The Best Architecture Project Management Software
Architecture project management software varies greatly depending on firm size and project complexity. We’ve evaluated the top options for small firms, large A&E businesses, and real estate developers, so you can find the right fit for your team.
- Billing, time and expenses tracking by project phase
- Employees can input time entry from anywhere
- Great for project management
- Project command center hub for monitoring phases and budgets
- Pulls live data on hours logged and expenses to generate invoices for clients
- Strong staffing and utilization tracking tool
- Full project management suite without à la carte costs
In this guide, we’ve ranked the top systems based on key features like time tracking, resource management, and financial reporting. Whether you’re managing small-scale projects or complex real estate developments, these tools offer the capabilities to help your firm succeed.
- BQE CORE: Best for Large A&E Firms
- Deltek Ajera: Best for Small A&E Firms
- Monograph: Best for Real Estate Firms
BQE CORE - Best for Large A&E Firms
BQE CORE’s powerful reporting tools meet the complex financial demands of large firms handling multiple, overlapping projects. The profit and loss reports, in particular, can help you keep overhead costs and resource utilization under control. Tabular and easy to read, these reports give you a clear view of income sources like consulting fees and your expenses like professional fees.
- Profit and Loss: Analyzes profitability month-to-month to show trends, seasonal shifts, or anomalies like unplanned spikes in costs; helps you pinpoint patterns and better manage cash flow.
- Profit and Loss Comparison: Measures profitability year-over-year to reveal any major shifts in costs or revenue at the firm level; helps you identify revenue trends and spot discrepancies or accounting errors.
- Profit and Loss by Project: Analayzes individual project performance and its contribution to firm’s overall financial health; helps balance several concurrent projects without overstepping resources.
By running and comparing these reports on a regular basis, large A&E firms can get a layered view of their financial health. This makes it easier to detect and address issues early on. BQE CORE offers over 120 reports for other categories, including billed time and expenses and statements of cash flows.
For 20 users, BQE CORE’s base model costs $19.95/user/month, plus an added $7.95/user/month, totaling $559 for basic time and expense tracking. Adding billing and invoicing tools brings the cost to $958, while including project management and accounting raises it to $1,039. The full suite, covering project management, billing, and accounting, reaches $1,498 per month. While this model lets firms pay only for the features they need, it’s pricier than a comprehensive suite like Monograph.
Check out our product page for BQE CORE for more details.
Deltek Ajera - Best for Small A&E Firms
Deltek Ajera’s project command center hub gives small A&E firms a clear, real-time view to monitor budgets, project phases, and billing all in one spot. Your team can set up projects by defining distinct phases and entering budget details for each. Ajera then aggregates these budgets for the total contract amount. This approach streamlines the financial side of complex projects, useful for smaller firms balancing multiple phases and client billing needs without relying on spreadsheets. By gathering data from modules across the system, it simplifies everything from financial management to invoicing to employee time tracking.
Employees can log their hours in Ajera’s time and expense module. Each entry includes your staff’s roles, billable rates, and actual hours spent. These time entries flow seamlessly into the project command center, reflecting financials in real time. Because Ajera handles the heavy lifting on these calculations, your team can focus on project work rather than administrative tasks. This also makes it easier to monitor how each project phase is progressing relative to labor costs.
Ajera’s invoicing capabilities also connect directly to the project command center. It automatically pulls live data on hours logged and expenses to generate invoices for clients. You can display information like phase-specific contract amounts, prior and current billings, and remaining balances to meet each client’s preferences. This gives them a breakdown of how their funds are being used, building trust and minimizing potential billing disputes.
Additionally, the project command center includes financial dashboards and reports. The snapshot report shows billed amounts, hours worked, and work-in-progress amounts for a day-to-day look at project progress. The progress report compares actual costs against budgeted figures for a quick earned value analysis. Finally, the plan report pulls budgeting and scheduling details from the command center for a high-level look at project pacing and financial performance.
Though some users find Ajera’s interface reminiscent of older systems, its specialized focus on A&E project financials make it effective for small firms with limited time and resources. Its pricing can range from $50-$100/user/month, so very small firms might want to go with lower-cost options like Asana or Trello for general project management.
Monograph - Best for Real Estate Firms
Monograph’s staffing and utilization tracking tool offers precise team allocation and time tracking for real estate firms juggling multiple projects all at once. The “availability view” offers you a high-level look into each employee’s weekly capacity assigned across various projects. Color-coded indicators (red for overutilization, yellow for underutilization, and white for balanced workload) allow your project managers to spot bottlenecks and balance assignments. This helps prevent employee burnout as scopes and timelines evolve.
The staffing and utilization tracking tool also provides micro and macro staffing views, best for real estate projects with distinct stages like planning, permitting, and construction. With the macro view, you can see how you’re distributing staffing overall across active projects. The micro view allows you to drill down into each project’s committed team members, their roles, and allocated hours by project phase. This makes weekly staffing adjustments much simpler and prevents budget overages through overstaffing.
Plus, Monograph gives employees transparency, too, letting them view their weekly assignments directly in their timesheets. These assignments specify their roles, target hours, and project phases. By minimizing frequent manager check-ins, the platform improves workflow efficiency for real estate firms. Its utilization tracking even integrates with time entries, providing live insights into billable versus non-billable time and utilization. This helps your firm minimize revenue leakage and optimize profitability across all projects.
