Inaccurate timesheets mean undercharged invoices, unseen budget overruns, and fee negotiations you lose before they start.
The right time tracking software for architects fixes this, but most tools aren't built for how AEC firms actually work. We've reviewed the five best options so you can find the right fit for your practice, from dedicated architecture timesheet software to broader platforms.
| Tool | Best for | Standout Feature | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Milient Project Flow | AEC firms needing phase-level time, budgets & expenses in one place | Time logged directly against project phases with live budget burn | From £20/user/mo |
| Monograph | Small US architecture studios on QuickBooks | Clean phase-level timesheets with QuickBooks integration | From $450/mo (firm) |
| Productive | Digital & creative agencies wanting an all-in-one tool | Multiple time entry methods including calendar sync and auto-tracking | From $9/user/mo |
| Deltek | Large AEC firms & government contractors | DCAA/GDPR compliance with full ERP integration | Custom quote |
| Xero | Small firms & sole traders already using Xero for accounting | Tracked hours auto-populate client invoices | From £16/mo (firm) |
Milient Project Flow is a project management and timekeeping platform built specifically for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms.
Unlike generic time trackers, every hour logged in Project Flow ties directly to a project, phase, and budget, giving principals and project managers real-time visibility into costs, workload, and profitability without manual reconciliation.
Its deep integration between time registration, resource planning, and financial reporting makes it the strongest choice for firms that bill by project phase or fee agreement.
Project Flow packs a focused set of features designed around how architects and engineers actually work, logging hours against projects, tracking budgets in real time, and managing team availability across concurrent commissions.
Each team member logs hours directly against specific projects, phases, and task types, including work, meetings, and vacation. The team timesheet view gives managers a live, week-by-week breakdown of who worked on what, with status indicators so nothing falls through the cracks. Hours feed straight into project cost calculations, eliminating double-entry between your time tool and your project tracker.
Project Flow plots hours spent against productivity over time in a single chart, making it immediately obvious where a project is burning budget faster than output justifies. Managers can filter by project, phase, or date range and export the data for client reporting or internal reviews. This turns raw timesheet data into actionable insight without needing a separate BI tool.
Staff can submit expense reports, complete with receipt photos from the mobile app, and assign them directly to projects. On the management side, a cost composition dashboard breaks total spend down by general expenses, payroll, and service providers, with month-by-month filtering. This gives finance teams a single view of where project money is actually going, salary costs included.
| Plan | Price | Inclusions |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | £20/per user/mo | Everything in Grow + flexible reports, quality & compliance |
"Project Flow allowed me to stop relying on endless Excel spreadsheets. Updating the billable forecast is the feature that has saved me a huge amount of time. The support team is very responsive."
"The ease of use, it's intuitive enough. It would be nice to integrate the working hours spent on a project in the calendar, to have a more general overview of them."
Monograph is a US-based time tracking and project management tool for architecture and engineering firms. It connects timesheets to project phases, staff budgets, and QuickBooks Online, and is known for a clean interface that makes time entry straightforward. It covers the core tracking workflow well but stops short of being a full practice management suite.
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Annual | $450-$600/mo for 10 users, scales with headcount | 20% discount vs monthly billing |
| Monthly | Higher rate, scales with headcount | Contact Monograph for larger teams |
"My team of architects enjoy looking at and analysing data now. Fee and staffing projections are married together to give a clear picture of our firm's profitability."
"Support is quite a bit slower now and there is no community forum. Invoicing requires the review of multiple tabs simultaneously, we've suggested combining this but nothing has been done yet."
Productive is an agency management platform that combines time tracking, project management, budgeting, and CRM in one tool. It's built primarily for agencies and consultancies rather than AEC firms specifically, but its breadth makes it appealing to teams wanting to consolidate multiple tools.
Time tracking feeds directly into profitability reporting, and an AI-assisted layer is being added across the platform. It's broad by design, though that depth can bring a learning curve.
| Plan | Monthly Billing | Annual Billing | Key Inclusions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | $11/user/mo | $9/user/mo | Time tracking, project management, basic reporting |
| Professional | $28/user/mo | $24/user/mo | Advanced reporting, resource planning, budgeting |
| Ultimate / Enterprise | Custom pricing | - | Full suite + automation, custom support |
"A great tool to manage agency projects, timesheets, and finances. Easy to navigate, and super fast to get help if you need it. Very efficient and user friendly, covers project management, time logs, budgeting, and reporting."
"Productive gives great clarity on project progress and budgets, and whether projects are running on time or over. Very clear and easy to use on the whole. Though time tracking can be a bit fiddly and could be more streamlined."
