Timesheets and project budgets for small architecture firms

Who this is for: architecture firms of about 5 to 25 people in San Francisco and the Bay Area that want to track time by phase and see project budgets clearly, either without Ajera or with fewer Ajera seats. Every number below is sourced and dated. Example numbers are marked as made up.

The short answer

Time and budget tracking needs less software than you might think. Get three pieces right:

1. A project list with a fee for each phase. Use the phases in your owner-architect agreement, for example Schematic Design (SD), Design Development (DD), Construction Documents (CD), and Construction Administration (CA).
2. A weekly timesheet where every hour goes to a project and a phase. Hours are recorded by day.
3. One weekly check. For each active phase, compare the share of fee used with the percent complete.

A shared spreadsheet can do all three. A small tool the firm owns does the same with fewer mistakes. You can try one now: our time and budget demo runs in your browser with fake data.

What to track, and what to skip

Track these

• Projects and phases. Project number, name, client, project manager, status, and each phase with its fee and budget hours.
• Hours by day. Person, date, project, phase, hours, and an optional note. Daily hours matter in California (see below).
• Overhead codes. A single internal project with phases for admin, marketing and proposals, PTO and holidays, and training. That way every hour has a home and your utilization numbers are honest.
• Rates. A bill rate and a cost rate for each person. Bill rate turns hours into fee used. Cost rate shows what the hours cost you.
• Percent complete. The project manager updates it for each active phase once a week. It is a judgment call, and that is fine.

Skip these at first

• Task lists inside each phase. Add them later only if a phase keeps going over and you need to see why.
• Timers that run while people work. Weekly entry by day is enough for phase budgets.
• Approval chains with several steps. One simple rule to try: staff submit by Monday, and the PM or principal approves by Tuesday.

The one weekly check: fee used versus percent complete

Here is the math, with made-up numbers.

A 15 point gap at the halfway mark gives you time to act: talk to the client about scope, move a senior person off the phase, or plan an additional services request. Found at the end of CD, the same gap is just a loss.

Our demo marks a phase at risk when fee used runs more than 10 points ahead of percent complete, and over budget once fee used passes the phase fee. Those thresholds are our choice, not an industry rule. Set your own.

Three simple setups

1. A shared spreadsheet

Two tabs are enough.

• Projects tab: project number, name, PM, phase, phase fee, budget hours, percent complete.
• Time tab: date, person, project number, phase, hours, bill rate.

A summary tab adds up hours x bill rate by project and phase with SUMIFS, then shows fee used, percent used, and the gap from percent complete.

• Cost: no new license if you already pay for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
• Weak points: typos in project numbers, a formula someone overwrote, past weeks nobody locked, and one person who understands how it all works.

2. A general time tracker plus the same budget sheet

Staff enter time in a general time tracking app, and once a week someone exports a CSV into the Projects tab. This fixes daily entry on phones, but you still maintain the budget sheet by hand, and phases have to be set up the same way in both places. We are not naming products or prices here because we have not sourced current prices for them yet. Check that the app lets you tag hours by project and phase and export them to CSV.

3. A small tool the firm owns

This is what our time and project-budget demo shows, with a made-up 14-person firm:

• A weekly timesheet by project and phase, with a button to copy last week’s rows.
• A project health view: fee, fee used, percent complete, estimate at completion, and on track, at risk, or over budget for each phase.
• A staff view with missing timesheets, people over 40 hours last week, and utilization.
• CSV import for projects and phase fees, and CSV export of timesheets and project status as a file you can hand to your bookkeeper. Test the import into your accounting system before you rely on it.

Everything in the demo stays in your browser. A real build uses your phases, rates, and export format. The catch: someone has to build and maintain it, and the export into your accounting or billing system has to be tested before you rely on it.

What this costs next to Ajera seats

Deltek does not publish Ajera prices. The figures below are third-party estimates, not quotes.

ITQlick also estimates $5,000 to $20,000 to implement Ajera for small and mid firms. Source: ITQlick, Deltek Ajera pricing, seen in search results 2026-09-27. The table assumes every person who logs time needs a seat. The full breakdown, with the questions to ask your Deltek rep, is in what Deltek Ajera really costs a small architecture firm.

Ajera does more than timesheets: invoicing, AR, AP, and a general ledger (Deltek, Ajera product page). If you already have it and your accountant depends on it, one middle path is to keep Ajera for accounting and move time and budgets to a simpler tool. That only saves money if Deltek lets you drop or downgrade seats for people who only log time, so ask before you plan around it.

Bay Area rules your timesheet has to handle

These are facts to plan around, not legal advice. Check with your payroll provider or an employment lawyer.

California daily overtime

For non-exempt employees, California requires 1.5 times the regular rate for hours over 8 in a workday, up to 12, and double time past 12, plus overtime past 40 hours in a week (California Labor Commissioner, overtime FAQ, checked 2026-09-29). The same page says employers have a duty to keep accurate time records. A timesheet that only stores a weekly total per project cannot show daily overtime. Record hours by day. If your drafters, interns, or admin staff are hourly, this matters most for them.

San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance

SF’s HCSO covers employers with 20 or more workers, and the city says employers must “maintain records to show that you are in compliance” (sf.gov, HCSO, checked 2026-09-29). For 2026, Newfront lists the medium employer rate (20 to 99 employees) at $2.74 per hour payable (Newfront, 2026 HCSO rates, published 2025-08-26, checked 2026-09-29). Sf.gov lists $2.99 for medium employers from January 1, 2027. Because the rate is per hour, a firm near 20 people should know where its hours data lives and whether payroll can use it.

Moving time tracking off Ajera without breaking billing

1. List who uses what. For each seat: time entry only, reports only, accounting, or inactive.
2. Set up projects and phases in the new setup. Import them from an Ajera export if you can, so project numbers match exactly.
3. Run both for a month. Staff enter time in the new tool. Someone checks the weekly totals against Ajera.
4. Test the handoff to billing. Whoever does invoicing must be able to bill from the new hours without retyping them.
5. Only then change seats, at renewal or whenever your contract allows. Get the answer from Deltek in writing.

Get a second opinion first

Start free: email the tools your firm pays for, with seats paid and people who use each, and within 2 business days you get a one-page Software Cost Snapshot with the yearly cost per tool and 3 questions for renewal. No obligation.

If one workflow looks expensive, the $350 Workflow Ownership Audit is the next step. It looks at one workflow, here your time and budget tracking, and what it really costs you. You get a written keep, repair, switch, or build recommendation with the math visible. Sometimes the answer is to keep what you have. If we later build a tool for you, the $350 is credited toward the build. See how the audit works, or browse all guides.