.
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- Set the baseline. Define the fee, budget, and project or phase structure against which actual work will be reviewed.
- Record and categorize work. Associate entries with the appropriate project and phase or activity, and identify billable status.
- Review while work is active. Compare hours and, where the system supports it, labor cost and other project costs with the budget and fee.
- Investigate meaningful variance. If budget burn is diverging from progress, examine scope, original assumptions, staffing, or delivery before the work closes. A variance is a prompt to understand what is happening, not a diagnosis on its own.
Project-cost reporting can broaden the comparison beyond staff hours. Monograph says its architecture and engineering project-accounting tools connect budgets, billable hours, invoicing, expenses, labor and consultant costs, and profitability, including phase-level reporting (Monograph project accounting). These are vendor-described capabilities, not independent test results.
How to establish a time-entry routine
Choose categories that match how the firm works
Before staff begin entering time, define the project and phase or activity structure. Categories should correspond to how the practice scopes, budgets, and reports work. Keep non-billable categories specific enough to make overhead and practice-development effort visible, but not so numerous that entries become cumbersome.
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Set expectations for detail and review
Agree when staff should enter time, how much detail project managers need, and how corrections or approvals will be handled. The right routine depends on the firm’s workflow; there is no universally established entry interval. Make expectations clear and consistent so managers can rely on the resulting data.
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Start with the firm’s operating needs, not a vendor’s feature list. An architecture-oriented project-accounting system may consolidate time, phases, budgets, costs, and profitability. A lighter tracker may be enough if project management and accounting already happen elsewhere. Confirm current features and integrations with vendors because product details can change.
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| Option | What its published material describes | Potential fit to assess |
|---|---|---|
| Monograph | Architecture and engineering project accounting linking budgets, billable hours, invoicing, expenses, labor and consultant costs, and profitability; its project-execution page also describes manual and AI-suggested entries tagged by phase, activity, and billable status. | Practices evaluating a connected project-accounting workflow. Capabilities are vendor-described and may change. |
| Harvest | Its architecture page describes tracking billable time against a fixed-fee project and turning tracked hours into invoices (Harvest for architecture). | Teams considering time tracking and invoicing without adopting an A&E project-accounting suite; verify current features and integration fit. |
| Deltek | Its architecture guidance explains billable and non-billable tracking and project-accounting uses (Deltek’s architecture guidance). | Firms assessing Deltek’s project time and billing offerings as part of a broader project-accounting workflow. This is not an independent product comparison. |
Compare systems against the work your firm actually needs to manage:
- Project and phase hierarchy, including whether it matches your scopes and budget structure.
- Support for fixed-fee, hourly, or mixed project workflows.
- Billable and non-billable categories and how easy they are for staff to use.
- Budget-versus-actual reporting, including phase-level views if needed.
- Labor, expense, and consultant-cost visibility.
- Connections to invoicing and accounting tools already in use.
- Desktop or mobile entry, approval and correction processes, and reporting.
- Implementation effort and fit for the firm’s size and operating practices.
No single option is established as best for every architecture practice. Compare vendors’ current documentation and confirm important workflows, integrations, and reporting directly before choosing.
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