Time Tracking for Architects

This is a case study about real-life examples and configurations of using Anuko Time Tracker software for architects and architectural firms. It provides an example and step-by-step instructions how to set up Time Tracker in such environment.

Need to Track Work Time

Every professional who bills clients for their work time needs to use a time tracking tool. The point is to log which activities they worked on and when and what exactly was accomplished. Once a breakdown of work hours is known, invoices can be issued, payments or retainers secured, etc.

Real-Life Architectural Firms

In this case study we focus on usage patterns of Time Tracker tool for several real-life architectural companies. For privacy, their real names are replaced with an imaginary Architects R Us company name. Information about their projects and activities (or tasks) is also changed to some generic names. However, configuration options of Time Tracker groups are mostly retained, as well as their collections of plugins, so that you could use a similar setup if you are in the same boat.

What do architects do:

• They design structures and buildings.
• They sometimes do construction project management such as overseeing construction as per their architectural drawings.
• They may provide help with obtaining construction permits from local authorities. For it to be possible, their drawings must comply with local building codes, zoning regulations, and other requirements.
• They liaison with engineers and other professionals involved in projects such as topography surveyors, geotechnical engineers, septic field and system designers, arborists, structural engineers, civic engineers, road designers, and others.
• They may travel to work sites, local government offices for meetings, or to other locations such as land title offices.

When you track work time and possibly mileage (kilometers travelled to and from work) or expenses, all of the above activities need to be entered into a time tracking system. Some of them are entered as work time only, such as making architectural drawings, time spent on phone calls or in meetings. However, other activities such as travel (mileage) to work may be treated differently as extra out of pocket expenses.

An architect working alone would probably need to take care of the following:

• A few clients (customers). These are entities an architect is working for.
• A few projects (buildings already designed or currently in progress).
• Maybe one ongoing construction project under supervision.
• A few common as well as one-off tasks (or activities). Work on a single architectural project usually includes a lot of smaller parts working on these individual tasks. For example: meetings with client, discussing requirements, drawing plans, etc.
• Marketing activities. The architect may have a website that needs updating and do other marketing work required in a small business.

An architectural company consisting of several professonals working together would roughly have the same requirements but having larger number of clients and projects and also a larger scope of activities. There also may be several concurrent construction projects under supervision. Marketing category would be larger and include additional work items to promote the company. There may be HR, payroll related tasks, and other activities.

Below, we show how to set up such a company for time tracking.

Register a New Group

To start using Time Tracker, go to https://timetracker.anuko.com and register there (use the Register link). The screen asks for your group name (use company name here), manager name and password, as well as their email.

Add Users

Once logged in, add additional users to your group. You can do so on the Users tab. What we are doing here is adding people who work in our company to Time Tracker so that they can track their work time and expenses.

Below is a screenshot of how a typical user list may look like in an architect office. A few well-known employee types are listed here such as director, architect, student architect, drafter, exterior designer, interior designer, regulations expert, marketer, office admin, and assistant. These are just generic names, but feel free to make them specific. For example, you can add B1300 specialist or B 1300:2018 expert for a person who specializes in Austrian standard ÖNORM B 1300 (object safety tests for residential buildings).

When adding users you can assign them different roles. Use built-in roles such as User, Co-manager, or Manager with yourself being the Top manager in the group. These roles differ with access rights to the system, and can be roughly described as so:

• User: A regular member without management rights.
• Co-manager: A person with a big set of management functions.
• Manager: Group manager. Can do most of things for a group.
• Top manager: Has full, unrestricted control of the group.

If users just need to enter their time, assign them to the User role. You can assign others to management roles depending on their work function. Roles in Time Tracker are defined by their rank and a collection of access rights, which is editable. We don't need to edit the roles here. Built in roles are good enough for a company of architects, drafters, assistants and helpers.

Enable Clients Plugin

To be able to track work time for clients (customers) we need to enable the Clients plugin. By default, it is disabled after new group registration. So, we need to navigate to the Plugins page and enable it there. See how to work with clients. With enabled Clients plugin, we can now add a few clients. For example, if our architects work on house design for John Doe, we can add him to our client list.

Add Projects

A project is a fundamental concept in Time Tracker. Projects are entities for which time records (work hours and minutes) are logged. Projects can also be associated with expenses (not time entries) but more on this later.

Time records are entries Time Tracker database with associated properties such as user id, project id, task id and so on. One of these properties is duration of a record, or a number of work minutes (or hours). For example, if an architect was working on concept / preliminary design for John Doe future residence for 2 hours, then a time record would indicate so.

Some examples of projects for an architectural company:

• John Doe residence
• Jane Doe lake cottage
• Office building Munich
• Warehouse construction
• City of Newport bus terminal
• Municipality of Redding railway station
• Office work
• Marketing work
• Time off

A number of projects in a typical architectural firm tends to be rather large. They mostly differ by physical location. For example, an architectural office / bureau may be involved in design of hundreds of residences, buildings, structures, or open spaces.

After adding projects, we can associate them with clients by editing clients one by one. Technically, it is easier to create projects first, and clients second. This way when creating a new client we can associate them with projects on the client creation screen (active projects are listed there).

This reduces clutter in dropdown controls on time entry screens. Upon selecting a client, only associated projects will be available for further selection.

Change Tracking Mode

By default, after we register a new group, the tracking mode is set to projects. This means a breakdown of work by projects only. There is no additional categorization of work. Because architectural work is complex and involves a lot of tasks, we need to change the tracking mode to projects and tasks. This link explains how to change tracking mode. After that we can define projects as well as tasks (activities) and associate them with projects.

