I Didn't See This Coming

Since closing my firm I have been concentrating all my efforts on Architekwiki. So I wasn't expecting what happened recently. I was approached by the founder of the bookkeeping software that I now use, B2Bee. [affiliate link] He proposed the idea of cloning his software and customizing it for architectural firms.

I quickly discovered that there are 17,000 architectural firms in the US with less than 10 people. This is the target audience and also the vast majority of the 21,000 total firms. My firm would have been included in that group for its 32 years of existence.

So lately I have been distracted by this idea of helping to develop this bookkeeping software and get it in front of as many firms as possible.

I have been making a fair amount of progress in evaluating what would be required of me and of the software - to the detriment of keeping up my writing schedule. I would say this software is at least a year away from being launched, but so far the economics seem to be positive.

So how do those 17,000 architectural firms do their bookkeeping now? Would they be interested in an easy-to-use product that combines timekeeping, invoicing and bill-tracking (bookkeeping)? A product that reduces the time that these tasks consume?

I would love to hear from anyone who is part of a small firm and happens to know how their timekeeping, invoicing and bill-tracking (bookkeeping) gets done. I could really use your input to aid my research.

Contact me at my email address to share your methods; or add them to the comments below. And stay tuned, I suspect you will be hearing more about this adventure.

MY FOUR QUESTIONS:

1. How many people in your firm?
2. Is your timekeeping system based on:  paper forms, spreadsheet, software, other?
3. Is your invoicing system based on: Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, software, other?
4. Is your bill-tracking system homemade, software or other?