The project management platform built exclusively for architecture and design studios. Pipeline, tasks, capacity, budgets, and billing — in one place.
The Problem
Studios manage projects across dozens of tabs — budgets, phases, team allocation, files — all disconnected and out of date by the time anyone looks.
A blocked task in Permitting delays Construction Docs, which delays the entire project — but nobody sees it until the deadline passes.
You don't know who's overloaded until they're burning out. No tool shows you how your team's hours map across projects over the next 8 weeks.
of architecture firms say they "manage projects primarily with spreadsheets and email," according to industry surveys. Generic PM tools like Asana, Monday, and ClickUp don't solve this — they just move the spreadsheet to the cloud.
The Solution
Arcova replaces your spreadsheets, disconnected tools, and guesswork with a single platform designed around architectural project phases.
Discovery, Schematic, Design Dev, Const Docs, Permitting, Construction, Closeout. Every project moves through the phases your studio already uses.
See every team member's workload across the next 8 weeks. Color-coded cells show who's light, who's full, and who's overloaded — before burnout hits.
Build a custom budget per phase at project creation — pick flat fee, hourly NTE, or non-billable for each. Burn rate, hours, and over-budget alerts roll up automatically.
Floating timer attached to any task or sub-task, weekly timesheet grid, and billable / non-billable entries. The same hour drives the budget burn and the client invoice — entered once.
Firm Performance
Arcova speaks the language of firm owners. Not just task completion — utilization, realization, burn rate, and revenue per FTE.
72%
Utilization Rate
Hours logged vs. total team capacity
$178K
Monthly Burn
Portfolio spend velocity
$21.3K
Revenue / FTE
Collected revenue per team member
87%
Realization Rate
Value billed vs. value worked
Why this matters
Monograph reports firms using practice management tools see +21% revenue per FTE. Arcova gives you the same firm-level metrics plus the project management layer that Monograph lacks — Kanban, Gantt dependencies, file versioning, and project chat.
Platform
Dashboard
Portfolio overview with pipeline visualization, budget utilization, revenue snapshot, and firm KPIs at a glance.
Kanban Board
Linear-style task management with drag-and-drop, 6 statuses, cross-project filtering, and task dependencies.
Tasks & Sub-tasks
Tabular task list with parent/child hierarchy, hour estimates, billability flags, and overrun / under-estimate analytics.
Timeline / Gantt
12-week visual timeline with task bars, blocker indicators, and critical path visibility across all projects.
Timesheet & Timer
Floating timer attached to any task or sub-task, weekly timesheet grid, billable/non-billable entries, and weekly reports.
Team Workload
8-week capacity heatmap showing utilization by team member. See who's light, who's full, and who needs help.
Client CRM
Client directory by type (Institutional, Hospitality, Residential, Government, Developer) with projects, tasks, and budget context.
Consultants
External consultant directory — structural, MEP, civil, landscape — with per-project assignments and contract tracking.
Expenses
Per-project expense tracking — reimbursables, consultant fees, materials — with markup rules and invoice pass-through.
Billing & Invoicing
Native time tracking, unbilled hours by project, invoice creation, and revenue analytics.
File Management
Per-project file storage with templated folder structure, version history, and upload attribution.
Sustainability Tracking
UNIQUELEED, Passive House, Net-Zero, WELL — track sustainability targets per project. No competitor has this.
From budget to billable hour
The budget you set at project creation flows into the tasks your team works on, and the time they log feeds directly back into burn rate and invoices. No re-entry, no reconciliation.
Multi-tier Budgets
Defined at project creation
When you create a project, you don't just set a single number — you build a budget per phase (Discovery, Schematic, DD, CDs, Permitting, Construction, Closeout) and pick the fee model for each phase independently:
Flat fee
Fixed amount for the phase. Burn tracks against the cap.
Hourly (NTE)
Hours × rate, capped at a Not-To-Exceed ceiling per phase.
Non-billable
Tracked for visibility but excluded from invoices and revenue.
Each phase budget carries its own start/end dates, status (Not started → In progress → Complete), and notes — so a single project can mix flat-fee Schematic with hourly-NTE Construction Admin and non-billable Closeout, exactly the way real architectural contracts are structured.
Tasks & Sub-tasks
Hierarchical work breakdown
Phases are too coarse for daily work, so every project breaks down into parent tasks with nested sub-tasks. Use it to model a real architectural deliverable — "Permit set" → "Coordinate with structural" → "Resolve RFI #14" — instead of flattening it into a giant checklist.
Each task and sub-task has its own assignee, due date, status (6 states inc. Blocked), priority, dependencies, and a billable / non-billable flag. Sub-task hours roll up into the parent, and the parent rolls up into the phase budget — so an overrun in "Wall sections" is visible at every level.
Time Recording
Inside the task itself
Time is logged against the task or sub-task the work belongs to — never against a vague project bucket. Two ways in:
Floating Timer
Click "Start" on any task. The timer follows you across the app, attaches the entry to that task on stop, and you can switch tasks without losing context.
Weekly Timesheet
Grid view of the week. Type hours per task per day, mark each entry billable or non-billable, submit for approval, export the weekly report.
Logged hours immediately reduce the remaining budget on the parent task → parent phase → project total. Billable entries flow into invoicing; non-billable entries stay visible in utilization metrics but never hit a client invoice. The same hour drives the timesheet, the burn rate, and the invoice — entered once.
Inside the Projects dashboard
The Projects dashboard answers two different questions: "Where is the work?" and "Where is the money?" Each tab is built around one of those.
