Last updated November 6, 2026
Architecture project management, on the money side, means turning each stage fee into a budget of hours, logging the team's time against that stage every week, comparing hours used with work done, and invoicing when the agreed trigger arrives. That comparison catches an overrun while you can still do something about it.
This guide is about keeping a fixed fee profitable while the project runs. Design coordination and the statutory side are a different subject, and the RIBA Plan of Work overview is the place for those.
How do you turn a stage fee into a budget of hours?
Turn a stage fee into a budget of hours by holding back a contingency and dividing what remains by your blended rate. Here's an invented example, with a 10% contingency and a blended rate of £85 an hour:
| Stage | Fee | Less 10% held back | Budget hours at £85 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Concept Design | £6,000 | £5,400 | 63 |
| 3 Spatial Coordination | £8,400 | £7,560 | 88 |
| 4 Technical Design | £11,600 | £10,440 | 122 |
Hours are rounded down. If you wrote the fee proposal from past hours, the budget should be close to what you estimated then. Tell the team the number. A budget only the director knows about can't influence anyone's Tuesday.
How do you track team time against a stage fee?
Track team time against a stage fee by having everyone log hours to the project and the stage at least weekly, then comparing the total with an honest estimate of how much of the stage is done.
Three rules make the numbers usable:
- Log to the stage, not only the project. "Smith House: 6 hours" can't tell you which fee it came out of.
- Log additional services separately. They're paid on top, so hours on them shouldn't eat the stage budget. See additional services.
- Estimate progress from what's been produced. Count the drawings and tasks left, and ignore the hours used. Otherwise the check proves nothing.
The tracker itself can be one row per stage. Here it is for the same invented job, four weeks into Stage 3:
| Stage | Budget hours | Hours used | Budget used | Work done | Projected total | Over or under |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Concept Design | 63 | 58 | 92% | 100% | 58 | 5 under |
| 3 Spatial Coordination | 88 | 62 | 70% | 50% | 124 | 36 over |
| 4 Technical Design | 122 | 6 | 5% | 5% | 120 | 2 under |
Projected total is hours used divided by work done, so Stage 3 reads 62 ÷ 50% = 124. That's 36 hours over budget, or £3,060 at £85, more than the £840 contingency held back on that stage. You now know that with half the stage still to run. The guide to budget hours vs actual hours goes deeper into reading these numbers on a single fixed-fee job.
What do you do when a stage is running over?
When a stage is running over, find the cause before you decide anything, because each cause has a different fix.
| Cause | What to do |
|---|---|
| The client changed something | Stop and agree it as an additional service |
| The design hasn't settled | Get a director to make the decision that's holding it up |
| The job is too senior or too junior for the people on it | Change who's doing what, since the blended rate moves too |
| More coordination with consultants than you assumed | Check your assumptions in the appointment, and raise it if they've been broken |
| The estimate was too low | Finish the stage, take the loss and correct your numbers for the next proposal |
Don't quietly borrow hours from Stage 4. The next stage's budget is what pays for the next stage, and the shortfall just arrives later with less time to fix it.
When should you bill a stage: at the end, monthly or by instalment?
Bill a stage at the point your appointment says, and if it doesn't say, monthly by progress is usually the best option on stages lasting more than a few weeks.
| Pattern | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| At the end of each stage | Short stages, small jobs | You fund the whole stage, and a stalled project leaves it unbilled |
| Monthly, by share of work done | Stages 2 to 4 on larger jobs | Needs a progress figure the client accepts |
| Equal monthly instalments | Stage 5, over the contract period | State what happens if the build overruns |
For monthly billing, invoice the stage's progress to date less what you've already billed. On the invented job, Stage 3 at 50% earns £4,200 of the £8,400 fee. If £2,800 has gone out already, this month's invoice is £1,400 plus VAT. Hours used don't come into it. The guides to RIBA stage fees and progress billing cover the wording and how to set up the stages.
Where do projects like this usually go wrong?
Fixed-fee architecture projects usually go wrong through small habits that hide the numbers until it's too late.
- Time typed in weeks later. Nobody remembers, so everything lands on whichever project is loudest.
- Reviewing only at stage end. By then the hours are spent and the client has signed off.
- Treating hours used as progress. A stage that's 70% through its hours isn't 70% done.
- No owner. One named person should review each project's numbers each week, even in a small practice.
- Unlogged "quick favours" for the client. Each one is small. Together they're often the overrun.
Running stages and invoices in ERPFlow
ERPFlow doesn't have a timer or timesheets today. Time tracking, including converting tracked time into invoices, is coming soon. ERPFlow has no stage budgets, staff rates or per-project profitability, and expenses aren't linked to projects, so the tracker above stays in a spreadsheet. Here is what ERPFlow does cover:
- The board. A board in Projects per job, linked to its customer, with columns named after your stages. The signed appointment can sit in the board's own attachments. See how projects work. Boards are unlimited on every plan, and the Free plan caps cards at 10.
- The work. A card per deliverable or stage, with assignees, a deadline, files, comments and time spent typed in as hours and minutes. Totals add up per project and per customer, and the card export gives you the time per card for your tracker.
- The fee. A quote with one line per stage. A service can hold your hourly rate for additional work.
- The stage invoice. This is an ordinary invoice with an edited line. Convert the quote, delete the other stages, and set the line to this period's amount, such as "RIBA Stage 3: 50% of £8,400, less £2,800 invoiced" at £1,400. The draft keeps the quote's project, and the quote's Linked documents lists every invoice made from it, so you can see what's been billed so far.