Australian Architectural Firm Dramatically Increases Productivity

About Edmiston James

Established on the South Coast of New South Wales in 1980, Edmiston Jones (EJ) is an architectural firm based in Nowra, Wollongong and Batemans Bay. The practice has grown to a solid architectural team consisting of qualified architects supported by technicians and clerical assistants. Their prime objective is to provide highly creative and innovative design solutions delivered with a clear management process that keeps clients involved and informed. Environmentally sensitive buildings that maximize site opportunities, while responding to climate and context, are the outcome of their design process.

Background

Edmiston Jones was in need of a simple and efficient billing process. Employees used to manually enter their time into Excel and then produce invoices on a separate system based on the spreadsheet calculations. “Using one system to enter data and then transferring this data to different software to create invoices and reports was very time consuming and open to errors”, said Lesley Drysdale, Accounting Manager of EJ. She wanted a software product that would streamline the entire process and automate time and expense tracking, billing, invoicing and reporting for her firm.

Solution

Since EJ employees primarily use Apple computers, they needed a solution that was compatible with Macs. The Executive Assistant at EJ was in charge of the product evaluation process and she found that there were not many Mac-based solutions available that were easy to use and had the functionality that they were looking for. After researching online, she stumbled upon ArchiOffice and was immediately attracted to the product’s intuitive and streamlined design, robust features and high level of value for a reasonable price. She requested a live demo to see the software in action and was not disappointed by the presentation.

Benefits & Results

Since installing ArchiOffice, employees at EJ have had great experiences working with the software. Lesley mentions that the firm heavily uses the project management and reporting features: “Project leaders use the tasks and time sheet reports in ArchiOffice to manage their time and percentages on a weekly basis. Also, phases and job codes work well - we have a few projects that use consultants as part of our fee, so sub-phases are a great way to manage this as well as producing reports. The Budget vs. Actual Report gives us the necessary information for our monthly billing cycle and the best part is we can invoice from the same software that we use to track time.”

“I use the Report section quite a lot to produce information relevant for our quarterly review meetings where we document staff percentages, non-chargeable time, write ups and downs per project and per project type, fee proposal success, professional development accrual, etc.”, Lesley continued.

When asked about how ArchiOffice has increased her firm’s efficiency, Lesley said, “Invoicing has become more streamlined and easier to manage, especially on large projects with consultants. Productivity has increased as we spend less time on managing projects since all relevant information is in one place.”

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