Monograph’s offers monthly or annual subscriptions based on your total employee count. If you have 20 employees, you can expect to pay $500-$1,200 per month for a yearly subscription. While this places it in a higher price bracket than modular platforms like BQE CORE, Monograph offers a full project management suite without à la carte costs.
Other Systems We Like
Scoro is full professional services automation software that serves a broader range of professional services industries beyond architecture and engineering. Its capabilities include financial, resource, and project management, making it a full-featured platform useful for teams transitioning from multiple systems.
What is Architecture Project Management Software?
Architecture project management software assists with managing workflow and helping firms complete projects on time. This software allows you to view and manage project schedules, tasks, budgets, customer contact information, contracts, and more. Having all the information in one place allows project managers to find important documents and other project-related information faster.
The software also tracks change orders. Changes to the project can be requested, approved, or denied. If changes are made, updates to the project budget and completion time estimates will be made automatically.
Architecture project management software also features document management capabilities. This allows team members to upload and collaborate on important project documents, including contracts, drawings, specifications, bidding requirements, and more. The software allows users to edit or view documents depending on their preset user permissions, preventing unauthorized users from changing or viewing documents they shouldn’t have access to.
Key Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Time Tracking | Record billable and non-billable hours worked on a project. |
| Document Management | Upload and store project documents, including drawings, contracts, bid proposals, and more. |
| Task Management | Create tasks for each project along with detailed instructions and due dates for the task. |
| Resource Management | Assign labor to each project based on employee availability and qualifications. |
| Project Accounting | Track costs, budgets, expenses, and income on a project level. Automate billing and invoicing. |
| Customer Relationship Management | Manage customer contact data and payment details for past and present clients, and marketing for prospective and existing clients. |
Time Tracking Capabilities
Time tracking functionality allows architects to record billable and non-billable time spent on a project. The system allows architects to set a time when work begins, allowing the exact amount spent on the project to be recorded. Employees won’t have to go back and log time, so they don’t under or overestimate how long they spend on a project. This ensures your firm gets paid for all work completed.
The architecture project management system will create invoices based on the number of billable hours spent on the project. Upon approval, the invoices can be automatically sent to the client.
Resource Management Tools
Resource management tools in architecture project management software help firms assign the appropriate team members to projects they’re qualified to work on. The system will keep track of each employee’s schedule and any relevant certifications. Knowing each employee’s availability prevents overbooking and scheduling conflicts. Architecture project management systems have a calendar view that allows you to see project and employee schedules on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
Multi-location architecture firms can also track where each employee is located. This allows you to schedule projects for employees from the right location.
Project Accounting Features
Architecture project management software helps firms manage income and expenses for each project. The system tracks budgets, actual vs. estimated costs, and employee timesheets on a project level. This helps firms stay on budget and identify areas for improvement to maintain project profitability.
Many architecture project management systems integrate with full-featured accounting software like QuickBooks Online and Xero. This allows you to streamline financial management processes across your entire business. For example, you can run detailed financial reports that give you a clear picture of where your finances are. Reports can be run on total income and expenses, unpaid invoices, WIP balances, billable vs. non-billable hours, and more.
Dedicated industry-specific architecture accounting software also links with many architecture project management solutions. These accounting solutions come with features that architects need like time and billing and customer relationship management. This allows architecture firms to get paid for their work and manage customers.
Free Architecture Project Management Software
Free architecture project management solutions on the market are going to be generic and won’t include features that most architecture firms look for like time management. There are industry-specific project management solutions that offer free demos for a limited time. However, these demos are meant to be a test drive before purchasing the full system.
Many free solutions put a limit on the number of projects you can manage or users you can have. Some popular free project management software solutions include:
1 Wimi
Wimi has a free plan that allows access to all features for unlimited users and management for up to 8 projects. It is advertised as a project management solution for architects, as well as other businesses like consulting firms, creative teams, and accountants.
The paid plans allow you to add an unlimited number of projects. If you only need access to content sharing and document management, the Team Plan starts at $10/user/month. The Business Plan starts at $24.80/user/month and gives you access to all project management tools in Wimi. The Enterprise Plan provides access to the Customer Success Program features in Wimi, including a private API, user training and onboarding, data migration, and more—it requires a custom quote.
2 Asana
Asana’s free plan helps individuals and small start-up teams with project management. This solution includes task management, calendars, board and list views, and collaboration tools for up to 15 team members. The paid plans start at $10.99/month/user and are meant for teams that need help with project planning. These plans add more project management tools like portfolios, custom fields and templates, and advanced reporting.
3 Trello
Trello’s free plan includes unlimited cards, up to 10 boards, and 10MB of file storage per attachment. However, it’s limited to 10 collaborators per workspace. Its Standard plan at $5/user/month (billed annually) includes unlimited boards, increased storage (250MB/file), and up to 1,000 automation commands per month.
The Premium plan at $10/user/month suits teams managing multiple projects with added views like calendar and timeline. Finally, at $17.50/user/month, the Enterprise plan is designed for large organizations needing advanced security and multi-board access across teams, with features like SSO and unlimited workspaces.
