Time Tracking for Independent Architects and Interior Designers

Architecture and interior design projects run long. A residential build from concept to construction completion can span two years. An interior fit-out might run six months of design followed by twelve months of procurement. Over that timeline, accumulated time is enormous — and without rigorous tracking, a significant portion of it goes unbilled.

Phase-based billing and why it complicates tracking

Architectural services are typically divided into phases: concept design, design development, construction documentation, tender, contract administration, and site observation. Each phase has a different scope, a different level of effort, and often a different billing arrangement — either a fixed fee per phase or an hourly rate applied throughout.

The challenge is that phases overlap in practice. While you're finalising construction documents, you're also answering contractor questions from the last phase and taking briefing notes for the next one. Keeping time clearly attributed to the right phase — and therefore the right fee — requires active session logging, not retrospective guesswork.

Contract administration: the most under-billed phase

Contract administration is routinely the most under-billed phase in an architect's practice. Site visits are logged. The constant small interactions around them often aren't: a contractor's question by email, a quick call about a material substitution, reviewing a shop drawing, issuing a site instruction. Each interaction is 15-30 minutes. Across a full construction phase, they accumulate to dozens of hours.

Log every client and contractor interaction during construction administration. Start a timer when you open an email that requires a substantive response. Log site visits as separate sessions with a note on what was covered. At fee reconciliation, your records determine whether you were fairly compensated for the phase.

Multiple concurrent projects at different phases

Most independent architects run three to six projects at once, each at a different stage. Context-switching is constant. When you move from Project A's construction drawings to a call about Project C's concept, you need to close one session and open another — accurately.

The simplest discipline: one timer running at a time, per client. In Cashlog, client-switching is fast — pick a new client from the home screen and the previous session is already logged. No manual time entry, no trying to remember when you switched tasks.

Site visits and reports

A site visit has several components: travel there, inspection time, notes on site, travel back, site report preparation. Log the full block, not just the time you were standing on site. Site reports in particular — which can take an hour or more to prepare — are routinely undercharged because they're written in the evening after an already-long day and never logged as a discrete session.

Long timelines and the value of accurate records

On a two-year project, your session log becomes a project diary. When a client queries a fee at practical completion, you can produce a clear record of every engagement across the full project — dates, durations, what was covered. That record is the difference between a credible fee discussion and one that relies on memory. Cashlog keeps that record indefinitely, by client, with the ability to generate an invoice at any point from the accumulated session log.