Accounting Software for Architects: Best Picks for Architecture Firms, Engineers, and Small Practices
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In short
Most US architecture firms run two tools rather than one: QuickBooks Online at $38 a month as the general ledger, plus an architecture-specific layer such as Monograph or BQE CORE that understands phase-based billing. The split exists because general accounting software has no concept of an AIA phase, so it cannot tell you whether Construction Documents ran over its share of the fee. Worth knowing before you compare prices: Monograph publishes only a range, $25 to $490 a month paid annually, and BQE and Deltek publish no per-user price at all. Any comparison table quoting confident tier prices for those three is repeating figures the vendors themselves no longer show.
Last updated August 2026
The honest read
Architecture firms get sold general small-business accounting software and then discover it was built for a company that sells widgets on a monthly cycle. An architecture practice does not work that way. You sign a fee, often a percentage of construction cost, then earn it down across five AIA phases that can span two or three years, while your only real cost is labor you have to allocate to the right phase of the right project to know whether you made money. That is project accounting, and it is a genuinely different discipline from bookkeeping. The practical consequence is that almost every firm above two or three people ends up with a stack rather than a single product. QuickBooks Online at $38 a month holds the books your CPA works from, handles payroll and produces the tax return, and it does that job well. On top of it sits a layer that knows what a phase is: Monograph for small and mid-size practices, BQE CORE for firms that want billing, HR and accounting modules under one login, or Deltek Vantagepoint and Ajera at the larger end where multi-office consolidation and government contract compliance start to matter. The awkward part of shopping this category is that three of those four vendors will not tell you what they charge. Deltek publishes no price for Vantagepoint or Ajera. BQE lists per-user pricing as a concept and then asks you to request a quote. Monograph replaced its published tiers with a calculator that reports a $25 to $490 per month range. So the comparison tables you find elsewhere, with neat columns of tier prices, are mostly quoting numbers scraped from directories years ago. We have said plainly below what each vendor actually publishes as of August 2026 and marked everything else as reported rather than verified. Earnly sits outside this stack and we should be direct about that: it is an income tracker for money that arrives from platforms, not a ledger and not project accounting software. It earns its place for the architect who also sells detail libraries, Revit families, courses or a YouTube channel on the side, where a marketplace deducts its cut before the deposit lands. For the practice itself, buy the architecture tool.
Published prices
What accounting software for architects actually costs
The important column here is the third one. Three of these vendors do not publish a per-user price at all, which is why prices quoted on comparison sites vary so widely. Figures below are what each vendor showed on its own site in August 2026.
| Tool | Published price | What the vendor actually publishes | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Online | $38/mo Simple Start | Full public tier list, $38 to $275 a month | The ledger, payroll and the tax return |
| Monograph | $25 to $490/mo, paid annually | A range behind a calculator, no named tiers | Small to mid-size practices wanting phase budgets |
| BQE CORE | Not published | Per-user pricing described, quote required | Firms wanting billing, HR and accounting in one login |
| Deltek Vantagepoint | Not published | Nothing, sales contact only | Larger multi-office firms, government work |
| Deltek Ajera | Not published | Nothing, sales contact only | Established AE firms already on Deltek |
| FreshBooks | $23/mo Lite | Full public tier list | Sole practitioners billing hourly or by fixed fee |
| Earnly | $12/mo Solo | Full public tier list | Side income from platforms, not the practice books |
ArchiOffice, the product a lot of older articles still recommend to architects, is a legacy BQE product that is no longer actively sold. BQE documents a migration path into CORE instead. Treat any ArchiOffice review written before that as stale.
Published prices
How the standard AIA phases split an architect fee
This is the table general accounting software cannot produce, and it is the reason architecture firms buy a second tool. The percentages are the widely used AIA distribution; firms vary them by contract, so treat them as the industry convention rather than a rule.
| Phase | Standard share of fee | Commonly seen range | Where firms lose money |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schematic Design | 15% | 10% to 25% | Unbilled revisions while the client decides |
| Design Development | 20% | 10% to 25% | Scope creep that never becomes an amendment |
| Construction Documents | 40% | 35% to 50% | The biggest phase, and the one most often over budget |
| Bidding | 5% | About 5% | Time spent answering bidder questions for free |
| Construction Administration | 20% | 20% to 30% | Site visits and RFIs that run past the fee |
If your software cannot show hours logged against each of these five lines while the project is live, you find out you lost money on Construction Documents after the phase is closed, which is too late to do anything about it.
Why architecture firms cannot just use QuickBooks
They can, and most do, but only for half the job. QuickBooks Online is a capable general ledger: it handles accounts payable and receivable, payroll, sales tax, bank reconciliation and the reports your CPA needs, and at $38 a month for Simple Start it is cheap for what it does. What it has no concept of is a phase. Architecture fees are earned down over Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction Documents, Bidding and Construction Administration, and profitability lives at that level, not at the project level and certainly not at the month level. A project can look healthy overall while Construction Documents quietly consumed 55% of the fee against a 40% budget, and you will not see that in a profit and loss statement. The second gap is labor allocation. In an architecture practice, staff time is essentially the entire cost of goods sold, so knowing whether a project made money means knowing which hours went to which phase of which project, including the hours nobody remembered to log. General accounting software collects payroll as one number. This is why the standard answer from firms with 5 to 100 staff is QuickBooks Online plus an architecture layer, rather than either one on its own.