Deltek is an enterprise ERP platform with a long-standing presence in the AEC and government contracting sectors.
Time tracking is one module within a much larger system covering project financials, CRM, compliance, and HR. The depth is real, but so is the complexity, it's an enterprise tool with enterprise overhead, and most small to mid-size architecture practices will find it disproportionate to their needs.
Deltek does not publish pricing. All plans are custom-quoted based on product line, modules, user count, and deployment. No free trial is available. Third-party sources estimate starting costs from around $30/user/month, but enterprise implementations run significantly higher.
"Intuitive interfaces and dashboards give great visibility into projects. Our launch went smoother than expected."
"Focused on the engineering space and customisable, but the interface feels dated. Entering time requires too many clicks and the AI agent is inconsistent — faster to bypass it entirely."
Xero is primarily an accounting platform with time tracking included via its Xero Projects module. It handles the timesheet-to-invoice workflow well for simple client billing, but it isn't designed around project phases or AEC workflows.
For practices needing more than basic hour logging, such as phase budgets, resource planning, or expense management against projects, it quickly shows its limits.
Xero is priced as accounting software, time tracking is included in paid plans rather than priced separately. UK pricing below (standard rates; promotional discounts available).
| Plan | Standard price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Ignite | £16/mo | Basic invoicing, limited to 20 invoices/mo |
| Grow | £37/mo | Unlimited invoices, performance dashboards |
| Comprehensive | £50/mo | Includes expenses and project tracking |
| Ultimate | £65/mo | Advanced analytics, multi-currency |
"Clean, intuitive UI that makes finance easy for both finance and non-finance staff. Strong integration ecosystem and good value compared to larger ERP platforms."
"Clean design and reports generate quickly. But bank reconciliation takes much longer when data isn't 100% accurate, and not being able to edit an invoice without removing the payment first is frustrating."
Not all time tracking tools are built the same, and for architecture firms, the gap between a generic tool and one designed for project-based work is significant. Here are the key features to look for before committing to a platform.
Architecture projects are structured around phases, schematic design, design development, construction documentation, and so on. Your time tracking tool needs to reflect this, so hours log against the right phase and feed into fee burn reporting accurately.
A tool that only tracks time by client or task will leave gaps in your project data. Milient Project Flow is built around exactly this structure, every timesheet entry maps to a project, phase, and activity, giving you real-time visibility straight from the timesheet.
Logging hours is only useful if those hours are automatically reflected in your project budget. Without this link, you're always working from yesterday's data, and by the time you spot an overrun, it's too late to act.
Look for a tool where time entries update budget burn automatically, without manual reconciliation. Milient does this natively, so project managers can see live fee consumption at any point, helping you track the financial metrics that matter without extra admin.
On-site visits, travel, materials, project expenses need to sit alongside time entries, not in a separate system. When expenses are siloed, reconciling project costs at invoice time becomes a manual headache.
The best tools let staff submit expenses directly against projects, ideally with mobile receipt capture. Milient includes expense reporting within the same platform, so your full project cost picture is always in one place, making invoicing faster and more accurate.
The best time tracking system in the world only works if people fill it in. Adoption is often the hardest part, and it comes down to how easy the tool is to use on a daily basis.
Look for a clean interface, mobile access, and ideally a calendar view that helps staff plan as well as record. Milient was developed directly with architects and engineers for this reason, and its mobile app means team members can log time from wherever they're working.
Depending on where your firm operates, time registration may carry legal obligations. EU regulations increasingly require firms to keep verifiable records of working hours. Your tool needs to support this with reliable audit trails and exportable reports, not as an afterthought, but as a core feature.
Milient is built with compliance in mind, with structured timesheet approval workflows and reporting that meets the financial and regulatory standards AEC firms need.
Choosing the right time tracking software comes down to one question: does it work the way your firm works? Generic tools can handle basic hour logging, but architecture practices need something that understands project phases, fee agreements, and the link between time and profitability.
If you're running a small US studio on QuickBooks, Monograph covers the basics. If you need enterprise ERP with compliance built in, Deltek has the depth, at the cost and complexity that comes with it. But for most AEC firms looking for a purpose-built tool that connects time, budgets, and expenses without the overhead of a full ERP, Milient Project Flow is the strongest fit.
The next step is understanding how your time actually translates into profit. Read our guide on making the most of non-billable work, or use our framework to assess whether a project is actually worth taking on. Or if you're ready to see how Milient works in practice, book a demo and we'll show you.
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