In Numbers
What the switch means day to day
What consultancies and IT service providers measure with QUANTICAL.ERP day to day.
What project time tracking has to do in planning offices
An architecture or engineering office knows its fee before it works the first hour. The HOAI fee scale or the contract fixes it, per service phase. What the office does not know is the number of hours it will need for it. Exactly in that difference the margin appears or disappears, phase by phase.
In a planning office, time tracking is therefore not a record for the client but an early warning system for the office itself. Whoever notices during construction documentation that the design phase has used up the fee can no longer do anything about it.
QUANTICAL.ERP sets hours and fee against each other per service phase, continuously. Additional services and construction delays are billed by the hour, progress invoices are added as separate lines. And capacity planning shows whether the team can carry the next building project.
How planning offices work with QUANTICAL.ERP
Building projects and service phases as projects
A building project runs as a project group, each service phase as a project within it, with a term and its share of the fee as the budget. Hours can be booked and evaluated per phase, and the building project as a whole stays visible in the group. Change orders and additional services get their own project with an hourly rate.
Assign the team, rates and internal costs
Only people assigned to the project can book on it. Each assignment carries an hourly rate for billing by effort, with a validity period. The cost of an hour comes from the stored salaries. Project lead, architect and draughtsperson thus enter the income statement with their own rates and costs.
Hours against fee, phase by phase
In controlling you see per service phase how much of the fee budget the booked hours have already used and where the phase ends at the current booking rate. If the design phase runs out of budget, you see it in the design phase, not at the close of the building project.
Progress invoices and billing by effort
Progress and final invoices per service phase are entered as manual invoice lines with an amount. Additional services, construction delays and consulting by effort come from bookings times rate, with a record of hours if you wish. Both run in the monthly invoice run in your office's branding, and the receivable is created automatically.
Capacity across several building projects
Weekly hours, vacation and sickness produce the target per employee, and bookings run against it. Planned hours per project and period show who is free in the coming months before you accept a new commission.
Where Excel and office software without time data fail planning offices
Most offices know their fees precisely and their hours roughly. Hours lists in Excel are merged at month end, often filled in from memory, and the comparison with the fee per service phase happens once, at the close of the building project.
By then it is too late. The margin of a service phase is decided during the phase, while a project lead can still change course. A comparison after the fact is an explanation, not steering.
Office software for tendering and cost control does not help here. It calculates construction costs, not the office's hours. What is missing is the link between the time the team invests and the fee that is fixed for it.
Frequently asked questions from architects and engineers
Does QUANTICAL.ERP calculate the fee under HOAI?
No. You determine the fee with your HOAI calculator or from the contract and store it per service phase as a budget. QUANTICAL.ERP sets the booked hours against that budget continuously and bills additional services by effort.
How do we model service phases?
As projects within a project group per building project. Each service phase has its own budget, its own assignments and term. Change orders and additional services get their own project with an hourly rate.
How do we issue progress invoices?
As manual invoice lines with description and amount, in the monthly invoice run or individually. Services by effort come from bookings times rate onto the same or a separate invoice.
Do we see the margin per service phase?
Yes. Bookings and the stored salaries produce the cost, and the fee budget stands against it. The projection shows where the phase ends at the current booking rate.
What does QUANTICAL.ERP cost for a planning office?
12.90 euros per user per month, cancellable monthly, all features included. Before that, 90 days free with the full feature set and no payment details required.