What architects actually need from accounting software
Strip away the feature lists and an architecture practice needs six things. Phase-based budgets, so a fee can be split across the AIA phases and tracked while the work is live. Time tracking that staff will genuinely use, because unlogged hours make every profitability number fiction. Invoicing that can bill percent complete against a phase, which is how most architecture invoices are actually written. Resource planning far enough ahead to see whether the next three months are overbooked or empty. Consultant management, because structural, mechanical and civil subconsultants get paid out of your fee and their invoices need to land against the right project. And a clean handoff to whoever prepares the tax return. What architecture firms rarely need is inventory, purchase orders for physical goods, point of sale or multi-currency consolidation, which is precisely what the general small-business tools spend their marketing budget on. A useful test when you are in a demo: ask the salesperson to show you a single project with its fee split across five phases, hours logged against each, and percent complete billing generated from that. If the answer involves a spreadsheet export, the tool is a ledger with an architecture landing page.
Why three of these vendors will not show you a price
This is worth understanding before you spend a week comparing. Deltek publishes no price for Vantagepoint or Ajera at all, and Ajera additionally charges separately for customization, data migration, training and maintenance, so the subscription figure would not be the real number anyway. BQE describes CORE as having clear per-user pricing and then routes you to a quote request, with a Foundations base and optional Accounting, CRM, HR and Payroll modules that each move the total. Monograph used to publish named tiers and now shows a calculator that returns a $25 to $490 per month range, paid annually. None of that is sinister; enterprise and mid-market software is commonly priced by seat count and module mix, and firm size genuinely changes the number. But it does mean the confident tier tables you find on review sites are unverified. Third-party estimates for Vantagepoint that we found put the realistic range at roughly $75 to $200 per user per month once project accounting and resource planning are switched on, with a 25-seat firm often landing between $3,000 and $6,000 a month. We are repeating that as reported, not verified, because Deltek does not publish it. The practical advice: get quotes from two of them in parallel, insist the quote includes implementation and data migration, and compare total first-year cost rather than the monthly seat price.
Percentage-of-construction-cost fees make revenue recognition awkward
Most architecture fees are set as a percentage of construction cost, commonly 8% to 15% for residential work and roughly 7% to 12% for general commercial work, with the range stretching from 5% to 20% once complexity and scope are accounted for. Renovation work typically carries a higher percentage than new construction of the same budget, because existing buildings hide surprises. That structure creates an accounting problem general software handles badly. The fee is a moving target until construction cost is final, so the contract value you booked in month one may be wrong by month eighteen. Meanwhile you are recognizing revenue as you complete phases, not as you invoice, and the two rarely line up. Firms that get this right bill percent complete against a phase budget and let the software calculate the invoice, so revenue recognized and revenue billed stay close. Firms that get it wrong invoice on a rough guess, then discover at year end that they have either been billing ahead of work performed, which is a liability, or behind it, which is an interest-free loan to the client. If you also want a plain-language view of how the fee itself is calculated, we wrote a full breakdown of architect fee percentage of construction cost covering the four common fee structures and where each one goes wrong.
Small firms and sole practitioners: when the AE tool is overkill
If you are one or two people doing residential work, the honest answer is that Monograph and BQE CORE are more machinery than your practice needs, and the seat cost is real money against a small fee base. A sole practitioner billing hourly or by fixed fee is well served by FreshBooks at $23 a month, which does estimates, retainers, time tracking against a project and invoices that chase themselves, or by QuickBooks Online at $38 if you want proper double-entry books and your CPA already lives there. The trigger to move up is not revenue, it is staff. The moment you have people whose time you have to allocate across concurrent projects, a spreadsheet stops being able to answer whether a project made money, and that is when phase-based project accounting starts paying for itself. A second trigger is subconsultants: once structural and MEP fees are flowing through your books on multiple live projects, you want them landing against projects automatically rather than by memory. Until then, keep the stack cheap. We compare the general-purpose end of the market on our QuickBooks alternatives and FreshBooks alternatives pages.
Where an income tracker fits, and where it does not
We should be straight about this rather than stretch the product to fit the page. Earnly is an income tracker for money that platforms deposit after taking a cut. It is not a general ledger, it does not do project accounting, it does not track expenses or produce a profit and loss statement, and it will not help you bill percent complete against Construction Documents. For the practice, buy the architecture tool. Where Earnly does earn its place is the other side of a lot of architects income. Plenty of practitioners sell Revit families and detail libraries, run a YouTube channel about the profession, teach on a course platform, or sell templates through a marketplace. That income arrives net, after a platform has deducted a listing fee, a transaction fee and payment processing, and your bank feed records only what landed. Earnly puts every one of those payouts on one board at $12 a month showing gross, fees and take-home per platform, with a payout calendar and a next-month estimate. That is a genuinely separate problem from your firm books, and neither tool replaces the other. If the side income is the bigger question for you, our comparison of the best income tracker apps covers that category properly.
