RIBA stage invoicing
Raising the invoice at the right stage for the right amount, tracking payment against retention terms, and following up on overdue amounts, in parallel across every live project.
Architects
Reclaim billable hours
from project admin.
Architecture sells design thinking, technical knowledge and oversight. A real part of every project week goes to work that needs none of it.
At a glance
- Who it fits
- Sole practitioners and small practices running several live projects
- What it removes
- Stage billing, drawing registers, consultant chasing, sign off packs
- Where it starts
- The Time Leak Audit, from £950 excluding VAT
- Your time
- Under two hours
The problem
The structure that makes
a practice work also makes admin.
Architecture runs on a predictable structure: RIBA stages, drawing registers, consultant coordination, a formal sign off at every milestone. That structure is exactly what generates repeatable admin, and it is where expert time disappears.
For a sole practitioner or a small practice it compounds fast. You are the designer, the project manager and the practice administrator at once. Every hour on project admin is an hour not on design, on winning work, or on the thing the client is actually paying for.
The awkward part is that project admin scales with the number of projects, not with the size of the team. More projects means more registers, more requests for information to track, more invoices to raise. A system scales the same way, without payroll.
Every practice is built differently, which is why the first step is not a tool. It is working out where your own time leaks.
Where the time goes
Where architects lose
the most time
Four areas account for most of it, and all four repeat on every project.
Common candidates in an architecture practice
- Stage invoice generation and payment follow up
- Drawing register updates and consultant distribution
- Request for information logging, routing and response tracking
- Stage sign off packages and approval chasing
- Planning application compilation and submission checklists
- CDM documentation and Principal Designer records
- New client onboarding: fee letters, appointment documents, project setup
- Site visit reports templated and distributed
- Alerts when a stage is approved but not yet invoiced
- A weekly view of what is outstanding across live projects
The arithmetic
What the hours cost a practice
Take an architect billing at £150 an hour and six hours of project admin a week. Over a forty eight week year that is 288 hours, or around £43,000 of expert time. At £200 an hour the same hours represent around £57,600.
These are illustrations on an assumed rate and an assumed number of weeks, not measured results. Across a practice of three the collective figure grows quickly, which is why the Audit works from your real projects rather than an average.
The most useful fixes in a practice are the ones that touch every project at every stage: onboarding, invoicing, coordination, approvals. The cost of building one is spread across every project it runs on afterwards.
≈12 → <1hours of admin in a busy month, at a payroll firm serving around 200 client companies
Premium Paye
Invoicing rebuilt by hand, direct debits keyed one client at a time, paperwork chased by email. Three connected processes took the manual work out of the month.
Read the case studyHow it works
Three paid phases.
You decide after each one.
Each phase has its own deliverables and its own fixed fee, so you always know what you are buying before you buy the next thing.
Time Leak Audit
I map how the work happens today, estimate the hours that could be recovered and rank the opportunities against your goals. Under two hours of your time.
From £950 · fixed fee · excluding VATProcess Design
A working session with your team, then detailed mapping: the steps, the data, the business rules and the exceptions that decide how the build behaves.
Separately scoped · fixed fee · excluding VATImplementation and handover
I build it in the tools you already use, test it against the agreed scenarios, document it and show your team how to run it without me.
Fixed project price · quoted after Process DesignBefore any of it, a free fifteen minute conversation. Bring the process as it actually happens, not as it should.
Before we talk
What practices ask
before starting.
Architecture has its own constraints. These are the ones that come up first.
Do I need to replace the systems I already use?
I work with the tools you already use rather than replacing them. What automation does need is a connector platform to run the processes, such as Make or Zapier, and any AI steps run on a subscription such as Claude or ChatGPT. These are modest monthly costs, you own the accounts, and I set out exactly what is needed and what it costs in the Audit, so nothing is a surprise later.
Do you build custom software?
No. I work with existing tools, automation and AI where they fit. If a job genuinely needs a developer, I tell you that, and who can do it.
What about design software and modelling?
That is not what this is. Nothing here touches your design tools, your modelling or your rendering. The work is the administrative layer that surrounds the project, not the project itself.
What does the Audit involve?
A short conversation about how your project week actually runs, then analysis, then a written report within 48 hours. Under two hours of your time. From £950, excluding VAT.
Will I be pushed into a build afterwards?
No. The Audit stands on its own and you decide what happens next. If the numbers do not support a build, that is what the report will say.
Keep reading
Related
Your business
Find out what project admin
is costing your practice.
If the practice is busy and still feels inefficient, it is worth knowing why. Tell me how your project week runs and I will tell you where I think the time is going.
15 minutes · No charge
Prefer to write? [email protected]