Your company is growing, and you are the leader of an architecture firm. Your team is in top shape, clients love your work, and you are even up for a few architecture awards.

You may be profitable, but to grow your business, you must make more money than you are currently. You can bring in more clients. However, this is only sometimes a viable solution. You can bring on more clients if you are at capacity. However, you will still earn the same amount as before.

Is there a catch-22? Perhaps not. What other ways can an architecture firm make more money if they are taking on fewer clients? These are our suggestions:

Increase the client’s satisfaction with other services

You don’t need to take on more clients if you want to make more money from each one. You can do this by either marketing to clients with higher values (see below) or getting each client to sign up for more services.

What additional services might your architecture firm be able to offer?

• Building process management. This service is the most obvious. This may be something that you already do for clients. However, separating it into a separate service allows you to charge the correct rate for your time and expertise.
• Purchasing and Delivery
• Sell Products. You could also stock your fixtures and fittings that you can sell to clients or wholesale to other shops.

Include a section describing the additional services you offer when you present your initial quotation to the client. The client may need one or more of these services.

Look at the pricing structures of other architecture firms. Many companies give away services that they should charge for. It might be time for you to separate these “included services” and determine how much they cost.

Reach high-value clients

If your clients are not getting more value, it is time to find new clients

This is about something other than increasing the number of clients but focusing your marketing efforts on attracting clients that create $100,000 jobs instead of $10,000.

It’s more challenging than it seems. You will need to change how you market your architecture business to be recognized in a higher market. You will likely need to rebrand to appeal to clients with higher spending. It’s a good idea to consult a branding agency if you are trying to reposition the firm in a new market.

Raise Your Rates

You can always increase your rates if your clients want more. Most businesses experience rate rises as long as the release is not rushed (i.e., You should not raise rates on clients, but you can introduce it to new employees.

Do you consider all of your expenses, time, effort, costs, expertise, and a reasonable level of profit when setting your fees? Are you afraid to raise your rates? You won’t regret taking the plunge.

Streamline Processes

It’s not about making more money; it’s about saving and accounting for expenses.

Many architecture firms lose large chunks of their profits by not correctly tracking expenses and time. Staff forgets to fill out timesheets, they struggle to recall how many hours worked, costs don’t get logged against jobs so that clients can pass them on, admin tasks drag on for hours, and the firm won’t be billed for the actual hours spent on a particular project.

This is how you can solve the problem. Time and project management software such as WorkflowMax are both options.

• Seamless time billing allows the team to track time against a job online. You can also create invoices from timesheets so that everything is remembered.
• Purchase orders, costs, and time can all be entered from anywhere, so you can manage your project from wherever you may be.
• Costs can be stored against jobs – so that they are always remembered.
• Admin costs reduced from hours to minutes – take the data from the quote through to the job and invoicing stage in just a few clicks. Your firm will save time and money by completing tasks that used to take hours.
• Custom Reporting – Never Undercharge a Client Again! By understanding what jobs you have made money in, which ones you’ve had to pay for, and which clients you are most successful at, you can ensure you don’t undercharge.