Active
Stacked card per active project. Sortable by efficiency, overruns, phase, contract size, name.
Each project card shows 4 metric bars
Hours
Logged vs planned, with efficiency %. Red bar = overrun, amber = >100%.
Budget
Spent vs total. Color flips: green < 90%, amber 90–100%, red > 100%.
Tasks
Done vs total, completion %. Click into the project to drill down.
Schedule
Phase N of 7, with current phase name and overall % complete.
Plus a task-health strip
MoneyGantt
A Gantt chart denominated in dollars instead of dates — contract money flow at a glance.
Four nested money states per project
The gap between bars tells the story: Logged > Invoiced = unbilled work-in-progress. Invoiced > Paid = collections lag. Logged > Planned = scope creep. One screen, every cash-flow risk in the firm.
Inside the Capacity dashboard
Capacity isn't a static number — it changes by week, by squad, by horizon. Three tabs answer the question at the resolution you need.
This week
Where everyone stands right now, segmented by load bucket.
Below the chips, an allocation breakdown per person — a stacked bar where each colored segment is a project. Click a segment to jump into that project. The capacity ceiling is drawn as a vertical marker on the bar.
Forward 8wk
8-week heatmap projecting load forward — staffing decisions, made early.
Color = load %. Spot a red column 6 weeks out and you have time to reassign, hire, or descope before it becomes a fire.
By team
Roll up by internal team — Design, Tech, Interiors — to see which squad is the bottleneck.
Average load per squad, plus per-member mini-bars expanded below — so a partner can answer "should we hire another tech architect?" in five seconds.
Inside the Tasks dashboard
Three tabs that turn the raw task list into estimating intelligence — so the next proposal you write isn't built on hope.
All
The full task list, n-level deep, sortable and filterable.
Four KPIs at the top
147
Total tasks
2,180h
Estimated
1,612h
Billable logged
284h
Non-billable
Filter row · 6 facets
Hierarchical tree, n levels deep
Sortable on 9 columns (id, title, project, assignee, status, priority, due, hours, billable). Filter a sub-task and ancestors auto-expand so you never lose context.
Overruns
Every task where logged hours exceeded the estimate, ranked by severity.
| Task | Est | Logged | Over |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coordinate w/ structural | 12h | 38h | +26h (317%) |
| Permit set revisions | 24h | 41h | +17h (171%) |
| Door & window schedule | 16h | 22h | +6h (138%) |
Severity color: red > 200%, amber 130–200%, light amber 100–130%. Click a row → jump straight into the project.
Under-estimate
Done tasks that came in below 70% of the estimate — your padding is showing.
| Task | Est | Logged | Saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Site analysis diagrams | 40h | 18h | ↘ −22h (45%) |
| Material library setup | 32h | 14h | ↘ −18h (44%) |
| Renderings · interior | 28h | 17h | ↘ −11h (61%) |
Use this tab to tighten future estimates — recurring under-estimates mean the studio is leaving money on the table at proposal time.
Comparison
| Feature | Arcova | Monograph | BQE Core | Asana | Monday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arch. phases | 7 phases | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Kanban + Gantt | Both | No | Basic | Both | Both |
| Capacity heatmap | 8-week | Yes | Yes | No | Pro only |
| Budget by phase | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Client CRM | Built-in | No | Yes | No | No |
| Time tracking | Native | Native | Native | No | Pro |
| Invoicing | Native | Yes | AIA | No | No |
| File versioning | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sustainability | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Modern UI | Yes | Yes | Dated | Yes | Yes |
Arcova combines the architectural depth of Monograph/BQE Core with the project management power of Asana/Monday — in a single, modern platform.
Demo Flow
The demo walks through a single project — Huntsville Eco-Resort — across every module in Arcova.
Dashboard
Show portfolio overview, firm KPIs, sustainability targets. Click into project.
Pipeline
Show 7 phases, budget by phase, burn rate, and team allocation.
Kanban + Gantt
Show task dependencies, blocked items, drag-and-drop. Switch to timeline.
Team Heatmap
Show 8-week capacity. Highlight overloaded members and blocked tasks.
Billing
Show unbilled hours by project and create an invoice from real timesheet data in one click.
End with the Sustainability Targets panel — it's unique to Arcova and leaves a strong impression. Mention LEED Gold and Net-Zero targets visible on the dashboard.
Objection Handling
"We already use Asana / Monday / ClickUp"
"Those are great general tools. But they don't know what Discovery, Schematic, or Const Docs mean. You'd spend weeks building custom fields and still not have budget-by-phase, capacity heatmaps, or sustainability tracking. Arcova has that out of the box."
"We're looking at BQE Core"
"BQE Core is powerful but it's an ERP — steep learning curve, complex setup. Arcova gives you the same A/E depth with a modern UI your team will actually want to use. Plus Kanban, Gantt dependencies, and project chat that BQE doesn't have."
"We like Monograph's budget tracking"
"Monograph is excellent at financials. But it doesn't have a Kanban board, Gantt chart, CRM, file versioning, or project chat. With Arcova you get Monograph-level budget tracking plus full project management — one tool instead of two."
"How is your time tracking different?"
"Time logs against the task or sub-task — never a vague project bucket. The same hour drives the timesheet, the budget burn, and the client invoice. Floating timer follows you across the app; weekly grid for batch entry. No reconciliation between three different systems."
15-minute demo, your data, your workflow. No spreadsheets required.
Launch Demo