Some examples of tasks for an architectural company:

• Administrative activity
• Tender
• Meeting
• Drafting
• Concept creation
• Concept / preliminary design
• Design development
• Construction documents / final design
• Building physics
• Renovation concept
• Consulting and advise
• Fire protection planning
• Documentation
• Detailed planning
• Proposal preparation
• Submission
• Special requests / wishes processing
• Scheduling
• Construction supervision
• Foreman planning
• Inventory planning
• Working aid at construction site
• Bobcat services
• Excavator services
• Dumper / dump truck services
• Carpenter services
• Site visit
• Property inspection
• Time off - vacation
• Time off - sick leave / personal
• Time off - holiday
• Time off - unpaid
• Assessments / evaluations / cost estimates
• Completion
• Award negotiation
• Insurance related work
• Preservation of evidence
• Invoice verification
• Car ride
• Seminar
• CAD / DWG
• Floor plans
• Outdoor area plans
• Change plans

This list of tasks may become quite extensive. It has a tendency to also grow over time. This is where association of projects with tasks comes to reduce clutter. You can associate a project with only relevant tasks. Then, selecting a project in a project dropdown will leave only associated tasks in a task dropdown.

Below is how we do it. Go to the Projects tab and edit a project such as Time off. Select only the tasks / activities that are relevant to this project such as Time off - holiday, Time off - sick leave / personal, Time off - unpaid, and Time off - vacation. Then click Save.

Now if we go to the Time tab and select the Time off project, we'll see that the Task dropdown is populated with only configured tasks.

Start Tracking Time

Our Time Tracker configuration is now ready for basic time tracking without expenses. To track work time, we access Time Tracker in a desktop or a mobile browser. We then use the Time tab to maintain our time log. We can also use the Reports tab to do advanced reporting.

Punching Time In and Out

In some architect organizations there may be a requirement for some users to punch in and out. This means that records are started when users punch in (start working) and ended when they punch out (stop work). This can be accomplished by enabling the Punch mode. There are also Puncher plugin and an Android app to help with data entry.

• The Puncher plugin provides a simple form for data entry where users essentially have only the Start or Stop button in addition to field selectors.
• The Android app allows you to do offline live time tracking, similar to Puncher with an option to synchronize the data with Time Tracker server automatically or manually. It can be very handy in no networking situations such as on off-grid remote sites, or inside concrete structures or underground with unreliable connections. Say, an architect travels to a remote island in a boat to survey work, and there is no signal there. They use the app to record their work day offline, then sync the data when they are back in town.

Tracking Mileage and Expenses in Architectural Firm

So far, our work time tracking software allows us to log time records. But what if we want to additionally track mileage for architects to travel to / from work sites, purchased materials, or other expenses? We can easily do so by enabling the Expenses plugin.

What it does is adding another tab to the app called Expenses (localized to other languages, of course: Kosten in German (Deutsch) or Dutch (Nederlands), Dépenses in French (Français), Gastos in Portuguese (Português Brasileiro) and so on.

We can use the Expenses page to enter items that add a cost for projects. For example, travel time to work, hotel expenses, gas expenses, meals and entertainment, materials for project, and so on. We can also pre-configure common expense items for quicker and easier expense data entry. To pre-configurte architect expenses, use the Configure link on the Plugins page (shown on the picture above).

If there is a value added tax involved with expense accounting (VAT, GST, PST, etc.) in architectural bureau, you can mark the Tax checkbox to the right of the Expenses checkbox on the Plugins page. Tax percentage is used on invoices (see Invoicing for Architects below) and is configured individually for each client.

Using Custom Fields

So far, our projects and tasks time tracking mode provides a 2-level breakdown for architect activities. But in some architectural offices an additional characterization may be required. For example, you may want to specify whether the work was performed in office, on project site, or remotely from an architect's home office. You can accomplish this with Custom fields plugin. It is a very powerful plugin that allows us to add an unlimited number of custom fields to time entries that can be either text or dropdown controls with predetermined options.

In case of office / project / home work designation mentioned above, we need to introduce a dropdown custom field and call it, for example: Location. We then define the following dropdown options for it: home, project, office (or Home, Projekt, Büro in German). Now if we go to Time tracking page, we will see an additional control where we can select location when entering time records. Location is stored together with time records and can be used in architect time reporting.

Another realistic possibility in an architect bureau would be classifying work as per its HOAI 1-9 designation, see https://www.hoai.de/hoai/leistungsphasen/

There are 9 phases in typical architectural projects that HOAI 1-9 defines as:

• LP1: Grundlagenermittlung (Basic determination)
• LP2: Vorplanung (Preplanning)
• LP3: Entwurfsplanung (Design plnanning)
• LP4: Genehmigungsplanung (Approval planning)
• LP5: Ausführungsplanung (Implementation planning)
• LP6: Vorbereitung der Vergabe (Preparation of the award)
• LP7: Mitwirkung bei der Vergabe (Participation in the award)
• LP8: Objektüberwachung – Bauüberwachung und Dokumentation (Object supervision - construction supervision and documentation)
• LP9: Objektbetreuung (Object management)

To achieve such association of architect work time records with project phases, we may introduce a dropdown custom field with HOAI phases as options.

Invoicing for Architects

If you want to invoice clients of an architectural establishment you can easily do so. This involves enabling the Invoices plugin, which you can do on the Plugins page.

Before invoicing architect customers set up projects rates for all employees involved (architect, draftsman, exterior and interior designers, architect students / interns, etc.). Rates can be set individually on a per-project basis for each worker in architect firm. You can set architectural project rates by editing users from the Users tab.

If your architect company uses the Expenses plugin as explained above then expense items such as purchased materials are included in nvoices.