How this page relates to our other professional comparisons
Architecture sits alongside several disciplines with the same underlying problem, which is client-invoiced project income rather than platform-deposited income, and we have separate pages for each because the tooling genuinely differs. The wider accounting software for creatives comparison is the pillar and covers artists, illustrators and musicians. Accounting software for photographers deals with deposits and balances against dated sessions. Accounting software for designers covers graphic designers and, importantly, interior designers, who face the closest problem to architects: reimbursable client purchasing that is a liability rather than revenue until the goods are delivered. If your income is mostly deposited by platforms instead of invoiced to clients, the relevant page is our roundup of the best accounting software for content creators, which is a different comparison with a different shortlist.
Side by side
Where the boards differ
| What you get | Earnly | Architect accounting software |
|---|---|---|
| Every platform payout on one board, gross -> fees -> take-home | Yes | No |
| Phase-based project accounting across AIA phases | No | Yes |
| Time tracking allocated to project and phase | No | Yes |
| Percent complete billing against a phase budget | No | Yes |
| Publishes its full pricing openly | Yes | Monograph a range only, BQE and Deltek not at all |
| Read-only, never touches your money | Yes | Varies by product |
| General ledger and tax return | No | QuickBooks or Deltek |
| Entry price | $12/mo | $25 to $490/mo Monograph, quote elsewhere |
Comparison reflects published pricing and feature descriptions as of July 2026; both products change. Pick the tool that fits how you earn. See what the board looks like on the income tracker homepage, or start with the revenue dashboard.
Questions people actually ask
What accounting software is best for architects?
For most US firms it is a pair rather than a single product: QuickBooks Online at $38 a month for the general ledger and tax return, plus an architecture-specific layer for phase-based project accounting. Monograph suits small and mid-size practices, BQE CORE suits firms wanting billing, HR and accounting in one system, and Deltek Vantagepoint or Ajera suit larger multi-office firms. A sole practitioner can stop at FreshBooks at $23 a month.
How much does accounting software for architects cost?
QuickBooks Online publishes $38 to $275 a month and FreshBooks starts at $23. Monograph publishes only a range, $25 to $490 a month paid annually. BQE CORE and both Deltek products publish no price at all and require a quote. Third-party sources report Vantagepoint landing around $75 to $200 per user per month in practice, but Deltek does not confirm that, so treat it as reported rather than verified.
Can architects just use QuickBooks?
Yes for the books, no for project profitability. QuickBooks Online handles the ledger, payroll, invoicing and the tax return well. What it cannot do is split a fee across the five AIA phases and track hours and percent complete against each one, which is where an architecture practice actually makes or loses money. Firms with staff normally run QuickBooks plus an architecture layer on top rather than choosing between them.
What software do professional architects use?
Two separate stacks. For design, Revit, AutoCAD, Rhino, SketchUp and rendering tools such as Enscape. For the business side, QuickBooks Online as the ledger plus a practice management and project accounting layer, most commonly Monograph, BQE CORE, Deltek Vantagepoint or Deltek Ajera. The two stacks are usually bought separately and by different people in the firm.
What is the best accounting software for small architecture firms?
Under about five people, QuickBooks Online at $38 a month plus disciplined time tracking is usually enough, and FreshBooks at $23 works for a sole practitioner billing hourly. Monograph is the common step up because its entry pricing starts at $25 a month per user and it is built around phase budgets. The trigger to upgrade is hiring staff whose time you must allocate across concurrent projects, not hitting a revenue number.
Do architecture firms need project accounting software?
Once you have employees, yes. Labor is essentially the entire cost of an architecture project, so profitability depends on knowing which hours went to which phase of which project. Without that, a firm learns it lost money on Construction Documents only after the phase closes. A single-person practice with a handful of projects can manage in a spreadsheet, but the accuracy cost rises quickly with headcount and concurrent projects.
Is ArchiOffice still available for architects?
ArchiOffice is a legacy BQE product that is no longer actively sold, and BQE documents a migration path into BQE CORE for existing users instead. A lot of older articles recommending ArchiOffice to architecture firms have not been updated, so if you are reading a comparison that lists it as a current option, check the publication date before trusting anything else on the page.
How much does Monograph cost per month?
Monograph no longer publishes named tiers. Its pricing page shows a calculator that returns a range of $25 to $490 a month, paid annually, based on how many employees your firm has. Third-party sites still list older tier tables such as $25, $39 and $45 per user per month, but those do not match what the vendor currently shows, so get a quote for your actual headcount.