Factor Blog for Architecture & Engineering Firms

Times are changing. Employees no longer plan to stay with one firm for decades—particularly if it becomes clear that they won’t be getting the role they’re focused on. They want to be PMs and they want to start their training asap. That means A/E firms have to be intentional about how they “groom” their talent if they want the best employees to stick around.

The exclamation “Happy Holidays!” typically rings a little hollow for architecture and engineering (A/E) firm accountants. Instead of being fun and festive, the end of the calendar year is one of their busiest times (along with tax season), as they scramble to complete a variety of tasks. However, there are ways that A/E firm accounting departments can complete those tasks without all of the usual stress.

The Factor team is committed to continuously improving your experience and helping your firm succeed. This blog outlines a few new features that were released in the past month that you should be sure to take advantage of. Try them out and let us know what you think!

QuickBooks scales just fine for general accounting tasks and can work for firms of all sizes. As a business scales up, they may have additional needs beyond accounting, but that doesn’t mean QuickBooks doesn’t still perform. You might just need something other than an accounting package to run your firm.

There’s a common misconception in the architecture and engineering (A/E) industry that QuickBooks is a good tool for small firms but that organizations can’t continue using it as they grow. The reality is that QuickBooks is great for general accounting tasks for firms of all sizes.

Most architecture and engineering (A/E) firms don’t have much in the way of financial management controls in place. And interestingly, given their lack of payroll expertise, most nevertheless feel they need to handle it internally.

Architecture and engineering (A/E) firms tend to use one of two primary economic models. The first is characterized by what we’ll call “passive project management” and the other is centered around “active project management.” Here are examples of the approaches, benefits of the different models, and how to know if you’re using the right one.

It is important as an architecture or engineering (A/E) firm owner to manage your firm’s valuation in order to ensure that it’s accurate and meets expectations. But it’s important to note that too much management of your stock value can cause internal buyers to be apprehensive. This is particularly true if you haven’t educated your employees (i.e., the next generation of owners) about how an A/E firm is run.

At the end of a fiscal year, many firms look to recalculate their value. We’ve found that too many of them believe a change in valuation is something that happens to them rather than something they control and manage.

It’s become clear that the COVID-19 pandemic will have long-lasting effects on how architecture and engineering (A/E) firms operate. While some will go back to work in-office, many will continue to work remotely. Here’s how to manage the performance of staff working from home.