Where the week went.
Every practice asks its people for timesheets, and most get them late, rounded, and written from memory on a Friday. It is not that architects mind recording time. It is that the timesheet asks for things in the wrong shape: a code for the job, another for the activity, and nowhere to say that the morning was Stage 3 and the afternoon was Stage 4.
Yet the timesheet is how a practice knows whether a fee was enough, which stage runs over on every job, and whether the year will pay its way.
The week as a grid
The days across the top, the jobs and office work down the side. A new week starts with what you worked on in the last three weeks, so most weeks you only type the hours, however you write them: 7.5, 7:30, 1h30, 45m. Each day fills toward the hours you work that day, with bank holidays and booked leave already taken off.
Under each job you can say its RIBA stage (it starts on the stage the job is in), a deliverable, and the role you worked in if it was not your usual one, so a director covering for an architect is charged at the architect’s rate. None of it is required. Split a line to put the morning on one stage and the afternoon on another.
Fee-earning, and the rest
Each line says whether its time earns fees. Time on a live job does by default; time on a lead, and office work, does not. Rework the client will not pay for can be switched off. Office time goes on activities the practice already knows: admin, practice management, fee proposals and new business, marketing, research, CPD, IT, quality and compliance.
Reports show the time by job and its stages, by RIBA stage across the practice, by activity, and the fee-earning share against each person’s target.
Rates that keep their history
Each hour is priced with the rates in force on the day it was worked, so a pay rise in April never changes last year’s figures. A job can carry its own rates, the discounted director rate in a fee letter, say, and a rate checker shows which rate any hour would carry, and why.
From each person’s target, rates and costs, the practice model works out what the year should earn against staff costs and overheads, month by month beside what has been recorded, with a what-if to move targets, rates and realisation.
In the small print
- Press = in a cell to fill whatever is left of the day
- Copy last week, line for line, into this week’s empty days
- Hand in the week; recall it until it is approved
- Close time up to month end so nobody changes it after
- Your timesheet is seen by you and the owners and admins, not by colleagues
- Rates, costs and the value of time only for whoever sees the finances
- No nagging reminders: the Team page simply lists who is still to hand in
Questions practices ask
- Can time be recorded against RIBA stages?
Yes. Each job line can carry its RIBA stage, and starts on the stage the job is in now. Reports then show time by stage on each job, and by stage across the practice.
- Does a change in someone’s rate change past figures?
No. Every hour is priced with the rates in force on the day it was worked. If a rate was simply entered wrongly, past time can be re-priced over a range of dates on purpose.
- Can colleagues see each other’s timesheets?
No. Your time is seen by you and by the practice’s owners and admins. Money, meaning rates, costs and what time was worth, is seen only by those an owner has given the finances to.