I was wondering if anyone could suggest a better way of recording consultant's fees.

My firm has been using Archioffice since 2005 and this seems to be the one issue that keeps coming up for discussion.

If my firm has a stipulated sum for a job and we have 4 separate consultants, is there any way to create a separate matrix for the consultants below the main matrix? This way we can track how far along they are in the project and how much of their stipulated fee they have charged. We could track our consultants as though they were separate businesses each with a stipulated sum independent of our fee.

Right now the way Archioffice is set up consultants are treated as expenses and there is now way to track their progress. For example, “Consultant “x” is 50% complete with Design Development”. Consultant’s fees are mixed in with the Architectural fees and there is no way to distinguish how much of the stipulated sum remaining is ours vrs what we owe consultants. My firm tracks our consultants separately on an excel spreadsheet, which is time consuming and seems to defeat the purpose of Archioffice.

Please any suggestions would be helpful.

Richard,

I hear you. And EVERYONE ELSE who's been complaining about the same thing is cheering you on.

Today, with the help of Robert Siegel, a great ArchiOffice user in NYC, we finally devised a great method to allow this (and much more). I won't discuss it here, but look for a new blog item within the next week which will describe the new process. It's going to take a couple of months to develop, but I hope it makes it into v8.6. If not, most certainly by 8.7.

Steve

Steve,
When do you expect v8.6 & v8.7 to be released? We are a small office that is beginning to implement ArchiOffice and are struggling with the same issue. I think this new feature will be very helpful.

This has been a REAL PROBLEM...We cannot use the power of the program without consultants being fully integrated. Are we that wierd?????Most architects have consultants totalling 30-50% of gross fee or HIGHER for labs, museums etc..

Yes, Yes, Yes - we know. We are taking action on improving our ability to track consultants. In the next upgrade of ArchiOffice (expected May/June - 08), we will allow you to "drill-down" into Phases and Codes. This means that you can have a Phase with sub-phases each having their own budget - or fees that comprise the header phase. For example - the Header phase could be "03 Design Development" and their would be Detail Phases such as "03 Architectural Fes" and "03 Structural Consultant" and "03 MEP Consultant," etc. You can assign a budget for all these detail phases and they would be rolled up into the header phase. You will also be able to invoice at the detail level. For instance - you can say you want the invoice to have 50% of the Architectural Fee and 25% of the Structural Consultant fee...

The ability to drill-down into Phases and Codes is only one, tiny new feature for the next upgrade of Archioffice.

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