Time Tracking for Architecture and Engineering Firms

Architecture and engineering firms rarely sell an open-ended hour. A project is fee'd by phase, schematic design, design development, construction documents, construction administration, either as a fixed fee per phase or as hourly work against a phase budget. The question time tracking has to answer is therefore not "how many hours did we work" but "how much of the design-development budget is already spent, and by whom." Plan contents and prices below come from each vendor's pricing page, read on October 28, 2026 (Everhour's price on October 27). Nothing here comes from a hands-on trial.

For whom: a principal or office manager at a firm of 5 to 30 people that bills by phase and invoices from its own records. Not for: a firm that already runs a practice-management ERP for accounting, utilization and fee earned; time belongs in that system.

The first plan that tracks a phase against its budget

Harvest's pricing page adds that on Teams and Enterprise, additional invoices, projects, clients and tasks are billed by usage, so its line is a seat estimate, not the whole bill. Treat each phase as its own project or task with its own estimate. All four tools can then show spent against planned hours for that phase; the difference is whether the same tool also bills it.

Our pick

Harvest Teams. It keeps the full loop, phase estimate, timesheet, invoice, in one place on its base paid plan, and integrates with Xero and QuickBooks Online from Teams; its Xero page states that invoices are copied to Xero when you send them. Clockify Pro costs about $12 a month less for twelve people on seat prices and does both too, but its Xero sync is a separate $4.99 monthly add-on, and a firm that invoices from Harvest gets estimates even on the base plan.

• Pick Clockify Pro if price comes first and your bookkeeper invoices outside the tracker anyway.
• Pick Toggl Track Premium if most of your work is fixed fee per phase: Premium is the plan where Toggl handles fixed-fee projects and project dashboards. It is the most expensive option here, so it only pays if fixed fees dominate.
• Pick Everhour if the firm already plans work in a task tool and wants time recorded there; the Team plan requires at least five seats.

When to skip all four

A firm that needs utilization targets, earned fee by phase, consultant markups and accounting in one ledger is shopping for a practice-management ERP, not a time tracker. Those systems cost more and take longer to set up; buy one when the monthly reconciliation between tracker, spreadsheet and accounts takes longer than the work it reports. Until then, see time tracking for professional services for the common setup, and payroll time versus project time if your hourly staff are paid from the same records.