Archinect - Project Costing Systems

Duggan Morris Architects

2016-05-11T07:45:52-04:00

Delighted to have started to work with Duggan Morris Architects on Business and Costing systems. Have a look at their website to see the exciting work they are responsible for.

Accounts nightmare now dream

2016-04-10T07:11:12-04:00

Well, contrary to what I preach, I have been slightly remise in my accounts, putting if off because I am too busy. I use a wonderful finance system called Xero and being a one man band just really have bank payments as expenditure. Its simple but I still had 300 bank payments to reconcile, mostly parking, train fares and coffee. Xero imports all of these transaction straight from my bank. Great, but them I have to find the receipt, number it, file it, and match it. Hence over 300 of the. However, I have found a saviour, Receipt Bank. You take a picture of the receipt, it files it, it transfers it to Xero with most of the coding completed and you throw away the paper receipt. I was sceptical until I took a picture of a petrol receipt, old wrinkled and faded. It captured it, after one entry knew it was a petrol receipt and coded it to motor expenses. Any way, nearly up to date!!!

Any info please feel free to contact me.

Everyone is busy, we must be doing okay !!!

2015-09-08T07:11:37-04:00

Unfortunately the idea of peering over your desk and seeing your staff busy meant that you were doing "okay" is no longer valid - if indeed it ever was! In the current economic environment of salary inflation and Fee stagnation costs are edging seriously close to fees. The only option to counter this is efficiency. Efficiency in staff utilisation project utilisation, Project utilisation is ensuring that we are only working on what we are being paid to do - and no more. One of the first questions is "do your staff know the brief", and does that brief contain only what the fee allows for. How can you expect your staff to flag a possible variation if they don't know what the fee covers? Unfortunately I have had too many conversations about over budget projects where, on further investigation there has been work carried out that should have been charged for, or not done!. The starting point is information. Information on the Fee, the scope, and progress. The core of this information is ...

First Principles - Why do Time sheets?

2015-08-31T16:56:07-04:00

I recently attended a meeting of FD's of Architectural Practices in London. As you can imagine, more of a therapy session than anything else. Humorously, a question was posed, "why bother with timesheets". As much as the Architectural staff begrudge doing them, finance and support staff hate the monthly task of nagging, the inane excuses and general "slog" of getting timesheets completed. So why bother? Putting that question aside, I would like to recall another question, this time from a Partner of a medium sized firm. His question was "why do we have to justify our fees and time all the time to clients - why don't they see the value in what we do". Maybe the two questions can be answered together. If we don't value our time, why should clients value our time. Given anything you value (holidays, money etc), you measure, If you want your clients to value the time you spend on their projects, value your time you spend on projects and measure it - do your time sheets. Not as a chore b...