Know which projects pay for the studio.

Each project is set up from its client agreement: the stages, the fee for each, and whether fees are fixed, a percentage of construction cost, or hourly. When a stage is reached, or on the claim dates the agreement sets, the claim is prepared, you approve it, and it is sent in your name and followed up until it is paid.

Yes. At each month-end, hours and costs are read from your practice management tool and set against the fee for the stage underway, so you see which projects have used more of their fee than the work completed, and which stages are finished but not yet claimed. Both come to the top of the monthly read.

Time recorded against work outside the client agreement is kept apart from the stage it sits in and listed by project each month, so a change the client asked for becomes a variation to agree, not a loss found at the end of the stage. Once a variation is signed, it is invoiced on the terms it sets.

The Architects Award 2020 (MA000079), which covers graduates of architecture and registered architects and sets rates for students of architecture. It has no salary level above which overtime stops applying, and it requires an annual review of each graduate’s progress toward registration. Engineers doing professional engineering work are generally covered by the Professional Employees Award instead. Your Payroll Officer records which award covers each person, and Delphi AI checks every run against it.

Under the Architects Award, time worked beyond 38 ordinary hours a week, or outside 8.00 am to 6.00 pm on weekdays, is paid at 150% of the minimum hourly rate, or under another arrangement that is agreed, fair to the employee, and recorded in writing. Time off instead of payment is taken within six months, at time and a half. Visory tracks the hours and the time off owed with every pay run.

Often, where the services relate to construction work. Security of payment law in every state and territory gives a right to progress payments for related services under a construction contract, and Victoria’s Act names architectural and design services expressly. Whether a particular project is covered, and whether to use the Act, is a question for your legal adviser. What Visory keeps is the record: claims raised on time, against the agreed stage, with the work they cover. This is general information, not legal advice.

Yes. Registration renewals, CPD, professional indemnity premiums, and memberships are coded as the practice’s fixed costs and spread across the months they cover, so the monthly result is not distorted by one large renewal. What each architect must hold and complete is set by their state’s board and stays with them.

Engineers, surveyors, and other consultants you engage are paid through accounts payable, coded to the project, and tracked until the fee is on-charged on the client’s invoice. Freelancers paid for their own labour are checked for super as their invoices arrive. Each month, paid sub-consultant costs are checked against what has been billed, so nothing recoverable is left off.

Visory charges one flat monthly fee for the scope we agree. No timesheets, no hourly billing, no surprises. The fee reflects the services you take and the volume of work in your practice, from the number of projects billed to the size of the pay run, so you know the monthly cost before you start.