Corbu - What I Have Learned So Far

My first survey of architectural accounting methods collected 400 responses. These responses form the basis for this update. That first survey is effectively closed. I started to notice that I was asking different questions when I interviewed someone. So I cloned the first survey and deleted the questions that weren’t helping to understand the methods being used. Then I added a few new questions. Survey 2 is two questions shorter, but offers more opportunities to comment. I plan to publish the results of Survey 2 when the number of participants are similar to the first survey. But here’s what I have learned so far.

Key things I have learned, or had confirmed, are:

• Paper methods are more prevalent than I thought they would be.
• QuickBooks is ingrained in an overwhelming majority of firms.
• Accounting takes up too much time in most firms.
• Getting invoices to show the critical information in an attractive and understandable format is harder to achieve than I would have guessed.
• Timekeeping seems to be especially time-consuming for most firms under 15 people: updating and collecting time sheets, compiling hours per project, and transcribing hours into invoices.
• Cloud-based solutions aren’t as popular for accounting as other types of software.

Compare your firm with others of the same size

In the charts above and below I have arranged the data for nine different firm sizes. Each chart shows the popularity of the four most-used methods by firm size. If you would like to dig deeper, the whole report can be downloaded.

In case you want a recap of the Corbu journey so far, here are the previous posts to catch you up.

• 5/13 - I Didn't See This Coming
• 5/21 - These Interviews Are Very Enlightening
• 6/08 - Code Name: Project Corbu
• 7/21 - Corbu Is 3 Months Old
• 9/02 - Update No. 5

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