archioffice/billquik?

[Juintow Lin]

Hello fellow members, has anyone given archioffice or billquick a try? I would love to use it but I use Quickbooks online, which doesn’t work with archioffice, so would need to use billquik, which is not exactly built for architects? Thanks! Any input needed.

Currently I use QB Online and this very complicated spreadsheet to track hours/billing, etc. to see how each job is going, not sure if anyone has a better solution. I use hubstaff for time tracking.

[Don Jamieson]

Hi Juintow. I haven’t looked at archioffice but we use a combination of Xero for accounts/billing and Workflow Max for time allocation and recording. These two programmes are cloud based and integrate with each other. You can have a common client list and also do billing from Workflow Max. May be worth a look.

[David Sisson]

I use QB for book keeping / accounting and Toggl for time tracking. Toggl outputs to excel, and has nice graphics itself. Not sure if it integrates with QB, but I love Toggl.

 

[David Sisson]

Sorry, I should mention that I’m a bit behind the curve in terms of tracking estimates vs actuals in terms of time. In some ways though, it does not matter, better to value price the work then set deadlines/benchmark dates for your staff and let them figure out how to hit the deadlines. If your staff is on salary, the only point to time tracking is to have a database of time req’d for past jobs to refer to when pricing new jobs. If you decouple time tracking from profitability you stop putting your thumb on your employees, give them the tools to hit the deadlines and destress yourself from worrying about time. Efficiency should be about profitability, not about time.

[Juintow Lin]

Thanks All, for these insightful replies. I would love to hear more about how to give employees tools to hit deadlines, that Dave S. refers to. Will check out toggl and xero/workflow too!

[David Sisson]

Juintow-I’m working on what these tools are. Really-this is project and resource management, which results in setting deadlines and giving your employees the information (quality level, financial info and expectations) then letting them do it. For me, this means building a solid business and marketing plan that links to office systems (like e-myth) . This takes a lot of decisions out of the hands of the employee, allows them to focus on production and quality instead of drudgery and reinvention of the wheel. A process I’m working on, and one that is specific to each firm, so I can’t share yet.

[Marie Grimaldi]

After research and a 60 day trial of archioffice, our 12 member firm settled on BigTime for time tracking and project management in coordination with our Qbooks Desktop. It seems as if there is not one standard in the architecture field for small offices. I came upon the BigTime reference in an architectural chat formum. Believe it or not, this is one of the cheaper options. Our office manager had some issues with it, but not as many as Archioffice. We have been using this for 6 months. We have to streamline the project management process, and it’s not perfect, because you are running two systems, QB and BigTime. So you need to ensure that both match up if any changes are made.

[Delcie Dobrovolny]

We have been using ArchiOffice since 2010. Overall we really like it and it gives staff the tools they need. Although we use a local version of Quickbooks, we don’t sync the two programs. We tried it, but didn’t like how Archioffice sent data to Quickbooks. So we’re currently using them independently. That means entering some data twice, but we’ve found it’s worth the extra effort as it has allowed us to catch come errors. About a year ago I was told by one of the salespeople at BQE/ArchiOffice that they are planning to merge the two programs into one. I don’t know if that is still in the works, but it might be the solution you’re looking for.

[Brian Lewis]

We have been using ArchiOffice since it was launched in the early 2000’s. We don’t integrate Quickbooks with ArchiOffice. AO has some issues. For one, it’s slow – at least on our system. Second, when the web goes down or if a problem occurs with ArchiOffice, our whole office comes to a standstill. We still use the software even though we have abandoned some of the features that we find impractical in our firm but I admit it’s easier to use in a very small firm. Despite all this it is worth looking at.

 

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